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Psychoanalysts have always had a tender affection for anthropology. It has supplied them with illustrations of the 'psychological brotherhood of mankind', man's relative uniformity, his birth and growth as a group, and it has offered hope for man's eventual maturity. It has also reassured analysts in their individualistic work that individual understanding may lead to social understanding and progress. Freud's Totem and Taboo, one of the first contributions, and Margaret Mead's Balinese Character, one of the most recent, are landmarks in psychoanalytic anthropology.
Géza Róheim is a pioneer in this field. His books—including The Eternal Ones of the Dream—are rich mines of information for the anthropologist. But the coal remains to be mined before it can be converted into analytic light and warmth. Róheim tries to interpret anthropological material analytically but rarely succeeds in creating a convincing and living impression. For instance, after many details and after he has given twenty-eight examples of Australian myth, heavily spiced with the original terms of the primitive, the interpretation of the Myth of the Dual Heroes is given (p. 67): 'The characteristic feature of the dual unity organization is just this: the body alone represents the unity of mother and son; the separation from the body (circumcision) represents a symbolic repetition of the primal trauma, the infant torn from its mother. The myth restores, by its own means (duality of heroes), the dual unity that has been broken. But it also keeps repeating the initial trauma in the attempt to master it.' In another place (p. 79), the origin of circumcision is summarized: '(a) Separation anxiety is countered by genitalization (I have lost the mother, but I can masturbate). (b) The penis has become an object representation. Separation is repeated; the foreskin is separated from the glans (mother from child, or vice versa). (c) Genitalization again; the boy receives an indestructible penis