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Every so often we embark on a reading experience with the expectation that we are about to explore a particular world of thought but soon find ourselves in a rather different, though fascinating, one. Reading Oedipus in the Stone Age: A Psychoanalytic Study of Masculinization in Papua New Guinea by Theodore and Ruth Wilmanns Lidz is such an experience.
The book begins with a brief history of the peoples of Papua New Guinea and a cogent summary of the multitude of relevant ethnographic studies. Soon the narrative focuses on the initiation rituals that mark the transition from boyhood into manhood in a number of the tribes of eastern Papua New Guinea and southeastern Irian Jaya. Just as we find ourselves steeped in the rites the males of these cultures must endure to make their way into adulthood, we realize that we are in the throes of a clear but complex discussion of a number of controversial issues in psychoanalytic theory. These include gender and sex-role development; the universality of penis envy, castration anxiety, the Oedipus complex, and possible sources and types of male homosexuality.
The book is both engaging and intellectually exciting. It is thick with description of these tribal worlds; yet an enormous amount of information is not only immediately accessible, but also is made applicable to current issues and the concerns of clinicians practicing on the other side of the globe. All of this is accomplished in under 200 pages of text.
The central thesis of the book is that, contrary to Freud and as demonstrated in studies of these tribal societies, the developmental path of boys is a more complex and difficult one than that of girls. In addition, males' profound envy of the