This book is a landmark effort in the application of psychoanalytic concepts to the study of culture. The author, through many years of intimate contact with the Chiricahua and Mescalero Apache Indians (including practicing psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapy on their reservation in New Mexico), developed a deepening awareness of his patients and research subjects and of the folklore reflected in their education and rearing of children.

While knowledge existed from the early days of psychoanalysis that primary process thinking and conflicts, id drive derivatives, and tortuous use of ego defenses could be marked as similar in dreams and myths, seldom has there appeared as complete a treatment of the subject in a given culture as in this volume. Moreover, Boyer conclusively demonstrates that, just as the dream's transformation of primary process material contributes much to the stability of the