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The author takes issue with Freud's linking the formation of sex identity to the resolution of the Oedipus complex. That formula, she argues, may have been
correct for his culture but not for ours. 'Today our society has built value conflicts in the very definition of the sex roles, resulting in serious confusions in sex identity.' There follow examples of the ways in which male and female cultural roles are defined in a number of subcultures and specifically how the role definition influences sex identity. Of particular interest is the discussion of the American Negro. 'The man unable to provide for his family has been stereotyped as shiftless and undependable while the woman has reluctantly continued as the mainstay of the family. This kind of double standard amounts to a partial sex role reversal in which the woman ambivalently performs the functions of both sexes while the man with equal ambivalence performs neither. The castrating effect of the man's economic dependency on the woman, and the masculinizing effect of the woman's having to assume the man's economic role has contributed to the widespread sexual disturbance in Negroes of both sexes.' The bias in this rather interesting article is toward relating the development of sex identity to subcultural and socio-economic pressures and away from biologic and psychologic determinants.