I got in touch with Professor Gananath Obeyesekere around twenty years ago, when I came across his book The Work of Culture, Symbolic Transformation in Psychoanalysis and Anthropology, while I was involved in my research on the Freudian notion of the "work of culture." And then, I sent him my paper. From this time, we kept in touch, and I was well-acquainted with his scholarly contributions.
My introduction to Dr. Ruwan M. Jayatunge came through my long-time friend Gananath Obeyesekere, and I had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Jayatunge in Paris a few years back. I was happy to see Dr. Jayatunge engaged with and analyzed the work of Gananath Obeyesekere, as this endeavour is vital for preserving and advancing Obeyesekere's academic legacy.
The continuation of such intellectual pursuits not only honors the contributions of a remarkable scholar but also enriches the broader academic community by fostering a deeper understanding of his insights and ideas.
I would like to say a few words about my friend Obeyesekere and his book. The Work of Culture, Symbolic Transformation in Psychoanalysis and Anthropology, which I read carefully and analyzed during the preparation of my book The Oedipus Complex, a focus of psychoanalysis/anthropology debate (Routledge, 2017). Among those who had inspired, stimulated, and nourished his thought in a major way, Obeyesekere mentioned the anthropologists Spiro and Leach; Freud, obviously; and the philosophers Paul Ricoeur and Ludwig Wittgenstein.
2 The notion of the "work of culture" found in Freud’s work unifies this book, which tackles diverse themes, among them, rituals, myths, history, and the Oedipus complex, but also a critical reflection on Freudian metapsychology and the divergences and convergences between anthropology and psychoanalysis.
Let us look at his conception of the Oedipus complex and the work of culture. The Oedipus complex: Using mythological and clinical data, he presents the Hindu Indian Oedipus complex and the Buddhist Sri Lankan Oedipus complex in boys. Based on these data, he invites readers to engage in a completely personal reflection contesting any universality of Oedipal myths and complexes in the sense of the existence of an invariant structure or model, contrary to the ideas of his American colleague Melford Spiro. They should, however, show us "family resemblances," a term inspired by Wittgenstein's relativism, enabling him to escape from the constraining universalist perspective of the Freudian conception. And what about the Oedipus complex in girls?
Finally, he sees the Western Oedipus complex as representing a "form" of life, one "scenario" among many others exhibiting "family resemblances" within or through cultures, all "derived as forms of life from the identical universal muddy bottom. "This is a metaphor, symbolizing our common human nature, with its basic human behaviors and its 'existential' universals, and, according to him, the ground of our human nature is psychobiological.
3. Finally, Obeyesekere seems to favor the cultural structuration of family. relations constituting the bases of multiple oedipal scenarios exhibiting "family resemblances" among themselves, the whole resting upon the "muddy bottom" or psychobiological human ground. He differentiates the historical Oedipus complex from that of the myths. and the diverse family configurations are largely influenced by religious values and multiple symbolic forms. The notion of «work of culture» To think through and make intelligible certain aspects of the relations between culture and unconscious deep motivation, Obeyesekere resorts to the notion of a "work of culture" inspired by Freud and the notion of a "work of art" proposed by Ricoeur. So, how are unconscious motivations transformed into symbolic forms, be they personal symbols, myths, or collective representations? The term "work of culture" designates this set of processes of symbolic transformations of unconscious motivations into cultural symbols that are bearers of meaning for the individual, involving both the person and the culture.
Recent research has led me to see his conception of a "work of culture" as representing one aspect of what is covered by the Freudian notion of Kulturarbeit. Unlike his many colleagues, Obeyesekere displays profound knowledge of Freudian thought, and the critical attitude he takes is stimulating and constructive. In addition, the remarkable depth of his reflection—nourished by philosophers, notably—combines with a rich experience of the Asian and Eastern worlds.
4 The avenues of research that he endeavours to explore—that of symbolic transformations from deep motivations, the notion of «work of culture» To account for this, its connection with dream work as a model is particularly attractive and subtle and raises questions having definite heuristic value. Nonetheless, it is interesting to note that by using the term "work" on the model of "dream work," he reduces it to rules and processes without inquiring into its correlative energizing, economic, and dynamic dimension. Meaning must certainly take precedence over energization, but the processes and symbolic transformations cannot take place without expending energy. This is something that "witch metapsychology" has. taught us. So, he seems to reject Freud’s theory of drives, only retaining the hermeneutic dimension of psychoanalysis. Dear Ganananth, I express my deep gratitude and admiration for your wonderful work.
Dr. Eric Smadja- psychiatrist-psychoanalyst (adults and couples) based in Paris, member of the Société psychanalytique de Paris and of the International Psychoanalytical Association; anthropologist, associate member of the American Anthropological Association and member of the Society for Psychological Anthropology.
