Human Subjectivity, Selfhood and Selfscapes: Perspectives from Psychoanalysis and Anthropology

This book explores cross-cultural similarities and differences of human subjectivity and selfhood through the concept of selfscapes.

Utilizing an ethnographic and person-centered approach to the study of human subjectivity, Selfscapes, Selfhoods, and Subjectivities demonstrates that autopoietic processes are informed by the constraints of a social and material ecology acting on a particular person and by how that person is remembering and habitually responding to that history of engagement with the world. While the co-constitution of social and historical circumstance and individual reactivity and memory is universal, the way an autopoietic process unfolds within any given social ecology will vary, sometimes greatly, from person to person.

Drawing on a broad theoretical base, this book is essential reading for anthropologists, psychoanalysts, social psychologists, and anyone seeking to understand the varieties and particularities of human subjectivity and selfhood.

Douglas Hollan is Distinguished Professor and Luckman Distinguished Teacher in the Department of Anthropology at UCLA and a research psychoanalyst affiliated with the New Center for Psychoanalysis in Los Angeles