Whatever Happened to the Id?

In: American anthropologist: AA, Band 81, Heft 1, S. 5-13

Abstract

There has been a strong tendency in structural and symbolic anthropology to assume that sex and aggression are of no concern to cultural symbol systems. Even when cultural beliefs, myths, or rituals are explicitly and preponderantly sexual or aggressive in content, they are typically interpreted as metaphors for social structural themes. This thesis is illustrated with respect to aggression by an analysis of Lévi‐Strauss' interpretation of a Bororo myth, after which the assumptions that structural theory makes concerning the place of aggression in cultural symbol systems are contrasted with the opposing assumptions of psychoanalytic theory. [structuralism, psychoanalysis, cultural symbol systems, myth]