Marvin Opler’s life can be defined, without a doubt, as passionate and exciting. From his childhood he pursued his dream of becoming an anthropologist, so he always had a deep respect for human diversity.

That is why the conflicts of the Second World War, which he unfortunately experienced, awakened in him the unwavering defence 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 deal with the most relevant moments of his professional life, delving into his career as an academic and the work he carried out as an anthropologist, teacher and social psychologist; in a historical context of special convulsion in which he was immersed until the last consequences.

Brief biography of Marvin Opler

Marvin Opler was a remarkable American anthropologist and social psychologist , born in Buffalo, New York, in 1914. He is known for his contribution to the study of stress attributable to the hustle and bustle of urban life, as well as for his sponsorship of the social side of a psychology anchored in the clinical setting. The figure of his older brother, Morris Opler (also an anthropologist), would be important to him, as he passed on to him his passion for the study of Apache culture 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 Native American cultures , as well as his social perspective on mental health and his contribution to the knowledge of the experience of Japanese residents 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 training

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

It was 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 such classic works as The Study of Man and the Tree of Culture); and that he would become a pioneer by carrying out anthropological studies on various indigenous tribes practically unknown to Western society.

In this sense, his contributions to the knowledge about the Ute (who lived in the areas of what is now Utah and Colorado, although extending their hunting area to the state of Wyoming and Arizona) and the Paiute (who made their homes on the Colorado River and in southern Utah), which were worth obtaining his doctorate degree from Columbia University in 1939, stand out.

Further 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 moving to the physical environments where the sample comes from, in order to live with the people of interest and assimilate their own uses and customs. It is a participant observation with which to discover and describe cultures different from the one of origin.

With this methodology, he contributed to broadening knowledge about the Apache people (who are now spread out over Oklahoma, Texas and Arizona; in a cultural conglomerate where linguistic and folkloric diversity is prominent) and about the indigenous people of Oregon’s northwestern coast. 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 the Second World War (1939-1945), was recruited by the American National War Labor Board , a government agency whose purpose was to resolve disputes arising from the war (in internal/external state affairs). It was created during the term of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, this being its second iteration (the first having occurred at the end of World War I and having been dissolved in 1919, almost a year after its conclusion).

Work as an anthropologist at Tule Lake

During his years on the National War Labor Board, Marvin Opler was assigned as a community analyst to Tule Lake (Newel), the site of the largest Japanese concentration camp at the time (his brother held the same position in Manzanar). This facility was used to confine citizens of Japanese descent residing in the United States during the time of the conflict (even though they were born there), amounting to approximately 120,000 inmates (most of them from the mainland).

In clear opposition to that of other colleagues, Opler developed a work especially critical of the treatment these citizens received during their long reclusion, recording in detail the life of the place and raising himself as a privileged activist for their rights.

At this point he described how many of the Japanese, acculturated for generations by Western influence, were recovering some of their ancestral customs in order to restore the dignity that had been taken away from them.

This phenomenon was coined as cultural revivalism , and was one of the phenomena that Opler would document after his experience in the concentration camp. He also had time to write numerous works 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 very critical of the regime of mass imprisonment that his country was carrying out, alluding to xenophobic rather than security motives.

Some of the people who helped Opler in this effort were attorney Wayne Mortimer Collins (a Sacramento native who had previously been involved in various civil rights cases) and his wife Charlotte (who was a nurse at the camp and was the only Caucasian woman to volunteer). He developed strong friendships that would last a lifetime, especially with Japanese people who were able to tell of his pro-social actions even after his death. In the end, they turned out to be artists who fanned the flames of Japanese culture after the war.

These activities aroused the suspicion of the FBI , which led to a detailed investigation of the figure of Opler in order to determine the possible presence of ties with the Communist Party. However, despite the unfounded accusations of some members of the War Relocation Authority (the agency that was responsible for locating the Japanese in their respective places of detention), 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 convictions.

The figure of Opler is considered today as a reference of how the work of the anthropologists who worked in Lake Tule during those years could have been, since most of them considered the work of confinement carried out there to be justified and ethical. Many Japanese thinkers have extolled Opler’s figure during the last decades, as an extraordinary bastion of respect for his compatriots in the darkness of that time.

Work in the field of social psychiatry

When all the concentration camps were finally closed and the great war ended, Opler devoted himself to teaching at Stanford and Harvard universities (for the departments of Anthropology and Sociology). However, it was from 1952 onwards that he began to develop important work related to the area of mental health, at the Midtown Community Mental Health Research Study. He remained in this position until 1960, publishing his conclusions about the experience a couple of years later.

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

Opler died in 1981 of a heart attack, one year after 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 most to the development of a Social Psychology , especially after the more than 200 texts he published during the almost 25 years 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).

Research interest of Marvin Opler

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

With respect to the first of these, he addressed issues such as the acculturation of peoples (loss of popular traditions due to the influence of an outside culture) or the rituals of the Ute and the Apache (including the shamanic analysis of one’s dreams, which resembled the method of psychoanalysis without any contact with it). He was also interested in the social role of women and wrote a lot about his experiences in the concentration camp of Lake Tule.

As for Social Psychology, was interested in a socio-cultural delimitation of mental health , the use of psychoactive substances for ritual purposes, the prevention of psychological disorders and how international conflicts could contribute to the emergence of problems such as violence and suicide. In this way, he focused his vision of mental health on the social sphere, with works that are still references in this field.

Bibliographic references:

  • Opler, M. (1956). Entidades y organización en el comportamiento individual y grupal – un marco conceptual. Psicoterapia de grupo y psicodrama, 9(4), 290-300.
  • Opler, M. (1941). La Integración de la Danza del Sol en la Religión Ute. Antropólogo americano, 43(4), 551-572.
  • Opler, M. (1946). El papel creativo del chamanismo en la mitología apache mescalera. Journal of American Folklore, 59, 268-281.
  • Opler, M. (1969). Conflictos internacionales y culturales que afectan a la salud mental. Violencia, suicidio y retraimiento. American Journal of Psychotherapy, 23(4), 608-620.