A MODEL APPLIED ANTHROPOLOGIST-PSYCHOANALYST IN THE MEXICAN SIERRA: A PROFILE OF DOREN SLADE

Abstract This brief article summarizes the life and work of Dr. Doren Leslie Slade (1945-2019) while honoring her legacy, as she stands as a role model of an eclectic applied anthropologist turned psychoanalyst. She conducted intensive field research among the Nahuat of the North Sierra of Mexico's state of Puebla, concentrating on the town of Chignautla. Her focus was on aspects of the Chignautecos' quotidian corpus of beliefs – which she defined as their cosmology - that have survived for centuries, as she narrated it originally in her doctoral dissertation for the University of Pittsburgh. Years later, back home in New York City, Doren became one of the few anthropologists to obtain the difficult license to provide psychoanalytic therapy in the U.S. Then, in 1992, she published a landmarking thick ethnographic book based on her field research, but also armed with her new insights, if retrospectively, as an experienced practicing psychoanalyst. Her multi-faceted professional career is exemplary of an applied/practicing anthropologist.