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By no means every work of major importance in anthropology, or even in psycho-analysis, brings such pleasurable excitement to the reader as this volume. The pleasure is in part directly communicated from the author's own zest in his pursuit of a solution to the Riddle, a zest which an excellent translation carries over undiluted. In part it springs from the reader's sense of mental movement in the author, and his so greatly enhanced mastery of his material.
The ease and depth and comprehensiveness of understanding which characterize this book are the outcome of two new inspirations—Róheim's own direct experience of savages, and his use of Melanie Klein's researches in the direct analysis of young children. Together these have led to a far juster appreciation of even the external aspects of man's social history than many non-analytic students display, as well as to a deepened awareness of its inner dynamics. In this picture, savages become human and individual—as human and individual as we who read and write about them. As Róheim himself says, 'My first impression during my field work was that savages were not nearly so savage as the anthropologists; or in other words, that they are not nearly so mysterious as one would think from reading Tyler, Frazer, Levy-Bruhl, or even Róheim' (p. 238). And the author's new ability to see people where before he knew only 'totemism', 'animism', etc., is paralleled by the way in which he now brings the child into the centre of the human psychological drama. He insists that there are 'three actors in the great play: the father, the brothers and the children'; and must always have been these three. To the understanding which Freud gave us by shewing us the primal horde of adult sons vis à vis the primal father, we must now add the further appreciation of the impact of their struggle upon immature observers, the children. Róheim's use of Melanie Klein's contributions has brought the problem of human origins closer than it was