The general problem this research approaches is the observation that, in Western cultures, Human occupies a central place and is identified with the cosmological wholeness—a worldview which is in tune with the paradigm of massive abuses that are practiced against animals who 1 are exploited by industry worldwide and with the environmental catastrophe we witness nowadays. Departing from that problem, this paper presents and discusses the Western notion indicated above, comparing it with the notion of Yanomami indigenous people about human’s place in the universe. We use a dialogical methodology pertinent to semiotic-cultural constructivism in psychology, focusing on the relationship between “human” and non-human animal in the two mentioned cultures, through the analysis of two creation myths: The Book of Genesis, the first book of the Hebrew-Christian Bible; and The Falling Sky: Words from a Yanomami Shaman, a set of narratives from indigenous leader Davi Kopenawa. Results show that Western and Amerindian narratives present mostly opposite conceptions concerning the relationships between “humanity” and animality and that meanings for “human” and “animal” differ essentially in both. From the tension with Amerindian cosmology and its relationship with nonhuman animal, we call into question the ethno-anthropocentrism that is present in Western psychology since its birth. Given that psychology lays its foundations on a worldview that presupposes a strict split between nature and Humanity (assuming, e.g. an insurmountable incompatibility between the impulse of our “natural” desires and the regulation and prohibitions imposed by “culture”), this research intends to draw attention to the fact that the naturalist ontology is not an a priori nor a necessary condition for the construction of self-identity in the world. Whereas this presupposed Human “alienation” from nature remains taken for granted in the hegemonic theoretical–methodological reflections in psychology, we discuss the limits of Eurocentered psychology research and its implications in a dialogical epistemology.

Western culture's imaginary positions human figure as exceptional and identified with cosmological wholeness: "humanity" is taken for granted in the construction of people's identity, while non-human beings are assigned a condition of non-subjects. This paper departs from the assumption that this worldview is supported by a fundamentally mythical structure, which has, as an important representant, world creation narrative expressed in the Hebrew-Christian Bible. Thus, this paper proposes an analysis of the relations between humanity and animality that are expressed in The Book of Genesis, first book of the Bible, comparing them with the way those same relations are expressed in an Amerindian creation myth: The Falling Sky: Words from a Yanomami shaman, from indigenous leader and shaman David Kopenawa. The results are interpreted from a dialogue between anthropology of the imaginary and cultural psychology and show that, unlike Western narrative, in Amerindian animality and humanity figure like parts of the same whole, immanently present in all beings: the contact with spiritual ancestors is only possible through animal mediation, which makes "nature" a fundamental dimension of the "divine" in Yanomami cosmology. I discuss the implications of these findings for a fundamental assumption of psychological thought: the notion of humanity Palavras-chave : Imaginary; Cultural Psychology; Myths; Anthropocentrism; Identity.

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