'Urban' culture (all those parts of the world, whether rural or not, that participate in industrialized society) is examined by Dr. Mead with special reference to the relation between cultural anthropology and psychoanalysis. The infant that fails to thrive evokes its mother's anxiety and her supply of milk fails. In primitive societies this frequently meant death for infants physically or psychologically inadequately endowed for nursing. Only the most suitable children survived, and consequently parents saved their energy for survival of themselves and their other children. Under those conditions death was a 'biologically adequate' result. In contemporary society, however, the defective survive because various supplemental devices are available. When today a child fails to nurse properly, and the mother becomes anxious and produces less milk, she is responding inappropriately: her apprehensions, with all their traumatic consequences for herself and the child, are unwarranted. Some of man's older biological