Psychological Anthropology

Psychological anthropology Psychological anthropology is an interdisciplinary subfield of anthropology that studies the interaction of cultural and mental processes. This subfield tends t o focus on ways in which humans' development and enculturation within a particul ar cultural group with its own history, language, practices, and conceptual catego riesshape processes of human cognition, emotion, perception, motivation, and ment al health. It also examines how the understanding of cognition, emotion, motivat ion, and similar psychological processes inform or constrain our models of cultu ral and social processes. Each school within psychological anthropology has its own approach.[1][2] Contents 1 History 2 Schools 2.1 Psychoanalytic anthropology 2.2 Culture and personality 2.2.1 Configurationalist approach 2.2.2 Basic and modal personality 2.2.3 National character 2.3 Ethnopsychology 2.4 Cognitive Anthropology 2.5 Psychiatric anthropology 3 Psychological anthropology today 4 See also 5 References 6 Bibliography 6.1 Selected Historical Works and Textbooks 6.2 Selected Theoretical Works in Psychological Anthropology 6.3 Selected Ethnographic Works in Psychological Anthropology 6.4 Selected Works in Psychiatric Anthropology 6.5 History 7 External links History Psychological Anthropology has been interwoven with anthropology since the begin ning Wilhelm Wundt a German psychologist was a pioneer in folk psychology. His object ives were to find out the psychological explanations using the reports of ethnol ogists he made different contracting stages for example "the Totemic stage", "ag e of heroes and gods", and "enlightened age of humanity". Unlike most, Wundt bel ieve that the brain of the primitive and the civilized had the same learning cap abilities but used that ability differently. For most of time the fields of Anthropology and Psychology have always remained separate. Where anthropology was geared towards historical and evolutionary tren ds psychology was focused more towards ahistorical and aculture. Psychoanalytic joined the two fields together. In 1972 Francis Hsu suggested that the field known as culture and personality be renamed to Psychological Anthropology. Hsu thought the previous title old fashi oned as many anthropologists thought personality and culture were the same, or t hat it required a better explanation than it had. During the 1970s and 80s Psych ological Anthropology began focusing on human behaviour in a natural setting. Schools Psychoanalytic anthropology This school is based upon the insights of Sigmund Freud and other psychoanalysts as applied to social and cultural phenomena. Adherents of this approach often a

ssumed that techniques of child-rearing shaped adult personality and that cultur al symbols (including myths, dreams, and rituals) could be interpreted using psy choanalytical theories and techniques. The latter included interviewing techniqu es based on clinical interviewing, the use of projective tests such as the TAT[3 ] and the Rorschach, and a tendency towards including case studies of individual interviewees in their ethnographies. A major example of this approach was the S ix Cultures Study under John and Beatrice Whiting in Harvard's Department of Soc ial Relations. This study examined child-rearing in six very different cultures (New England Baptist community; a Philippine barrio; an Okinawan village; an Ind ian village in Mexico; a northern Indian caste group; and a rural tribal group i n Kenya).[4] Some practitioners look specifically at mental illness cross-culturally (George Devereux) or at the ways in which social processes such as the oppression of eth nic minorities affect mental health (Abram Kardiner), while others focus on the ways in which cultural symbols or social institutions provide defense mechanisms (Melford Spiro) or otherwise alleviate psychological conflicts (Gananath Obeyes ekere).[5] Some have also examined the cross-cultural applicability of psychoana lytic concepts such as the Oedipus complex (Melford Spiro).[6] Others who might be considered part of this school are a number of scholars who, although psychoanalysts, conducted fieldwork (Erich Fromm) or used psychoanalyt ic techniques to analyze materials gathered by anthropologists (Sigmund Freud, E rik Erikson, G?za R?heim). Because many American social scientists during the first two-thirds of the 20th century had at least a passing familiarity with psychoanalytic theory, it is har d to determine precisely which ones should be considered primarily as psychoanal ytic anthropologists. Many anthropologists who studied personality (Cora DuBois, Clyde Kluckhohn, Geoffrey Gorer) drew heavily on psychoanalysis; most members o f the "culture and personality school" of psychological anthropology did so. In recent years, psychoanalytic and more broadly psychodynamic theory continues to influence some psychological anthropologists (such as Gilbert Herdt, Douglas Hollan, and Robert LeVine) and have contributed significantly to such approaches as person-centered ethnography[7] and clinical ethnography.[8] It thus may make more sense to consider psychoanalytic anthropology since the latter part of the 20th century as more a style or a set of research agendas that cut across sever al other approaches within anthropology. See also: Robert I. Levy, Ari Kiev. Culture and personality Personality is the overall characteristics that a person possesses. These all ch aracteristics are acquired within a culture; however when person changes his or her culture his personality automatically changes because person learns the norm s, and values of that new culture and follow them, hence it becomes its personal ity. Configurationalist approach This approach describes a culture as a personality; that is, interpretation of e xperiences, guided by symbolic structure, creates personality which is "copied" into the larger culture. Leading figures include Ruth Benedict, A. Irving Hallow ell, and Margaret Mead. Basic and modal personality Major figures include John Whiting and Beatrice Whiting, Cora DuBois, and Floren ce Kluckhohn. National character

Leading figures include sociologist Alex Inkeles and anthropologist Clyde Kluckh ohn. Ethnopsychology Major figures: Georges Devereux, Tobie Nathan, Catherine Lutz, Michelle Zimbalis t Rosaldo, Renato Rosaldo, Charles Nuckolls and Dorinne K. Kondo Cognitive Anthropology Cognitive anthropology takes a number of methodological approaches, but generall y draws on the insights of cognitive science in its model of the mind. A basic p remise is that people think with the aid of schemas, units of culturally shared knowledge that are hypothesized to be represented in the brain as networks of ne ural connections.[9] This entails certain properties of cultural models, and may explain both part of the observed inertia of cultural models (people's assumpti ons about the way the world works are hard to change) and patterns of associatio n.[10] D'Andrade (1995) sees the history of cognitive anthropology proper as divisible into four phases. The first began in the 1950s with the explicit formulation of culture as knowledge by anthropologists such as Ward Goodenough[11] and Anthony Wallace. From the late 1950s through the mid-1960s, attention focused on categor ization, componential analysis (a technique borrowed from structuralist linguist ics), and native or folk systems of knowledge (ethnoscience e.g., ethnobotany, e thnolinguistics and so on), as well as discoveries in patterns of color naming b y Brent Berlin and Paul Kay. During the 1950s and 1960s, most of the work in cog nitive anthropology was carried out at Yale, University of Pennsylvania, Stanfor d, Berkeley, University of California, Irvine, and the Harvard Department of Soc ial Relations. The third phase looked at types of categories (Eleanor Rosch) and cultural models, drawing on schema theory, linguistic work on metaphor (George Lakoff, Mark Johnson). The current phase, beginning in the 1990s, has seen more focus on the problem of how cultural models are shared and distributed, as well as on motivation,[12] with significant work taking place at UC San Diego, UCLA, UC Berkeley, University of Connecticut, and Australian National University, amon g others. Currently, different cognitive anthropologists are concerned with how groups of individuals are able to coordinate activities and "thinking" (Edwin Hutchins); w ith the distribution of cultural models (who knows what, and how people access k nowledge within a culture: Dorothy Holland, A. Kimball Romney, Dan Sperber, Marc Swartz); with conflicting models within a culture (Naomi Quinn, Holly Mathews); or the ways in which cultural models are internalized and come to motivate beha vior (Roy D'Andrade, Naomi Quinn, Charles Nuckolls, Bradd Shore, Claudia Strauss ).[13] Some cognitive anthropologists continue work on ethnoscience (Scott Atran ), most notably in collaborative field projects with cognitive and social psycho logists on culturally universal versus culturally particular models of human cat egorization and inference and how these mental models hinder or help social adap tations to natural environments.[14] Others focus on methodological issues such as how to identify cultural models.[15][16] Related work in cognitive linguistic s and semantics also carries forward research on the Sapir Whorf hypothesis and lo oks at the relationship between language and thought (Maurice Bloch, John Lucy, Anna Wierzbicka).[17][18] Psychiatric anthropology While not forming a school in the sense of having a particular methodological ap proach, a number of prominent psychological anthropologists have addressed signi ficant attention to the interaction of culture and mental health or mental illne ss (Jenkins and Barrett 2004), ranging through the description and analysis of c ulture-bound syndromes (Pow-Meng Yap, Ronald Simons, Charles Hughes);[19] the re lationship between cultural values or culturally mediated experiences and the de velopment or expression of mental illness (among immigrants, for instancemore pa

rticularly) (Thomas Csordas, George Devereux, Robert Edgerton, Sue Estroff, Arth ur Kleinman, Roberto Beneduce, Robert Lemelson, Theresa O'Nell, Marvin Opler); t o the training of mental health practitioners and the cultural construction of m ental health as a profession (Charles W. Nuckolls, Tanya Luhrmann), and more rec ently to the cultural creation of a "pharmaceutical self" in a globalizing world (Jenkins 2011). Recent research foucuses on specific relationships between Hist ory, conscience, cultural Self and suffering (Roberto Beneduce, Etnopsichiatria. Sofferenza mentale e alterit? fra Storia, dominio e cultura, 2007).Some of thes e have been primarily trained as psychiatrists rather than anthropologists: Abra m Kardiner, Arthur Kleinman, Robert I. Levy, Roberto Beneduce, Roland Littlewood . Psychological anthropology today During most of the history of modern anthropology (with the possible exception o f the 1930s through the 1950s, when it was an influential approach within Americ an social thought), psychological anthropology has been a relatively small thoug h productive subfield. D'Andrade, for instance, estimates that the core group of scholars engaged in active research in cognitive anthropology (one of the small er sub-subfields), have numbered some 30 anthropologists and linguists, with the total number of scholars identifying with this subfield likely being less than 200 at any one time.[20] At present, relatively few universities have active graduate training programs i n psychological anthropology. These include: Centre Georges Devreux, Paris 8 University Australian National University - Linguistics and Applied Linguistics Program Brunel University, West London - MSc program in psychological and psychiatri c anthropology Case Western Reserve University - MA, PhD in cultural anthropology Duke University - Cultural Anthropology Emory University - Anthropology London School of Economics - Anthropology University of Bergen, Norway - Social Anthropology University of California, Berkeley - Anthropology and Linguistics University of California, Irvine - Anthropology University of California, Los Angeles - Anthropology University of California, San Diego - Anthropology and Cognitive Science University of Chicago - Human Development University of Connecticut - Anthropology University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill - Anthropology Also, social medicine and cross-cultural/transcultural psychiatry programs at: Harvard - Department of Global Health & Social Medicine McGill - Division of Social and Transcultural Psychiatry Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Valparaiso - Master in Ethnopsychology Universit? degli Studi di Trieste - Department of Ethnopsychology See also Cognitive anthropology Cognitive science Cultural psychology Egocentrism Enculturation Development of religion Harvard Department of Social Relations Social psychology Symbolic interactionism

References ^ D'Andrade, R. G. (1995). The development of cognitive anthropology. New Yo rk, Cambridge University Press. ^ Schwartz, T., G. M. White, et al., Eds. (1992). New Directions in Psycholo gical Anthropology. Cambridge, UK, Cambridge University Press. ^ Murray, H. A. (1943). Thematic Apperception Test. Cambridge, MA, Harvard U niversity Press. ^ Whiting, Beatrice and John Whiting. 1975. Children of Six Cultures: a psyc hocultural analysis. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ^ Obeyesekere, G. (1985). Depression, Buddhism, and the work of culture in S ri Lanka. In: Culture and depression: studies in the anthropology and cross-cult ural psychology of affect and disorder. A. Kleinman and B. J. Good. Berkeley / L os Angeles, University of California Press: 134-152. ^ Kilborne, B. and L. L. Langness, Eds. (1987). Culture and human nature: Th eoretical papers of Melford E. Spiro. Chicago, University of Chicago Press. ^ Levy, R. I. and D. Hollan (1998). Person-centered interviewing and observa tion in anthropology. Handbook of methods in cultural anthropology. H. R. Bernar d. Walnut Creek, CA, Altamira Press: 333-364. ^ Herdt, G. (1999). "Clinical ethnography and sexual culture." Annual Review of Sex Research 10: 100-119. ^ D'Andrade, Roy G. (1995). The Development of Cognitive Anthropology. Cambr idge, UK: Cambridge University Press. ^ Strauss, Claudia and Naomi Quinn (1997) A Cognitive Theory of Cultural Mea ning. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. ^ Goodenough, W. H. (1969). Rethinking "status" and "role": toward a general model of the cultural organization of social relationships. Cognitive Anthropol ogy. S. A. Tyler. New York, Holt, Rhinehart and Winston: 311-330. ^ D'Andrade (1995: 244-248) ^ D'Andrade, Roy G. and Claudia Strauss. (1992) Human Motives and Cultural M odels. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. ^ Atran, Scott and Douglas Medin, (2008) The Native Mind and the Cultural Co nstruction of Nature. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. ^ Holland, Dorothy and Naomi Quinn, (Eds.) (1987) Cultural Models in Languag e and Thought. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. ^ Quinn, Naomi, (Ed.) (2005) Finding Culture in Talk: a collection of method s. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. ^ Wierzbicka, Anna (1999) Emotions across Languages and Cultures: diversity and universals. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. ^ Wierzbicka, Anna (1993) "A conceptual basis for cultural psychology." Etho s 21:205 - 231. ^ Jenkins, Janis H. and Robert J. (2004). Schizophrenia, Culture, and Subjec tivity. New York: Cambridge University Press. ^ D'Andrade (1995: xiv) Bibliography Selected Historical Works and Textbooks Bock, Philip K. (1999) Rethinking Psychological Anthropology, 2nd Ed., New Y ork: W. H. Freeman D'Andrade, Roy G. (1995). The Development of Cognitive Anthropology. Cambrid ge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Hsu, Francis L. K., ed. (1972) Psychological Anthropology. Cambridge: Schenk man Publishing Company, Inc. Wilhelm Max Wundt, V?lkerpsychologie: Eine Untersuchung der Entwicklungsgese tze von Sprache, Mythus und Sitte, Leipzig (1917); 2002 reprint: ISBN 978-0-54377838-3. Selected Theoretical Works in Psychological Anthropology

Bateson, Gregory (1956) Steps to an Ecology of Mind. New York: Ballantine Bo oks. Hallowell, A. Irving (1955) Culture and Experience. New York: Schocken Books . Kilborne, Benjamin and L. L. Langness, eds. (1987). Culture and Human Nature : Theoretical papers of Melford E. Spiro. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Nuckolls, Charles W. (1996) The Cultural Dialectics of Knowledge and Desire. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Nuckolls, Charles W. (1998) Culture: A Problem that Cannot be Solved. Madiso n: University of Wisconsin Press. Quinn, Naomi, ed. (2005) Finding Culture in Talk: a collection of methods. N ew York: Palgrave Macmillan. Sapir, Edward (1956) Culture, Language, and Personality: selected essays. Ed ited by D. G. Mandelbaum. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Schwartz, Theodore, Geoffrey M. White, and Catherine A. Lutz, eds. (1992) Ne w Directions in Psychological Anthropology. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Shore, Bradd (1995) Culture in Mind: cognition, culture, and the problem of meaning. New York: Oxford University Press. Shweder, Richard A. and Robert A. LeVine, eds. (1984). Culture Theory: Essay s on mind, self, and emotion. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Strauss, Claudia and Naomi Quinn (1997). A Cognitive Theory of Cultural Mean ing. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Wierzbicka, Anna (1999) Emotions across Languages and Cultures: diversity an d universals. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Selected Ethnographic Works in Psychological Anthropology Benedict, Ruth (1946) The Chrysanthemum and the Sword: Patterns of Japanese Culture. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company. Briggs, Jean (1970) Never in Anger: Portrait of an Eskimo family. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. DuBois, Cora Alice (1960) The people of Alor; a social-psychological study o f an East Indian island. With analyses by Abram Kardiner and Emil Oberholzer. Ne w York: Harper. Herdt, Gilbert (1981) Guardians of the Flutes. Chicago: University of Chicag o Press. Levy, Robert I. (1973) Tahitians: mind and experience in the Society Islands . Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lutz, Catherine (1988) Unnatural Emotions: Everyday sentiments on a Micrones ian atoll and their challenge to Western theory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Rosaldo, Michelle Zimbalist (1980) Knowledge and Passion: Ilongot notions of self and social life. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Scheper-Hughes, Nancy (1979) Saints, Scholars, and Schizophrenics: mental il lness in rural Ireland. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Swartz, Marc J. (1991) The Way the World Is: cultural processes and social r elations among the Swahili of Mombasa. Berkeley: University of California Press. Selected Works in Psychiatric Anthropology Jenkins, Janis H. and Robert J. Barrett (2004) Schizophrenia, Culture, and S ubjectivity: The Edge of Experience. New York: Cambridge University Press. Jenkins, Janis H. (2011) Pharmaceutical Self: The Global Shaping of Experien ce in an Age of Psychopharmacology. Santa Fe, NM: School of Advanced Research. Kardiner, Abram, with the collaboration of Ralph Linton, Cora Du Bois and Ja mes West (pseud.) (1945) The psychological frontiers of society. New York: Colum bia University Press. Kleinman, Arthur (1980) Patients and healers in the context of culture: an e

xploration of the borderland between anthropology, medicine, and psychiatry. Ber keley, CA: University of California Press. -- (1986) Social origins of distress and disease: depression, neurasthenia, and pain in modern China. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Kleinman, Arthur, & Good, Byron, eds. (1985) Culture and Depression: studies in the anthropology and cross-cultural psychology of affect and disorder. Berke ley / Los Angeles: University of California Press. Luhrmann, Tanya M. (2000) Of two minds: The growing disorder in American psy chiatry. New York, NY, US: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Beneduce Roberto (2008) Undocumented bodies, burned identities: refugees, sa nspapiers, harraga when things fall apart, Social Science Information, 47; 505 Beneduce Roberto (2005) (with Martelli, Pompeo) Politics of Healing and Poli tics of Culture: Ethnopsychiatry, Identities and Migration, 42. O'Nell, Theresa D. (1996) Disciplined Hearts: History, identity, and depress ion in an American Indian community. Berkeley, CA: University of California Pres s. Beneduce, Roberto (2007) Etnopsichiatria. Sofferenza mentale e alterit? fra Storia, dominio e cultura, Roma: Carocci.