Paper short abstract:

This paper offers some ethnographic and historical reflections on the relationship between anthropology and psychotherapy and, in turn, the ‘relationship’ at the heart of both disciplines.

Paper long abstract:

This paper offers some ethnographic and historical reflections on the relationship between anthropology and psychotherapy and, in turn, the ‘relationship’ at the heart of both disciplines. Psychotherapy is often characterised as a profoundly ‘relational’ profession. Psychotherapeutic practices, despite their variety and differences, all tend to underline the significance of a therapeutic relationship. This relationship is not everywhere the same, of course, and interesting rethinkings of therapeutic relations mark the historiography of psychotherapy. Likewise, anthropology brings us into contact with relationships of all kinds – indeed, anthropologists use relations to study relations (Strathern 2020). Both the anthropologist and the psychotherapist understand human beings to be intrinsically relational. The resonances between the two disciplines are evident to those who know both (Luhrmann 2019). However, whereas the anthropologist examines how relations are constituted differently and have different effects around the world, the psychotherapist is principally trying to change people’s relation to relations: they help human beings to understand themselves so that they can change. In this paper, I reflect on the convergence of anthropology and psychotherapy, and why it might be their divergence that matters most.