Abram Kardiner. At the Intersection of Social Anthropology and Psychoanalysis

Abstract

The name Abram Kardiner is mentioned relatively infrequently by Russian academia — despite the fact that he was a key figure in psychoanalysis, a founder of a school and even an entire movement that integrated psychology and social anthropology, and one of the first to link mental illness to cultural characteristics, long before the concept of culture-bound syndromes entered psychiatry. He also researched traumatic disorders and war neuroses. The subjects he explored and the questions he raised are not only still relevant but are acquiring new resonance and urgency today.The absence of Kardiner’s texts in Russian was due, firstly, to the fact that psychoanalysis was practically banned in the USSR. Kardiner’s famous seminar and his works, which examined culture and society through the lens of psychoanalysis, contradicted historical materialism and were completely rejected by Soviet scholars. Today, in the education of both psychologists and anthropologists, interest in the history of science and various theories is, for a number of reasons, greatly reduced. It is especially important to pay tribute to Kardiner’s role in the construction/creating of modern interdisciplinary anthropological discourse.