16 - Anthropology and psychology: an unrequited relationship

Summary

In this chapter I will contend that anthropology has not had the impact it should on mainstream psychology considering the claims that psychological anthropology makes or should make. I will qualify this assertion later in considering remaining limitations in some “best-case” psychologies. Where we have been neglected or ignored, I will try to identify failings on both sides including our own neglect of academic, mainstream psychology.

Anthropological knowledge of the evolution, nature, forms, and role of culture implicates a set of claims concerning the constitution of human nature and of the bases of human behavior that should not be ignored and yet are largely ignored in mainstream academic psychology, psychoanalysis, and psychiatry. The consequence is an incomplete and misconceived psychology that undershoots its mark – fully human nature. If psychology has failed to accept both the challenge and the resource of anthropological knowledge, we must look for the fault on both sides. Though we began together in the quest for human nature, there has been a mutual estrangement – an inter-paradigmatic misunderstanding. I will contend, nevertheless, that obscured by this estrangement, a major convergence is taking place in some areas (I have in mind cognitive science and the psychology of culture) but perhaps not in some others that we most take for granted (I have in mind psychoanalysis and psychiatry).