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This book is of interest to psychoanalysts who wish to supplement their knowledge of children with data from societies other than our own. Cohen has performed a herculean job in personally examining 'complete ethnographic reports' on sixty-five cultures to ferret out facts and correlations of which theoreticians concerned with psychoanalytic developmental psychology should be aware. He found this method more rewarding than merely referring to the Cross-Cultural Files at Yale, a more convenient and conventional practice. The data uncovered are rather extensive and I will refer to only a few. He found that extrusion (the dislodgment of a child, usually a boy, from his household) and brother-sister avoidance occur at eight or nine years of age. He also noted the rise in sex hormones that occurs at that age. And he observed that these customs occur more frequently than do initiation ceremonies of puberty. The following correlations are quite remarkable: when the child is taught by his parents and descent group, extrusion or brother-sister avoidance is almost universally present; in sixty-six per cent of the societies studied puberty rites are also performed. When a child is taught by his parents and by nonmembers of his descent group, extrusion, brother-sister avoidance, and puberty ceremonies are rare.
Although the author's observations will be stimulating to the analyst, his theoretical attempts will often be disappointing. Cohen's concept of an innate need for privacy, which he considers a biological determinant of the incest taboo, is interesting when one realizes that he is referring to the organism's attempts to avoid excessive and traumatic stimulation. But this concept is not satisfactorily formulated. His idea of two stages of adolescence, the first beginning