The Atabascan people inhabit the harsh and barren land of subarctic Alaska. The scarcity of food forced them to spread over vast areas in small, matrilineal hunting and gathering groups. These people are distinguished by a specific "cultural personality," as defined by the authors. They are highly suspicious, even paranoid, toward all who are not members of their family and are preoccupied with dread, imaginary monsters which populate their environment. Suggestible, gullible, impulsive, and subject to hysterical illnesses, they lack tenderness in sexual relationships, and the attitudes of parents toward their young is extremely ambivalent. They seem to be able to lose loved ones without evidence of pain or suffering and in general to exhibit stoic attitudes and suppress any intense emotions. The authors propose an interweaving system of ecological conditions, adaptational needs, social structure, child-rearing practices, specific effects of these