Anthropologists, Gestaltists, Jungians, and the Pastoral Theologians of New York

Abstract

One of the more important circles in New York that had embraced dynamic psychology and used it to promote a theory of culture and personality flourished around the anthropologists at Columbia, emanating from the intellectual lineage of Franz Boas, Ruth Benedict, and Margaret Mead. Boas, who had first taught at Clark and the University of Chicago, was a German émigré who has variously been called the father of modern anthropology. He specialized in native cultures and languages, and launched the new but controversial idea that there were no genetic differences between the races in terms of abilities. All races that had survived were equal in endowment. Their radical differences were primarily cultural and historical. Others in this arc included Edward Sapir, Ruth Benedict, Margaret Mead, and, by association with Mead, figures such as Gregory Bateson.