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"We have been comparing point for point, our civilisation and the simpler civilisation of Samoa, in order to illuminate our own method of education," wrote Margaret Mead in her Coming of Age in Samoa (p. 234). I am quoting from my copy of 1930, when her book was in its fifth printing and by all accounts was the most resonant publication in cultural anthropology so far. It was her report of the fieldwork she had conducted among Polynesian adolescents in Samoa. Her project, to be followed by many others, was focused on the complex interplay of the psyche-soma forces or, more precisely, on the integrative processes of physical development, maturation, and the prevailing environmental ethos. This work was a first attempt, though not yet clearly conceived or formulated, of what came to be known as the "Culture and Personality" school of (American) anthropology. It was the childhood milieu, i.e., the external reality, that became the frame of reference with respect to the developing ego in this school of thought.
Mead's initial focus must be understood in a contemporary perspective;