The argument of the paper is summarized by the author as follows:

'1. Culture or sublimations in a group are evolved through the same process as in the individual. 2. Cultural areas are conditioned by the typical infantile situation in each area. 3. Human culture as a whole is the consequence of our prolonged infancy. 4. Typically human forms of adjustment are derived from the infantile situation. 5. Our conquest of nature is due to the synthetic function of the ego. 6. Psychoanalytic interpretations of culture should always be ego plus id interpretations. 7. The interpretation of cultural elements through individual analysis is probably correct, but should be combined with the analysis of anthropological data.' An important part of the paper and of the eighty-two footnotes is taken up by a methodological discussion and confrontation of the author's extreme ontogenetic theories with Otto Fenichel's more sociological interpretation of culture, as stated in the latter's paper The Drive to Amass Wealth,1 and others.