The authors extend Hallowell's idea that an individual's experience and culturally constituted environment combine adaptive strategies and defensive fantasies. Fantasies

of interest from a psychoanalytic point of view may be either personal or collective, but the anthropologist investigates their interrelationship in a cultural context. The authors conclude that an institution is a compromise formation offering participants satisfaction of unconscious motives, together with public approval and other culturally sanctioned benefits. They illustrate ideas by examining the design of houses and household objects among the Gusii of Kenya. They conclude that the traditional Gusii house involves a fantasy, satisfying certain psychologically important needs of men and women, as well as serving as a context for social interaction and ritual performance.