Douglas W. Hollan
Biography
I am a cultural and psychological anthropologist and research psychoanalyst whose primary focus is on how social ecologies affect health and illness, as well as aspects of emotion, empathy, embodiment, and different states of consciousness, including sleeping and dreaming.
Using person-centered ethnography and observation and the concept of selfscapes, I am particularly interested in how emotional health and illness are conceptualized in different times and places and the extent to which these conceptualizations influence the experience of emotional health and illness per se.
Publications
Recent Books and Edited Volumes
Hollan, Douglas W. 2025. Selfscapes, Selfhoods, and Subjectivities: Perspectives from Anthropology and Psychoanalysis. New York: Routledge University Press.
Hollan, Douglas W. and C. Jason Throop, eds. 2011. The Anthropology of Empathy: Experiencing the Lives of Others in Pacific Societies. New York: Berghahn.
Hollan, Douglas W. and C. Jason Throop, eds. 2008. Whatever Happened to Empathy? Ethos 38(4).
Recent Articles and Book Chapters
Hollan, Douglas. Person-Centered Interviewing and Observation: Exploring Complex Personhood. In Cambridge Handbook of Psychological Anthropology, Edward D. Lowe, ed. Pp. 201-221. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hollan, Douglas. 2023. Relational, But Also Singular: On the Varieties and Particularities of Selfscapes. In Handbook of Existentialist Human Science. Nigel Rapport, Huon Wardle, and Albert Piette, eds. Pp. 115-125. London: Routledge.
Hollan, Douglas. 2023. Dynamics and Vicissitudes of Empathy. In Conversations on Empathy: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Imagination and Radical Othering. Francesca Mezzenzana and Daniela Peluso, eds. Pp. 101-115. London: Routledge.
Hollan, Douglas. 2023. James and Radical Empiricism in Rural Indonesia. In Philosophy on Fieldwork: Case Studies in Anthropological Analysis. Nils Bubandt and Thomas Schwarz Wentzer, eds. Pp. 337-352. London: Routledge.
Hollan, Douglas. 2022. Anthropology and Psychoanalysis: The Looping Effects of Persons and Social Worlds. Annual Review of Anthropology 51:155-171.
Hollan, Douglas. 2022. Haunted by Internet Porn: Configuration of a Hidden Contagion. In Configuring Contagion. Lotte Meinert and Jens Seeberg, eds. Pp. 193-212. New York: Berghahn.
Hollan, Douglas. 2021. Afterward: On the Varieties and Particularities of Dreaming. In New Directions in the Anthropology of Dreaming, Pp. 226-233. Jeannette Mageo and Robin E. Sheriff, eds. New York: Routledge.
Hollan, Douglas. 2019. Who is Haunted by Whom?: Steps to an Ecology of Haunting. Ethos 47(4):451-464.
Hollan, Douglas. 2019. Emotional Entrainment in Crowds and Other Social Formations. In Crowds: Ethnographic Encounters. Megan Steffen, ed. Pp. 105-118. New York: Bloomsbury.
Hollan, Douglas. 2017. Dreamscapes of Intimacy and Isolation: Shadows of Contagion and Immunity. Ethos 45(2):216-231.
Hollan, Douglas. 2017. Psychoanalysis and Ethnography. Ethos 44(4):507-521.
Hollan, Douglas. 2014. From Ghosts to Ancestors (and Back Again): On the Cultural and Psychodynamic Mediation of Selfscapes. Ethos 42(2):175-197.
Awards & Grants
UCLA Luckman Distinguished Teaching Award (1995)
Boyer Prize, Society for Psychological Anthropology (2013)
Lifetime Achievement Award, Society for Psychological Anthropology (2024)
Degrees
PhD in Anthropology, University of California, San Diego (1984)
PhD in Psychoanalysis, New Center for Psychoanalysis (1997)