The 20th Century was marked by two profoundly different insights into human nature: one views each person as the product of unconscious desires, while the other sees the individual as the product of language and culture. While some still believe these two insights to be irreconcilable, many social scientists are attempting to integrate psychoanalysis into their culturally-bound research.

In this groundbreaking new work, Anthony Molino has collected in-depth interviews with seven renowned anthropologists and social theorists: Marc Auge, Vincent Crapanzano, Kathering Ewing, Gananath Obeyesekere, Michael Rustin, Kathleen Stewart and Paul Williams. These dialogues, alongside essays by Molino, anthropologists Wesley Shumar and Waude Kracke, and psychoanalyst Lucia Villela, update the prevailing conceptions of psychoanalysis within anthropology, exploring distinctive psychoanalytic contributions and ethnographic theory and practice.