Tahitians: Mind and Experience in the Society Islands

by Robert I. Levy, Pierre Heyman (Illustrator)

Overview

This seminal work in several fields—person-centered anthropology, comparative psychology, and social history—documents the inner life of the Tahitians with sensitivity and insight. At the same time Levy reveals the ways in which private and public worlds interact. Tahitians is an ethnography focused on private but culturally organized behavior resulting in a wealth of material for the understanding of the interaction among historical, cultural, and personal spheres.

"This is a unique addition to anthropological literature. . . . No review could substitute for reading it."—Margaret Mead, American Anthropologist

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780226476070
Publisher:	University of Chicago Press
Publication date:	08/15/1975
Series:	Mind and Experience in the Society Islands
Edition description:	1
Pages:	576
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 2.20(d)

About the Author

Robert I. Levy is professor of anthropology at the University of California, San Diego.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction
I. Orientations
1. The Setting
2. Some Actors
II. Shared Privacy
1. Style, Integrations, and Surfaces
4. Bodies
5. Souls
6. Aspects of Personal Relationships
III. Psychological Abstractions
7. Self and Identity
8. Thinking
9. Feeling
10. Moral Behavior
IV. Organization and Disorganization
11. Fantasy
12. Adjustment and Readjustment
13. Aspects of Growing Up
14. The Question of Maintenance
15. Aspects of Personal Organization
Postscript: Time
Appendix 1: Check Sheet for Psychodynamic Interviews
Appendix 2: Interview Sample: Oro's Second Dream
Glossary
References
Index