Intimate Communications

Using the ethnographic methods of anthropology in conjunction with the clinical techniques of psychoanalysis, this study explore the culture and erotic experiences of the Sambia, a tribe of Papua, New Guinea, and the role of subjectivity in ethnographic research.

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Intimate Communications is the first systematic effort to explore and interpret erotic experience and gender identity in a cross-cultural perspective. This is a diologic work that emphasizes the need for exact descriptions of people's statements, feelings, and fantasies, presenting data from individual interviews with the Sambia of Papua New Guinea. Using the ethnographic methods of anthropology informed by the clinical techniques of psychoanalysis, Gildbert Herdt and Robert J. Stoller explore the culture and erotics of the Sambia and the role of subjectivity in ethnographic research.