Depth Psychology and Symbolic Anthropology: Toward a Depth Sociology of Psychocultural Interaction

• Published in: The International journal for the psychology of religion Vol. 24; no. 3; pp. 169 - 184
• Main Author: Goodwyn, Erik
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Philadelphia Routledge 03-07-2014; Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group
• Subjects: 20th century; Anthropologists; Anthropology; Cultural anthropology; Culture; Methodology; Psychologists; Psychology; Social interaction; Symbolism
• ISSN: 1050-8619; 1532-7582
• DOI: 10.1080/10508619.2013.828994

Early psychologists and anthropologists worked more closely in the early 20th century than they have subsequently. However, more recent scholarship has shown that the work of Freud, and even more so Jung, is receiving renewed interest from some interpretive anthropologists. In this article, some of the challenges inherent in the comparison of the depth psychology of Freud and Jung and the anthropology of Durkheim, Lévy-Brühl, Lévi-Strauss, Geertz, and Rappaport are summarized. An underlying methodology is proposed, which accounts for the complexity of interaction between individual and culture, but neither reduces culture unnecessarily nor isolates individual and culture from the elements from which they are both derived and influenced.