The stance that an anthropologist must take when carrying out their field observations and presenting their research findings strongly echoes that of counter‑transference for a psychoanalyst. In the two cases, there is the same migration towards the other, and, as the other’s strangeness progressively gives way to greater familiarity, the same transfer of otherness – from the stranger – inside oneself. The issue then is to succeed in creating a « third » position, something which the contributions of psychoanalysis make possible. It is not a question here, therefore, of suggesting some similarities between anthropology and psychoanalysis, but in fact of asserting the porous impermeability of their methodological boundaries. This is illustrated by two field examples that bring into play the sexing of power relations and the process whereby individuals sustain ideologies and collective belief systems.