Melford Elliot Spiro (April 26, 1920 – October 18, 2014) was an American cultural anthropologist specializing in religion and psychological anthropology.
Explicated in numerous theoretical publications, they are empirically exemplified in monographs based on his fieldwork in Ifaluk atoll in Micronesia, an Israeli kibbutz,[1][2] and a village in Burma (now Myanmar).
from the University of Minnesota in 1942,[6] where he majored in philosophy,[7] following which he studied at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York.
Having developed an interest in culture theory, he explored this interest through enrolling in the anthropology department at Northwestern University, where he worked with Melville Herskovits and A. Irving Hallowell, and received his PhD in 1950.
He received postgraduate training in psychoanalysis at the San Diego Psychoanalytic Center and practiced as a lay analyst,[7] additionally overseeing a course series at UCSD that exposed graduate students in anthropology to psychiatric training.