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If the psychoanalyst lives in an ivory tower, this book shows what a splendid vantage point an ivory tower is for viewing mankind
from China to Peru. Not that the author depends on the far-flung researches of the anthropologist or sociologist. Rather, he finds in his clinic, in thorough investigations of schizophrenics and their families, a starting point from which to explore civilizations ancient and modern.
In three lectures, originally given at Tulane University, he concerns himself with the threat of the collapse of whatever social values we have today. He points out what is all too frequently ignored, that the family of yesterday, a cohesive clan consisting of parents, two couples of grandparents, numerous aunts and uncles, and a multitude of cousins, capable of offering impulsive traditional advice and willing unskilled help, is seldom found in the United States today though it persists on other continents. The typical child today is confronted with only two adults, his parents, whose ancestors may have spoken different languages and who are guided and supported by new found precepts and intellectual novelties rather than by other people, since they probably live in an environment of new acquaintances. The need for maturity in such parents is greater than ever before since they must inculcate in their children the adaptability necessary to live with the ever-quickening variants of life imposed by expanding technology.
And of what does such maturity consist? By demonstrating how children suffer from their parents' inadequacy, the author shows the need for marital partners to form a reciprocating coalition, to maintain the boundaries between their generation and the next, and to fulfil their sexual and sex-linked social roles.
This microcosm of the family is united to the macrocosm of its culture by the words it uses. Following Whorf, the author exemplifies the fact that the specific qualities of a language influence its user's mode of experiencing life—t