This special issue demonstrates the value of close examinations of mothering as actually practiced by particular mothers in particular circumstances. The articles in this issue analyze instances of mothering in Papua New Guinea, Sri Lanka, Ecuador, China, and the United States and are followed by commentary from leaders in the field about what might be learned by attending to such everyday practices. These ethnographic studies extend lines of research within psychological anthropology that have focused on mothers as socializers, by drawing on contemporary developments, including those concerned with schema theory, psychodynamic and intersubjective processes, the interpenetrations of political‐economies and domestic relations, feminist perspectives, and questions of agency in the lives of women and children. This examination of projects, processes, and practices of mothering affords insights into a range of related questions concerning human nature, processes of enculturation and socialization, individual agency and lived worlds, cultural patterning and change. [mothering, practice, child socialization, cross‐cultural child development, psychological anthropology]

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This article presents the case of a Sri Lankan woman who tells of an early life fraught with suffering and problematic dissociation. After a 30‐year career as a priestess during which she became renowned for deep possession trances, firewalking, and blood sacrifices, she no longer participates in these activities. The analysis of this case argues that problematic dissociation outside a ritual context can be used in and transformed by involvement in culturally available possession rituals to promote healing. This counters Melford Spiro and others who have viewed possession experiences as necessarily abnormal, psychotic, and symptomatic of mental disorder. It supports Gananath Obeyesekere's assertion that engagement with these symbolic systems can lead to “progressive transformations.” Parallels between this priestess' lifestory and Western psychotherapy extend Obeyesekere's conception of “the work of culture” beyond the domain of meaning and symbol to include roles for embodied practice and interpersonal relationships. [spirit possession, Sri Lanka, dissociation, healing, mental health]

Using data gathered through participant‐observation and interviews focused on everyday mothering interactions in a Sinhala family in central Sri Lanka, I argue that the combination of continuous indulgence with disappointing material, social, and emotional results leads children to disavow their own desires by middle childhood. This early socialization to the negative potential of desire makes fertile ground for cultural doctrines that explicitly link desire, suffering, and destruction. Further, mothers who themselves have internalized these understandings react to their children's assertions of desire with intense discomfort combined with indulgence, reproducing their own socialization in the experiences of their children. By being attuned to psychodynamic processes between and within people and as well as attentive to the sociocultural medium in which they occur, I provide a model of and for thinking about how actual practices of mothering lead children to develop culturally patterned habits of thought, behavior, and feeling, preparing them to find subsequently encountered cultural material meaningful. [mothering, child socialization, indulgence, disavowal, desire, Sri Lanka]

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