Géza Róheim And The Amalgam Between Psychoanalysis And Anthropology

Géza Róheim’s name is not as well known as others in the world of psychoanalysis; however, he is one of the brightest exponents of this trend. In fact, Sigmund Freud himself said that this researcher was one of the few who had managed to expand the boundaries of the psychoanalytic and the cultural, beyond what had been raised in the great work Totem and Taboo.

Géza Róheim is considered the father  of psychoanalytic anthropology. He is also admired for having made rigorous records in his field work. The latter was done with ancestral communities in Australia and North America. It is that same rigor that over time has given it a privileged place in the history of psychoanalysis.

Géza Róheim’s masterpiece is entitled Psychoanalysis and Anthropology . In this he manages to apply Freudian principles to the understanding of culture. This was something that many of his contemporaries considered misleading. However, the solidity of Róheim’s approaches has cleared up all doubts over time.

The origin of Géza Róheim

Géza Róheim was born in Budapest (Hungary) in September 1891. Unlike many other pioneers of psychoanalysis, Róheim lived a very happy childhood . He was the only child of a family of Jewish merchants, who surrounded him with care and love. His grandfather went out of his way for him and passed on his interest in popular myths and legends.

When Géza Róheim was just 8 years old, she read The Last of the Mohicans , by James Fenimore Cooper. This approach to primitive cultures fascinated him from the first moment. Since then he begins to read everything he found on the subject and very soon he becomes an expert.

Róheim was a cheerful and dynamic person who divided his time between books on mythology and ethnography and his fondness for good cuisine and sports. In 1914 he graduated as a geographer. Later he continued his training in Leipzig and Berlin. It was there that he first came into contact with psychoanalysis through the work of Otto Rank.

A new slope

Géza Róheim claimed that the discovery of Freud’s work was absolutely revealing for him. He felt that all his knowledge was like separate and scattered pieces. Psychoanalysis was that theoretical structure that allowed him to give order and meaning to many of his observations and knowledge.

Róheim did psychoanalysis, first with Sandor Ferenczi and then with Wilma Kovacks. At first he was very influenced by the work of Melanie Klein. However, later on he entered directly into Freud’s work and varied some of his concepts, getting closer to classical psychoanalysis. He met Freud personally in 1918.

Since then, Róheim’s work has focused on making a psychoanalytic interpretation of cultural and social phenomena. His was not an analytical and theoretical work, but was supported by his coexistence with ancestral communities, with which he achieved great empathy and affection.

Géza Róheim’s work

Géza Róheim published several powerful works, such as the aforementioned Psychoanalysis and Anthropology , The Enigma of the Sphinx , Magic and Schizophrenia,  and The Doors of Dreams. His work was originally written in Hungarian and was later translated into English and French. Only a small part of his work is in Spanish.

Róheim stated that the myths and legends of the original peoples have a structure similar to that of individual dreams. From that point of view, those cultural productions could also be analyzed as a dream. Likewise, it presents serious evidence that the Oedipus complex, postulated by Freud, is universal. In other words, it is present in all times and cultures.

At the time he was one of the great opponents of famous anthropologists such as Bronislaw Malinowski and Margaret Mead. He questioned their interest in showing the particularities of each culture, making people believe that there were great differences between one and the other. For Róheim the opposite was the case: the universal elements far exceeded the circumstantial specificities. Géza Róheim died in the United States in 1953, two months after the death of his wife, whom he loved dearly.