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It is indeed timely that, coincidental with the observation of World Mental Health Year, there should appear on the scene a book featuring material on the effects of cultural patterns on mental health throughout the world. Opler's choice of selections, culled from recent cross-cultural studies, is highly commendable. His book features material by distinguished researchers in the fields of anthropology, sociology, psychology, and psychiatry.
In these days more than ever before, when travel has been greatly facilitated and communication between people is a matter of ultimate concern, we cannot view the world from a limited frame of reference. Furthermore, even within our own country there are social and economic barriers which modify and limit the degree to which we can psychologically identify with our environment.
Kardiner's study of the Negro personality, Opler's work on contrasts in patterns of schizophrenia of Italians and Irish in the United States, Sanua's observations on the differences in personality adjustment among different generations of American Jews and non-Jews, and Jaco's findings on the mental health of the Spanish-Americans in Texas clearly reveal the psychological components of acculturation in this country.
Of particular interest is the concept of “marginality” discussed by Sanua. The members of a marginal group are not completely identified with either the dominant in-group or with their own minority out-group, but must by necessity maintain cultural ties with both. The consequences are ambivalent identification, rejection, guilt, and frustration. Four main types of adjustment have been determined. One can reject the dominant and live entirely within one's minority group. He can reject the minority and adopt the dominant group. He may try in a social and political nihilistic way to renounce both. Finally, he may select what is aesthetically acceptable from both. This requires, of course, a continuous scrutiny of values, neither accepting nor reje