You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
In this meticulous work, a study of boyhood rituals in the Afikpo, the name of one of many groups making up the Igbo people of southeastern Nigeria, Ottenberg marshals an impressive quantity of ethnographic evidence to provide a picture of the development of boys in an African society. Ethnographically curious analysts will find much here to interest them. Ottenberg says candidly that he wishes to convey a sense of how boys develop in relation to others, while not diminishing "the sense of life and experience of the boys" (p. xxiii).
After birth, nursing continues for at least two and a half years, during which time the mother is expected to abstain from all sexual relations in order, as the Afikpo say, "to allow the mother to give her baby full attention" (p. 20). During the period of breast-feeding, the mother is allowed all kinds of dispensations from normal female responsibilities, such as going to market. During this "golden age for mother and child" (p. 21), the two become very close.
When a child is born it is believed to have within it three reincarnated ancestors. There is a personal spirit (owa), designated by different names depending on the sex, and two ancestral spirits (ma). While the two ancestral spirits may inhabit more than one child, the personal spirit is present in only one person at a time, although, signficantly, this owa can and does change during the various phases of development. Knowing the identity of these three spirits is not considered important before teething begins, at which time a ritual specialist is called upon. Such divination ceremonies explicitly link the infant to members of the clan. As Ottenberg notes, "ritualization is an internalization of parental control, expressed in spiritual terms" (p. 27). These social representations of inner conflicts brought on by teething are indeed important for the development of the superego.1
Since the weakening of ties to the mother is a major theme in the development of boys, Ottenb