George Devereux
Encyclopedia
George Devereux was an American - French
ethnologist
and psychoanalyst
, born in a Jewish family from Banat
. He was one of the pioneers of ethnopsychoanalysis and ethnopsychiatry.
, now in Romania
and then part of Austria-Hungary
. Devereux’s family, like Géza Róheim
's, was Hungarian Jewish and bourgeois. His father was a lawyer, his mother of German origin. Devereux had a rather difficult relation with his mother. The "insincerity of the adults", their "lack of respect for the world of the children" was a formative experience of his childhood and youth.
Even as a youngster Devereux spoke four languages (Hungarian, Romanian, German, French).
After an unsuccessful operation Devereux had to give up his wish to become a pianist. After the suicide of his brother Devereux went to Paris to study chemistry and physics with Marie Curie
. He was looking for ‘objective truth’ in physics and 'subjective' truth in music. In his later work Devereux often referred to notions taken from the natural sciences. Devereux became ill and moved to Leipzig
to begin an apprenticeship in a publishing house. After completing his apprenticeship Devereux returned to Paris. He enrolled at the École des langues orientales
studying the Malay language
, became a pupil of Marcel Mauss
, befriended himself with Klaus Mann
and wrote a novel «Le faune dans l’enfer bourgeois» [The faun in the bourgeois hell] which remained unpublished.
In 1933 György Dobó converted to Christianity and henceforth was called George(s) Devereux. Thanks to a scholarship from the Rockefeller Foundation
he moved to the United States to prepare fieldwork with Mohave
Indians. His early days in America proved to be difficult. "Among the young American anthropologists with whom he collaborated during his preparative stage he encountered only distrust and contempt when, being asked about his teachers, he mentioned the names Mauss, Rivet
and Lévy-Bruhl
, he said.”
Before he left for Indochina
to live among the Sedang Moi
, Devereux spent some time with Mohave
Indians. Devereux considered that this time had been the happiest of his life. The Mohave pay a lot of attention to their dreams, it’s them who "converted me to Freud
". Devereux received his PhD working with Alfred Kroeber.
From 1943 he served in the American army.
Devereux was analyzed by Marc Schlumberger and Robert Jokl and completed his analytical training in 1952 at the Menninger Clinic
(Topeka, Kansas
). From 1953 to 1955 he worked with children and teenagers and in 1956 he moved to New York City. He became a member of the American Psychoanalytic Association
and the Société psychanalytique de Paris.
On the initiative of Claude Lévi-Strauss
he was invited to teach at the École pratique des hautes études
in Paris in 1963 where he continued to teach up until 1981. His methodological main work From anxiety to method in the behavioral sciences was published in 1967. During the last years of his life Devereux worked as a graecist and published a book about dreams in Greek tragedies
.
More precisely, the only data to which the observer actually has access to are his own perceptions, his reaction to reactions he himself had provoked. According to Devereux the observer must think about his relation to the observed in the same manner an analyst would do in his relation to his analysand. The analyst works with the transference
he triggers and with the countertransference
he can perceive looking at himself. In any study where the subject under scrutiny is the subjectivity of human beings (ore even of animals), this procedure has to be applied, according to Devereux.
Besides using his own experience Devereux studied carefully Claude Lévi-Strauss
' Tristes tropiques
[A World on the Wane], Georges Balandier
s Afrique ambiguë [Ambiguous Africa : cultures in collision] and Condominas' L'Exotique au quotidien "[…] which are the only major attempts known to me to appraise the impact of his data and of his scientific activity upon the scientist."
French
German
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
ethnologist
Ethnology
Ethnology is the branch of anthropology that compares and analyzes the origins, distribution, technology, religion, language, and social structure of the ethnic, racial, and/or national divisions of humanity.-Scientific discipline:Compared to ethnography, the study of single groups through direct...
and psychoanalyst
Psychoanalysis
Psychoanalysis is a psychological theory developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud. Psychoanalysis has expanded, been criticized and developed in different directions, mostly by some of Freud's former students, such as Alfred Adler and Carl Gustav...
, born in a Jewish family from Banat
Banat
The Banat is a geographical and historical region in Central Europe currently divided between three countries: the eastern part lies in western Romania , the western part in northeastern Serbia , and a small...
. He was one of the pioneers of ethnopsychoanalysis and ethnopsychiatry.
Biography
Devereux was born in Lugoj in the BanatBanat
The Banat is a geographical and historical region in Central Europe currently divided between three countries: the eastern part lies in western Romania , the western part in northeastern Serbia , and a small...
, now in Romania
Romania
Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central and Southeastern Europe, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian arch, bordering on the Black Sea...
and then part of Austria-Hungary
Austria-Hungary
Austria-Hungary , more formally known as the Kingdoms and Lands Represented in the Imperial Council and the Lands of the Holy Hungarian Crown of Saint Stephen, was a constitutional monarchic union between the crowns of the Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Hungary in...
. Devereux’s family, like Géza Róheim
Géza Róheim
Géza Róheim was a Hungarian psychoanalyst and anthropologist. Originally based in Budapest, he is often credited with founding the field of psychoanalytic anthropology, since he was the first psychoanalytically trained anthropologist to do fieldwork...
's, was Hungarian Jewish and bourgeois. His father was a lawyer, his mother of German origin. Devereux had a rather difficult relation with his mother. The "insincerity of the adults", their "lack of respect for the world of the children" was a formative experience of his childhood and youth.
Even as a youngster Devereux spoke four languages (Hungarian, Romanian, German, French).
After an unsuccessful operation Devereux had to give up his wish to become a pianist. After the suicide of his brother Devereux went to Paris to study chemistry and physics with Marie Curie
Marie Curie
Marie Skłodowska-Curie was a physicist and chemist famous for her pioneering research on radioactivity. She was the first person honored with two Nobel Prizes—in physics and chemistry...
. He was looking for ‘objective truth’ in physics and 'subjective' truth in music. In his later work Devereux often referred to notions taken from the natural sciences. Devereux became ill and moved to Leipzig
Leipzig
Leipzig Leipzig has always been a trade city, situated during the time of the Holy Roman Empire at the intersection of the Via Regia and Via Imperii, two important trade routes. At one time, Leipzig was one of the major European centres of learning and culture in fields such as music and publishing...
to begin an apprenticeship in a publishing house. After completing his apprenticeship Devereux returned to Paris. He enrolled at the École des langues orientales
Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales
The Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales is located in Paris, France. It was founded in 1795 after the French Revolution and is now one of the country's Grands établissements with a specialization in African, Asian, East European, Oceanian languages and civilisations...
studying the Malay language
Malay language
Malay is a major language of the Austronesian family. It is the official language of Malaysia , Indonesia , Brunei and Singapore...
, became a pupil of Marcel Mauss
Marcel Mauss
Marcel Mauss was a French sociologist. The nephew of Émile Durkheim, Mauss' academic work traversed the boundaries between sociology and anthropology...
, befriended himself with Klaus Mann
Klaus Mann
- Life and work :Born in Munich, Klaus Mann was the son of German writer Thomas Mann and his wife, Katia Pringsheim. His father was baptized as a Lutheran, while his mother was from a family of secular Jews. He began writing short stories in 1924 and the following year became drama critic for a...
and wrote a novel «Le faune dans l’enfer bourgeois» [The faun in the bourgeois hell] which remained unpublished.
In 1933 György Dobó converted to Christianity and henceforth was called George(s) Devereux. Thanks to a scholarship from the Rockefeller Foundation
Rockefeller Foundation
The Rockefeller Foundation is a prominent philanthropic organization and private foundation based at 420 Fifth Avenue, New York City. The preeminent institution established by the six-generation Rockefeller family, it was founded by John D. Rockefeller , along with his son John D. Rockefeller, Jr...
he moved to the United States to prepare fieldwork with Mohave
Mohave
Mohave or Mojave are a Native American people indigenous to the Colorado River in the Mojave Desert. The Fort Mojave Indian Reservation includes parts of California, Arizona, and Nevada...
Indians. His early days in America proved to be difficult. "Among the young American anthropologists with whom he collaborated during his preparative stage he encountered only distrust and contempt when, being asked about his teachers, he mentioned the names Mauss, Rivet
Paul Rivet
Paul Rivet was a French ethnologist, who founded the Musée de l'Homme in 1937. He was also one of the founders of the Comité de vigilance des intellectuels antifascistes, an antifascist organization created in the wake of the February 6, 1934 far right riots.Rivet proposed a theory according to...
and Lévy-Bruhl
Lucien Lévy-Bruhl
Lucien Lévy-Brühl was a French scholar trained in philosophy, who made contributions to the budding fields of sociology and ethnology. His primary field of study involved primitive mentality....
, he said.”
Before he left for Indochina
Indochina
The Indochinese peninsula, is a region in Southeast Asia. It lies roughly southwest of China, and east of India. The name has its origins in the French, Indochine, as a combination of the names of "China" and "India", and was adopted when French colonizers in Vietnam began expanding their territory...
to live among the Sedang Moi
Xo Dang people
The Xo Dang are an ethnic group of Vietnam.Their main source of income is farming. They are also known to be involved with raising cattle and poultry.Religiously, they are largely animistic...
, Devereux spent some time with Mohave
Mohave
Mohave or Mojave are a Native American people indigenous to the Colorado River in the Mojave Desert. The Fort Mojave Indian Reservation includes parts of California, Arizona, and Nevada...
Indians. Devereux considered that this time had been the happiest of his life. The Mohave pay a lot of attention to their dreams, it’s them who "converted me to Freud
Sigmund Freud
Sigmund Freud , born Sigismund Schlomo Freud , was an Austrian neurologist who founded the discipline of psychoanalysis...
". Devereux received his PhD working with Alfred Kroeber.
From 1943 he served in the American army.
Devereux was analyzed by Marc Schlumberger and Robert Jokl and completed his analytical training in 1952 at the Menninger Clinic
Menninger Foundation
The Menninger Foundation was founded in 1919 by the Menninger family in Topeka, Kansas, and consists of a clinic, a sanatorium, and a school of psychiatry, all of which bear the Menninger name. In 2003, the Menninger Clinic moved to Houston. The foundation was started by Drs. Karl, Will, and...
(Topeka, Kansas
Topeka, Kansas
Topeka |Kansa]]: Tó Pee Kuh) is the capital city of the U.S. state of Kansas and the county seat of Shawnee County. It is situated along the Kansas River in the central part of Shawnee County, located in northeast Kansas, in the Central United States. As of the 2010 census, the city population was...
). From 1953 to 1955 he worked with children and teenagers and in 1956 he moved to New York City. He became a member of the American Psychoanalytic Association
American Psychoanalytic Association
American Psychoanalytic Association is an association of psychoanalysts in the United States. It was founded in 1911, and forms part of the International Psychoanalytical Association.-External links:**...
and the Société psychanalytique de Paris.
On the initiative of Claude Lévi-Strauss
Claude Lévi-Strauss
Claude Lévi-Strauss was a French anthropologist and ethnologist, and has been called, along with James George Frazer, the "father of modern anthropology"....
he was invited to teach at the École pratique des hautes études
École pratique des hautes études
The École pratique des hautes études is a Grand Établissement in Paris, France. It is counted among France's most prestigious research and higher education institutions....
in Paris in 1963 where he continued to teach up until 1981. His methodological main work From anxiety to method in the behavioral sciences was published in 1967. During the last years of his life Devereux worked as a graecist and published a book about dreams in Greek tragedies
Tragedy
Tragedy is a form of art based on human suffering that offers its audience pleasure. While most cultures have developed forms that provoke this paradoxical response, tragedy refers to a specific tradition of drama that has played a unique and important role historically in the self-definition of...
.
Methodology
In From anxiety to method in the behavioral sciences Devereux proposes to rethink the question of the relation between the observer and the observed. Devereux takes his guidance from psychoanalysis. According to him, the classical methodological principle which prescribes to the researcher to make his observations from a strictly objective point of view is not only impossible to put into practice but outrightly counterproductive. Instead the observer should place himself in the middle of the process and keep in mind that whatever he may observe is always influenced by his own activity of observing.More precisely, the only data to which the observer actually has access to are his own perceptions, his reaction to reactions he himself had provoked. According to Devereux the observer must think about his relation to the observed in the same manner an analyst would do in his relation to his analysand. The analyst works with the transference
Transference
Transference is a phenomenon in psychoanalysis characterized by unconscious redirection of feelings from one person to another. One definition of transference is "the inappropriate repetition in the present of a relationship that was important in a person's childhood." Another definition is "the...
he triggers and with the countertransference
Countertransference
Countertransferenceis defined as redirection of a psychotherapist's feelings toward a client—or, more generally, as a therapist's emotional entanglement with a client.-Early formulations:...
he can perceive looking at himself. In any study where the subject under scrutiny is the subjectivity of human beings (ore even of animals), this procedure has to be applied, according to Devereux.
Besides using his own experience Devereux studied carefully Claude Lévi-Strauss
Claude Lévi-Strauss
Claude Lévi-Strauss was a French anthropologist and ethnologist, and has been called, along with James George Frazer, the "father of modern anthropology"....
' Tristes tropiques
Tristes Tropiques
Tristes Tropiques is a memoir, first published in France in 1955, by the anthropologist and structuralist Claude Lévi-Strauss. It documents his travels and anthropological work, focusing principally on Brazil, though it refers to many other places, such as the Caribbean and India...
[A World on the Wane], Georges Balandier
Georges Balandier
Georges Balandier is a French sociologist, anthropologist and ethnologist noted for his research in Sub-Saharan Africa...
s Afrique ambiguë [Ambiguous Africa : cultures in collision] and Condominas' L'Exotique au quotidien "[…] which are the only major attempts known to me to appraise the impact of his data and of his scientific activity upon the scientist."
Influence
As it had been the case during most of his lifetime, there seems to be more interest in Devereux in Europe then in North America. In France Tobi Nathan and Marie Rose Moro continue Devereux's ethnopsychiatric work, especially in psychotherapy with migrants. In Switzerland the second generation of the "Zurich School" of ethnopsychoanalysis (Mario Erdheim, Maya Nadig, Florence Weiss etc.) has been heavily influenced by Devereux's methodological approach.Writings (Selection)
Devereux has published more than 400 texts. Among them:- Reality and dream: Psychotherapy of a Plains Indian, New York: International Univ. Press, 1951
- A study of abortion in primitive societies; a typological, distributional, and dynamic analysis of the prevention of birth in 400 preindustrial societies, New York, Julian Press 1955
- From anxiety to method in the behavioral sciences, The Hague [etc..]: Mouton, 1967
- Ethnopsychoanalysis : psychoanalysis and anthropology as complementary frames of reference, Berkeley : University of California Press, 1978
- Basic problems of ethnopsychiatry , Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980
- Dreams in Greek Tragedy: An Ethno-Psycho-Analytical Study, University of California Press, 1975
- Mohave ethnopsychiatry and suicide : the psychiatric knowledge and the psychic disturbances of an Indian tribe, St. Clair Shores, Mich. : Scholarly Press, 1976
- Les Femmes et les psychotiques dans les sociétés traditionelles, (edited by Devereux), Paris 1981
- Baubo, la vulve mythique, Paris : J.-C. Godefroy, 1983
- Femme et Mythe, Paris : Flammarion, 1982
- The character of the Euripidean Hippolytos : an ethno-psychoanalytical study, Chico, Calif. : Scholars Press, 1985.
- Cléomène le roi fou. Etude d'histoire ethnopsychanalytique, Paris : Aubier Montaigne, 1998, ISBN 2700721144
Secondary literature
English- Andrew P. Lyons, Harriet D. Lyons, Irregular Connections: A History of Anthropology and Sexuality (Critical Studies in the History of Anthropology), Paperback Edition, University of Nebraska Press, 2005
- Simone Valentin, “Devereux, Georges (1908-1985)” in: International dictionary of psychoanalysis, Detroit: Thomson Gale 2005, vol. 1, A-F, pp. 409–410
French
- Marie-Christine Beck: La jeunesse de Georges Devereux. Un chemin peu habituel vers la psychanalyse. In: Revue Internationale d'Histoire de la Psychanalyse, 1991, 4, pp. 581–603
- Elisabeth Burgos, Georges Devereux, Mohave: Le Coq Héron, n°109, 1988, pp. 71–75
- Françoise Michel-Jones: Georges Devereux et l'ethnologie française. Rencontre et malentendu. In: Nouvelle revue d'Ethnopsychiatrie, 1986, n°6, pp. 81–94
- Simone Valantin-Charasson, Ariane Deluz: Contrefiliations et inspirations paradoxales. Georges Devereux (1908-1985). In: Revue Internationale d'Histoire de la Psychanalyse. 1991, 4, pp. 605–617
- "Devereux, un hébreu anarchiste" préface à Georges Devereux, Ethnopsychiatrie des Indiens Mohaves. Paris, Synthélabo, 1996.
German
- Georges Devereux: Es gibt eine kulturell neutrale Psychotherapie. Gespräch mit Georges Devereux. In: Hans Jürgen Heinrichs (hg.): Das Fremde verstehen. Gespräche über Alltag, Normalität und Anormalität. Frankfurt, Paris: Qumran, 1982, pp. 15–32
- Ulrike Bokelmann: Georges Devereux. In: Hans Peter Duerr: Die wilde Seele. Zur Ethnopsychoanalyse von Georges Devereux, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp 1987, pp. 9–31
- Klaus-Dieter Brauner: Kultur und Symptom. Über wissenschaftstheoretische und methodologische Grundlagen von George Devereux' Konzeption einer Ethnopsychoanalyse und Ethnopsychiatrie. Frankfurt am Main, Bern, New York: Peter Lang, 1986
- Hans Peter Duerr (Hg.): Die wilde Seele. Zur Ethnopsychoanalyse von Georges Devereux. Frankfurt : Suhrkamp, 1987
- Johannes Reichmayr: Einführung in die Ethnopsychoanalyse. Geschichte, Theorien und Methoden. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 2001, ISBN 3596106508 – Revised new edition: Giesssen:Psychosozial-Verlag, 2003, ISBN 3898061663
- Ekkehard Schröder (Hg.): Georges Devereux zum 75. Geburtstag. Eine Festschrift, Braunschweig [etc.]: Vieweg, 1984
External links
- Centre Georges Devereux (Université de Paris VIII)
- Vie et Œuvre de Georges Devereux by Patrick Fermi