Continuities in psychological anthropology: A historical introduction

By Philip K. Bock

Book Overview

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0716711370
• ISBN13: 9780716711377
• Release Date: January 1980
• Publisher: W. H. Freeman
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 0.88 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Tying It All Together

This book is an excellent review of psychological theories of anthropology. Bock sketches standard Twentieth Century theories of psychology and personality theory. He then reviews the main schools of cultural anthropology from the 1930s, noting how each related to and drew from the various theories of personality. In doing so, he describes classic works in psychology from Freud to Erikson to Fromm, and in anthropology from Benedict to Mead, to Kardiner, DuBois, and LeVine. He not only summarizes these classic works, but puts them in the theoretical contexts of their times and outlines how can they can be compared. Bock is careful through most of the book not to take sides and defend one particular theory or another. Nevertheless, when he does let his own inclinations come to light, it is clear that he is a strong proponent of psychoanalysis. He declares "Psychoanalysis insists on what we apparently most wish to deny: that we were all tiny, dependent babies once; that our lives are forever entwined with our early loves and hates, identifications and disappointments; and that virtually any human action may carry a great load of symbolic significance. So long as we repress these truths, they will return to haunt us and to upset our tidy theories and methods." In any case, the book makes great reading for those who have read (or plan to read) the classics in cultural anthropology and want to know how they fit together, or to better understand the psychoanalytic theories of the time that were driving the research.