Marvin Opler: biography of this anthropologist and social psychologist.

This researcher was one of the first to study Native American tribes.

Marvin Opler's life can be defined, without any doubt, as passionate and exciting. Since his childhood, he pursued the dream of becoming an anthropologist and always harbored a deep respect for human diversity.

That is why the conflicts of World War II, which he unfortunately had to live through, awakened in him the unwavering defense of the rights of those who were subjected to the yoke of social injustice. It is a testimony of love for his profession, which still prevails today.

In this biography of Marvin Opler We will address the most relevant moments of his professional life, delving into his career as an academic and the work he performed as an anthropologist, teacher and social psychologist; in a historical context of special upheaval in which he was immersed to the last consequences.

Brief biography of Marvin Opler

Marvin Opler was a remarkable American anthropologist and social psychologist.born in the city of Buffalo (New York) in 1914. He is known for his contribution to the study of stress attributable to the din of urban life, as well as for his sponsorship of the social side of a psychology anchored in the clinical framework.

The figure of his older brother, Morris Opler (also an anthropologist), would be important to him, as he transferred his passion for the study of Apache culture to him when he was just a child.

We will now review the life and work of Marvin Opler, highlighting his great contribution as an anthropologist to the detailed study of aboriginal American cultures. his great contribution as an anthropologist to the detailed study of American aboriginal cultures, as well as his social perspective on mental healthWe will also review his social perspective on mental health and his contribution to the knowledge of the experience of the Japanese living in the United States during World War II (1939-1945). This historical context is key to understanding how the author projected his legacy and understood the society in which he lived.

Academic background

Marvin Opler began his higher education at the age of 21 in his hometown of Buffalo, but completed it at the University of Michigan.. He moved there because of his interest in a theoretical convergence of Social Psychology and Anthropology, which at the time was represented by Professor Leslie White, who taught there. However, when he obtained his degree in social studies, his insatiable thirst for knowledge prompted him to pursue his PhD at Columbia.

It would be precisely at this stage that he would meet Ruth Benedict (president of the American Anthropological Association and a key figure in the study of personality, art and culture) and Ralph Linton (author of classic works such as The Study of Man or The Tree of Culture); and in which he would become a pioneer by carrying out anthropological studies on various indigenous tribes practically unknown to Western society. to Western society.

In this sense, his contributions to the knowledge of the Ute (who lived in the areas of present-day Utah and Colorado, although extending their hunting area to the state of Wyoming and Arizona) and the Paiute (whose homes were located in the Colorado River and southern Utah), which were worth for obtaining his PhD degree from Columbia University in 1939.

Later ethnographic studies

Opler's work as a researcher resorted to the method of social anthropology, that is, ethnography.. This is a qualitative design that requires travel to the physical environments where the sample comes from, in order to live with the people of interest and assimilate the uses and customs that are specific to them. It is a participant observation with which to discover and describe cultures other than the one from which they came.

With this methodology he contributed to expand the knowledge about the Apache people (currently distributed in Oklahoma, Texas and Arizona; in a cultural conglomerate in which linguistic and folkloric diversity stands out) and about the Indians of the northwestern coasts of Oregon. For this work, among others, he held the chair of Anthropology at Reed College (a prestigious private university located in southeast Portland).

In 1943, at the height of World War II (1939-1945), he was recruited by the U.S. National War Labor Boarda government agency that pursued the purpose of resolving disputes arising out of the war (in internal/external state affairs). Its creation took place during the term of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, this being its second iteration (as the first occurred at the end of World War I and was disbanded in 1919, almost a year after its conclusion).

Work as an anthropologist at Tule Lake

In the years during which he remained with the National War Labor Board, Marvin Opler was assigned as a community analyst at Tule Lake. was assigned as a community analyst to Tule Lake (Newel), a site on the (Newel), the site of the largest concentration camp for Japanese at the time (his brother held the same position at Manzanar).

In these facilities were interned the citizens with Japanese ancestry who resided in the USA during the time of the conflict (even though they were born there), amounting to approximately 120,000 inmates (most of them from the continental region).

In clear opposition to that of other colleagues, Opler was especially critical of the treatment of these citizens during his long imprisonment, recording life there in detail and emerging as a privileged activist for their rights. during his long imprisonment, recording in detail the life of the place and emerging as a privileged activist for their rights.

Here he described how many of the Japanese, acculturated for generations by Western influence, recovered some of their ancestral customs in order to restore the dignity that had been taken from them. This phenomenon was coined as cultural revivalismand was one of the phenomena that Opler would document after his concentration camp experience.

He also had time to write numerous papers on the implicit effects of racial segregation and even the emotional crises of the Japanese that motivated their renunciation of an identity as Americans. In all his writings he was highly critical of his country's mass incarceration regime, citing xenophobic rather than security reasons.

Among those who assisted Opler in this endeavor were attorney Wayne Mortimer Collins (a Sacramento native who had previously been involved in various civil rights causes) and his wife Charlotte (who served as a nurse at the camp, the only Caucasian woman to do so). He established strong friendships that would last a lifetime, especially with Japanese who were able to recount his prosocial acts even after his death. Ultimately they turned out to be artists who fanned the dying flame of Japanese culture after the War.

These activities aroused the suspicion of the FBI.This prompted a detailed investigation of Opler's character with the purpose of determining the possible presence of ties with the Communist Party. However, despite the unfounded accusations of some members of the War Relocation Authority (the agency responsible for placing the Japanese in their respective places of internment), they were finally dismissed.

The persecution of this agency would not end there, as it would return some years later, although it never resulted in any conviction. It was an example of the extent to which ideological control of the population was a constant in the United States, even though it claimed to be a land of freedom.

The figure of Opler is considered today as a reference of how the work of the anthropologists who worked at Tule Lake during those years could have been, since most of them considered justified and ethical the work of reclusion that was carried out there. Many Japanese thinkers have extolled Opler in recent decades as an extraordinary bastion of respect for his compatriots in the darkness of that time, rowing against the tide in a turbulent era marked by warmongering impulses.

Work in the field of social psychiatry

When all the concentration camps were finally closed and the Great War ended, Opler went on to teach at Stanford and Harvard Universities (for the departments of anthropology and social psychiatry). (for the departments of Anthropology and Sociology). However, it was in 1952 that he began to develop an important work related to the area of mental health, at the Midtown Community Mental Health Research Study Center. He remained in this position until 1960, publishing his findings a couple of years later.

In his work, oriented to the inhabitants of this area of New York, he emphasized the search for individual differences in mental health, his work, oriented to the inhabitants of this area of New York, emphasized the search for individual differences in the expression of schizophrenia attributable to the cultural substratum of the patients. His work in the health field pursued the aspirations that motivated him as a young man to study anthropology.

Opler died in 1981 of a Heart attack, one year after the death of his wife (from whom he separated in 1970), without seeing his last and most relevant contributions in this field published.

He is remembered as one of the authors who contributed the most to the development of a Social Psychologyespecially as a result of the more than 200 texts he published during the almost 25 years in which he was a professor at the University of Buffalo (where he began and ended his academic life). He worked there from 1958 until the end of his days, holding the position of Professor of Anthropology for a few years (1969-1972).

Marvin Opler's research interest.

Marvin Opler published throughout his life very different works, all of them on Anthropology and Social Psychology.

Regarding the first of these, he addressed issues such as the acculturation of peoples (loss of folk traditions through the influence of an outside culture) or the rituals of the Ute and Apache (including the shamanic analysis of one's dreams, which resembled the method of psychoanalysis without any contact with it). He also became interested in the social role of women and wrote extensively about his experiences in the Tule Lake concentration camp.

As for Social Psychology, he was interested in a socio-cultural demarcation of mental healthHe was also interested in the use of psychoactive substances for ritual purposes, the prevention of psychological disorders and the way in which international conflicts could contribute to the emergence of problems such as violence and suicide. In this way, he focused his vision of mental health to the social sphere, with works that are still today referents in this field, showing that even in well-being of this type is not purely a matter of the proper functioning of the body as an individual entity, but also has to do with what happens in the environment.

Bibliographical references:

• Opler, M. (1956). Entities and organization in individual and group behavior - a conceptual framework. Group Psychotherapy and Psychodrama, 9(4), 290 - 300.
• Opler, M. (1941). The Integration of the Sun Dance in Ute Religion. American Anthropologist, 43(4), 551-572.
• Opler, M. (1946). The Creative Role of Shamanism in Mescalero Apache Mythology. Journal of American Folklore, 59, 268 - 281.
• Opler, M. (1969). International and cultural conflicts affecting mental health. Violence, suicide and withdrawal. American Journal of Psychotherapy, 23(4), 608 - 620.
• Price, D.H. (2004). Threatening Anthropology: McCarthyism and the FBI's Surveillance of Activist Anthropologists. Durham: Duke University Press.
• Price, D.H. & Peace, W.J. (2003). Un-American anthropological thought: The Opler-Meggers exchange. Journal of Anthropological Research, 59(2), pp. 183 - 203.