“Before the dementia diagnosis, Marcel and I were at dinner with some Jewish friends from South Africa,” said Ruth, Marcel’s wife. I was interviewing Ruth about Marcel’s younger onset dementia. “Marcel started talking about things he never talked of before,” she said. “He told stories about himself during the Holocaust as a child. You know,… Continue reading Anchoring the Unspeakable: Trauma in Younger Onset Dementia Narratives
Category: Theory
Of House or Bush: The Cultural Psychodynamics of Infanticide in Northern Ghana
My latest article was accepted for publication in Current Anthropology. It has been a long ten years in the making. Infanticide, Oedipus, projection, family conflict, scapegoats, and narcissistic injury--all the makings of a good drama. I'll be posting a link to it after some final edits. For now, the abstract (summing up the 12,000 word behemoth) and… Continue reading Of House or Bush: The Cultural Psychodynamics of Infanticide in Northern Ghana
On Personhood and its Subjunctivity
Elijah and I sat chatting with three elder men outside a compound. Earlier we were discussing spirits, but the postlunch conversation soon switched to more mundane topics. There was a brief lull in the conversation before Akolbire declared, to our astonishment, “I am a spirit child."[i] “What are you talking about? You shouldn’t be revealing… Continue reading On Personhood and its Subjunctivity
On the “Reality” of Witchcraft
The following are some thoughts I shared with my Culture, Health, and Disease students on belief and reality. “Why would anyone admit they are a sorcerer or a witch?” is a question that arises when I teach topics related to witchcraft, sorcery, and belief. This is a well-trod theme for anthropologists. However, it remains significant… Continue reading On the “Reality” of Witchcraft
An Introduction to Psychoanalytic Anthropology: Perspectives (2/2)
This is the second post (of two) on psychoanalytic anthropology. The previous post, which discussed background details, is located here. There is significant diversity in how anthropologists have engaged or adopted psychoanalytic methods and theory in their ethnographic research and writing. To summarize these perspectives, I grouped these approaches into four categories. While presented as… Continue reading An Introduction to Psychoanalytic Anthropology: Perspectives (2/2)
An Introduction to Psychoanalytic Anthropology: The Background (1/2)
There has always been a kinship between anthropology and psychoanalysis, however uneven, from Freud’s interest in anthropological data and his attempts to link the psyche with social forms, to more contemporary shared theorizations of the self and subjectivity in culturally diverse contexts. Psychoanalyst and anthropologist Elizabeth Bott-Spillius believed that while the content and expressions between… Continue reading An Introduction to Psychoanalytic Anthropology: The Background (1/2)
What is Cultural Psychodynamics?
I frequently refer to parts of my research and writing as working from a "cultural psychodynamic" perspective. What is this? In short, it is a theory and methodology that brings together perspectives from cultural phenomenology and psychoanalysis (culture + psyche). It emphasizes the complexity of cultural subjects and examines the ways in which culture and… Continue reading What is Cultural Psychodynamics?
Reflections on the 2016 Boyer Award
This was originally posted on the Society for Psychological Anthropology blog. In it, I summarize my award winning article. While most scholarly accounts of divination focus on its social functions, in A Psychodynamic Phenomenology of Nankani Interpretive Divination and the Formation of Meaning, I emphasize Nankani divination’s meaning-making features and explain how divination shapes people’s subjectivity… Continue reading Reflections on the 2016 Boyer Award
Reflexivities 