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Publisher Version Current Anthropology Volume 60, Number 4, August 2019 559 Freud among the Boasians Psychoanalytic Influence and Ambivalence in American Anthropology by Kevin P. Groark In this article, I present an unpublished letter in which Franz Boas offers what would become his final remarks on the work of Sigmund Freud and the influence of psychoanalysis on anthropology. I explore the intellectual and inter- personal field of early psychoanalytic anthropology, outlining Boas’s empirical objections to Freud’s “ethnology” (what we might call the letter’s manifest content), while exploring the less obvious latent factors underpinning his antipathy toward psychoanalytic thought: the marginalization of the Boasian paradigm at Columbia University, the cultural impact of Freud’s “untenable” theories, and most significant, the paradoxical and ambivalent appeal of psychoanalysis among Boas’s former students and disciples. I close with a set of reflections on the current relationship between an- thropology and psychoanalysis, offering thoughts on the role a cultural psychodynamic approach might play in what Géza Róheim called “the anthropology of the future.” Introduction: Remembrance of Things Past Several months earlier, just after Freud’s death, Kaempffert had published two critical retrospectives of Freud’s legacy in On a cold winter day in February 1940, several years after his his New York Times “Science in the News” column. “Now that retirement, Professor Emeritus Franz Boas sat at his desk in the Sigmund Freud is gone,” he wrote, “the world is trying to judge fi spacious Schermerhorn Hall of ce he still occupied in the De- him. Does he loom as large as Newton and Darwin, as his partment of Anthropology at Columbia University. It was time more ardent disciples insist?” (Kaempffert 1939a).2 Although ’ to catch up on the week s mail. On the desk sat a newly arrived he concluded that Freud’s psychological discoveries “must be letter from his colleague Waldemar Kaempffert, the science and numbered among the greatest that have ever been made,” engineering editor at the New York Times, with whom he cor- Kaempffert emphasized his many personal and conceptual fi responded often on scienti c and political matters. Recently, shortcomings, with his excursions into anthropology receiving Boas and Kaempffert had been exchanging letters concerning a harsh appraisal: the distortion of scientific data under the Nazis and Fascists. But [Freud] plunged into anthropology and the study of primitive this letter concerned something new; Kaempffert had written to peoples and societies to reach conclusions, which were never Boas soliciting his opinion on Freud’s socio-psychoanalytic accepted by scientists who had lived with savages and knew the theories concerning “primitive” societies: working of their minds. [He] unhesitatingly branched Dear Professor Boas: At the time that Freud died I [wrote a out into what may be called “psychological anthropology” and New York Times column in which I] quoted Malinowski to the made dogmatic assertions about the sex instincts of primitive effect that the Oedipus complex did not hold among the peoples and their taboos. It made no difference that so able an matrilineal Trobriand Islanders in Melanesia. So far as I can anthropologist as Malinowski . disproved the validity of make out a good deal of what Freud predicated about primitive these pronouncements. Nearly every anthropologist is of people seems to have been quite wrong. I should like to pursue the opinion that most of what Freud has written about this social phase of Freud further. Can you refer me to some primitive man, primitive society and primitive culture is fan- books or articles that I ought to read? Possibly you may have tastic, obscure or wrong . all were interpreted in the Freud- published a critique of Freud yourself which would be sure to ian way in Freudian terms to the profound disgust of the [an- 1 give me what I want. thropological] authorities. (Kaempffert 1939a, see also 1939b) Kevin P. Groark is a Lecturer in the Department of Anthropology of 1. Waldemar Kaempffert to Franz Boas, letter, February 6, 1940, Amer- Macquarie University (Sydney, New South Wales 2109, Australia ican Philosophical Society, Franz Boas Papers, Mss. B. B61. [[email protected]]) and a Psychoanalytic Associate at the New 2. The second of Kaempffert’s columns (1939b) was a response to an Center for Psychoanalysis (2014 Sawtelle Boulevard, Los Angeles, editorial letter submitted by Smith Jelliffe (1939), a prominent New York California 90025, USA). This paper was submitted 25 I 18, accepted psychoanalyst and orthodox Freudian who had served for a short time 14 V 18, and electronically published 24 VII 19. as Kroeber’s analyst (Burnham 2012:17). q 2019 by The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. All rights reserved. 0011-3204/2019/6004-0005$10.00. DOI: 10.1086/704711 This content downloaded from 137.111.013.200 on August 29, 2019 22:37:28 PM All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c). 560 Current Anthropology Volume 60, Number 4, August 2019 Boas could not agree more. Despite clear overlap in their last very long. I have expressed myself a few times very briefly psychological and ethnological interests, Boas found Freud’s in regard to it. There is a short statement on the subject on “psychoanalytic ethnology” to be profoundly flawed. He not page 176 of the 1938 edition of THE MIND OF PRIMITIVE only invoked an outdated unilineal evolutionary model of hu- MAN.3 man evolution but joined it with Lamarckian inheritance of Boas was sure that the psychoanalytic “fashion” in anthro- acquired psychological characteristics; and the entire project pology would soon pass, but how had it happened in the first was in service to the preposterous idea that the study of Eu- place? In this article, I explore some contours of the intellectual ropean neurotics could illuminate both “primitive” mentality and interpersonal field of early psychoanalytic anthropology, and the evolution of human society. Just a few years earlier, outlining Boas’sobjectionstoFreud’s “ethnology” (what we Boas had published his misgivings about Freud’s work in the might call the letter’s manifest content), while exploring the less recently revised edition of his classic 1911 book The Mind of obvious latent factors reflected in the letter: the cultural impact Primitive Man. If Kaempffert needed an anthropological cri- of Freud’s “untenable” theories, the marginalization of the tique of Freud, Boas could provide it. Retrieving a copy of the Boasian paradigm at Columbia in the late 1930s, and perhaps book from his library, he turned to chapter 10 and skimmed most significant, the paradoxical and ambivalent appeal of the text: psychoanalysis among Boas’s former students and disciples. I ...The mental activities of primitive man have been com- close with a set of reflections on the current relationship be- pared to those of children and vice versa, so that the devel- tween anthropology and psychoanalysis, offering thoughts on ’ opment of the child s mind has been looked at as a recapit- the role a cultural psychodynamic approach might play in what ulation of the development of the mind of mankind . Róheim (1932:6) called “the anthropology of the future.” ...primitive mind is being compared with the minds of mentally unsound, as though the mental activities of per- fectly normal people of foreign cultures could be explained The 1909 Clark University Lectures: Boasian Anthropology by the mentally affected of our own culture . Meets Freudian Psychoanalysis ’ . Freud s comparison of primitive culture and the Freud and Boas crossed paths for the first and only time dur- ’ psychoanalytic interpretations of European [neurotics ] be- ing the 1909 Clark University Lectures, held in celebration of fi havior seem to lack a scienti c background. They appear to the institution’s twentieth anniversary. The famous Schervee me as fancies in which neither the aspect of primitive life nor and Bushong group portrait of the Clark Lecture speakers that of civilized life is sustained by tangible evidence . (Boas (fig. 2) shows both men standing with fellow psychoanalytic – 1938 [1911]:175 176; emphasis added) presenters Carl Jung and Sandor Ferenczi (see Mason 2012).4 “ These critical comments were almost identical to those Boas As his contribution to the event, Boas read a paper titled Psy- ” had published decades earlier, when he and two of his finest chological Problems in Anthropology (Boas 1910), while — fi students—Alfred Kroeber and Alexander Goldenweiser— Freud enjoying a fth lecture slot ceded to him by Boas at the — “ wrote a series of articles that played a key role in discrediting the request of the conference organizers presented The Origin outdated evolutionary anthropology of Freud’s Totem and Ta- boo (see Boas 1916, 1920; Goldenweiser 1910; Kroeber 1920). 3. The signed typescript letter presented in this article was purchased After this seemingly decisive rout, Boas lost interest in Freud’s at auction by me in 2015. An unsigned carbon copy is archived in the Franz social theories and had not kept up with more recent psycho- Boas Papers at the American Philosophical Society (Franz Boas to Walde- analytic developments. But many of his former students— mar Kaempfert [sic], letter, February 9, 1940, American Philosophical So- Kroeber, Sapir, Goldenweiser, even Mead and Benedict— ciety, Franz Boas Papers, Mss. B. B61). developed a lively interest in psychoanalysis and were exploring 4. We have no direct evidence that Boas and Freud interacted during the conference, nor that they attended each other’s lectures. Despite this, the relevance of Freud’s theories to anthropology. Kroeber even Kenny (2015) has presented compelling circumstantial evidence sug- opened shop as a psychoanalyst in Berkeley before returning to gesting that Freud and Jung attended Boas’s lecture, which inspired both the anthropological fold.
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