Fieldwork

"In this paper, I shall attempt a psychoanalytic hypothesis concerning the psychological nature of fieldwork for the anthropologist who possesses, in the ethnographer Evans-Pritchard's words (1962), the capacity "to abandon himself without reserve," "to think and feel alternately as a savage and as a European" and for whom the native society is "in the anthropologist himself and not merely in his notebooks"" (614)"Briefly stated, the hypothesis postulated here is that in the course of fieldwork the anthropologist establishes a new object relationship with the culture being studied. Immersion in the alien surrounds of fieldwork induces ego regression in the anthropologist and an outpouring of drive discharges of libideo and aggression in the form of transference responses toward aspects of the new object, i.e., the culture and its physical setting" (614-615)"The theme of intense and equally intense distaste for the setting of his fieldwork, with its obvious sexual connotations, is a recurrent one" (616)"That night he recounts: "I had a strange dream; homosexual with my own double as a partner. Strangely autoerotic feelings; the impression that I'd like to have a month just like mine to kiss, a neck that curves just like mine, a forehead just like mine (seen from the side)" (pp. 12-13). One could postulate that this remarkable dream speaks to a narcissistic regression, a falling back upon the self as sexual object and comforter in the face of a new and intimidating object relationship with the alien environment" (618)"Malinowski notes, "I wrote to Mother."... Malinowski's intense feelings for his mother while in the field - one manifestation of the regression induced by his isolation in a totally alien setting - are recorded regularly throughout the first section of the Diary" (618)"She felt totally trapped, immersed in this stranger world from which there was no escape. At her first fieldwork site, as she became more fluent in the native language and accumulated pertinent data on the native culture, these murderous fantasies diminished. She began to see the natives and their society in a more benign light. Of central importance in this change was the close relationship she formed with a native informant, a parallel to her relationship with me" (627)"What seemed to be crucial to this process was the total immersion that fieldwork provided in developing an object relationship with something that was completely "other," alien, frightening, and potentially dangerous, precipitating considerable regression and releasing powerful transference feelings. This was combined with the act of the observer, her raison d'etre for being there, in which she, in a sense, stood outside her immediate subjective experience, examined, studied, and mastered its strangeness - a parallel to the observing ego in analysis" (628)"In fieldwork, unlike analysis, the anthropologist is completely surrounded by the object of study" (629)"Fieldwork is not unique in its capacity to induce regression - the student living abroad, the lone sailor or explorer confronting implacable nature or alien places may also experience regressions and confrontations with the self. In fieldwork, however, as in analysis, one is faced with the task of continually attempting to decipher and comprehend one's cognitive and affective responses using one's intellectual and emotional capacities to achieve this goal" (631-632)