The Self in Culture Society

3 Credits · Level: Undergraduate

Intro to Psychological Anthropology. The main objective of the course will be that of showing the students how constitutive psychological processes are to the very social and cultural fabric of any given society or human group. The course will also have the purpose of dispelling the “myth of the isolated mind”, that is, the conviction according to which psychological dynamics are universal in features and meaning, and can be investigated irrespective of the socio-cultural environment in which they develop. The material will immerse the students in examples from the ethnographic literature which discuss most vividly the points I have sketched above. I will also provide the students with sections from a textbook to help them contextualize the major theoretical and conceptual propositions that the discipline has offered throughout the decades. The main takeaway from the course should be that of becoming intellectually and ethically equipped to consider any human psychological condition (whether “normal” or “pathological”) as at least in part dependent on, and the result of, the social, cultural, economic, political context in which the individual exists.