Learning about/from psychoanalysis

“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.”-is this really achievable? Can one be without one’s own bias?“Immersion in the alien surrounds of fieldwork induces ego regression in the anthropologist and an outpouring of drive discharges of libido and aggression in the form of transference responses toward aspects of the new object, i.e., the culture and its physical setting. Using Loewald’s model of the nature of object relations (1978) I suggest that an internalization of the interactional process of the anthropologist with the object of study may take place, potentially causing psychological change in the fieldworker.”“Felt not too distinctly or strongly, but surely, that a bond was growing up between myself and this landscape. The calm bay was framed in the curving branches of a mangrove tree, which were also reflected in the mirror of the water and on the damp beach. The purple glow in the west penetrated the palm grove and covered the scorched grass with its blaze, slithering over the dark sapphire water-everything was pervaded with the promise of fruitful work and unexpected success; it seemed a paradise in comparison with the monstrous hell I had expected”“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.”-always returns to sexuality“The question was thus posed as to which elements, if any, of the experience of fieldwork itself had resulted in such dramatic changes in self- and object representation. Was this simply the resolution of conflicts through action-i.e., being away from the analysis and engaging in living out the fantasy of finding the good mother rather than analyzing it-something that could have occurred in any external context outside of the analysis? Or were there some specific aspects of fieldwork that had promoted these intrapsychic changes?”“These feelings were aroused both by the multiple frustrations she encountered in obtaining reliable informants and by the regression that the overwhelming strangeness of the place induced.”“Loewald (1960) has observed that in analysis a new object relationship is established by the analysand, one that potentially enables development to begin again, a process that, in his opinion, is crucial to therapeutic change. It can be postulated that in the course of fieldwork a new object relationship is established by the anthropologist with the culture being studied such that psychological changes might potentially occur through, to quote Loewald, “the internalization of an interaction process, not simply the internalization of ‘objects’ ”-is this relationship equal though?“in order for a more profound understanding of the native society to be acquired, it must be in the anthropologist himself and not merely in his notebooks. It is my contention that for this to take place, aspects of the interaction process with the object, the native society, are internalized by the fieldworker, an internalization that is a consequence of the regression induced, the subsequent evocation of powerful transference responses, and the working through of them in the act of studying, observing, and codifying the alien society so that some elements of the experience are made a part of the self.”-what actors should speak on these issues though? Is it always acceptable for an anthropologist to speak when they’re coming from a place of “other” especially if their framework is Western influenced.“This alone-had driven him out to the edge of the forest, to the bush towards the gleam of fires, the throb of drums, the drone of weird incantations; this alone had beguiled his unlawful soul beyond the bounds of permitted aspirations-Being alone in the wilderness, it had looked within itself, and, by heavens, I tell you, it had gone mad”