It has taken me nearly two years to muster the courage to write a review of this book. Call it resistance. Nothing prepared me for this book, for it is not only about culture and intimacy; it is a profoundly intimate book. It forced me to face what anthropology and psychoanalysis are ultimately about—and what life is all about, too. I simply could not assimilate the work at first. The words I could come up with to begin a “review” were at best trite. They were defenses against the book's core. At least I knew that. I read it many times and made copious notes, but none of them amounted even to a beginning of a review. I knew only that I was not ready. I could not force the review or “will” it until its time.

One may, presumably, need to grow into a book just as one must often grow into a piece of music. Thirty years ago I had the same experience when I first read Erik Erikson's Insight and Responsibility: I could affirm the ideas in the abstract, but not in the flesh of my