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This work of Malinowski is one of very considerable importance to psychoanalysis. The author is an anthropologist of note who is very much convinced of the great value of psychoanalysis and of the important contributions it has made, though he is not disposed to accept everything that is labeled “psychoanalysis” uncritically. In his broad experience in the Melanesian Islands, where he has studied the natives very intensively, he has come to some conclusions regarding the validity of certain psychoanalytic hypotheses and some other conclusions which bring other of these hypotheses into question, and his book is very largely a discussion of these several matters. In the main it may be said to deal with a description of the modifications of the Oedipus complex in a matrilineal society, and as such is a very valuable contribution to anthropology and a very valuable confirmation of the psychoanalytic principles. He takes considerable pains to answer Jones' argument in his article on Mother-Right, particularly with reference to his discussion of the sexual ignorance of savages. He has much to say about the Oedipus complex as the foes et origo of everything which he takes to be Jones' position but with which he disagrees, and much to say of the mating instinct in pre-humans. His discussion of culture is particularly to be commended. The book as a whole discloses very well the strong hold which psychoanalytic thinking has taken upon scientific thought in so many directions, and it is an indication of the great value of the psychoanalytic point of view in this particular instance in the field of anthropology.
White