Introduction

This book brings anthropologists and psychoanalysts together in a common project, exploring the interface between the two disciplines through the interpretation of culture. It is based on papers presented at a colloquium, entitled Culture, Psychanalyse, Interprétation, held in Paris in July 1991 at the Collège de France, organised by Ariane Deluz and Suzette Heald. The colloquium took the form of anthropologists-French, British, Australian and North American-experimenting with psychoanalytic interpretations of their material. A group of psychoanalysts, also from international backgrounds, was then invited to comment on these interpretations. The book keeps the same structure in the hope of purveying some of the excitement of the colloquium and in order to point to new ways of conceiving the relationship between the disciplines and to new possibilities for collaboration.