The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis

Roheim, Geza. Psychoanalysis of Primitive Cultural Types. Pp. 1-224.

Reviews.

Reports of Psychoanalytical Societies.

Roheim, G. Psychoanalysis of Primitive Cultural Types. As may be known to many this contribution is part of a monographic anthropological survey of some Australian, African, and North American Indian tribes offered by an anthropologist who is experienced in and deeply influenced by psychoanalysis. It is the most thoroughgoing and complete study of any in the psychoanalytic anthropological literature of the world. It fulfills in a most satisfactory manner certain ideals often expressed by psychoanalytical workers who have made use of anthropological and ethnological material as first suggested, most pointedly in Freud's contribution on Totem and Tabu. No attempt will be made to abstract this monograph of 224 pages. The table of contents will give an idea of its scope. 1. Introduction; 2. Psychoanalytic Technique and Field Anthropology; 3. Children of the Desert; 4. Sexual Life in Central Australia; 5. Totemic Ritual; 6. Psychology of the Central Australian Culture Area; 7. Tauhau and the Mwadare; 8. Doketa; 9. Super-Ego and Group-Ideal; 10. The National Character of the Somali. The expedition was financed by Marie Bonaparte for a two-year research and Roheim chose Central Australia since, with Frazer and the classical anthropologists, he believed Central Australia represented the most primitive of living cultures. Furthermore, he wished to clear up certain conceptions re matrilineal societies and the criticisms of certain writers regarding the Oedipus situation in a matriarchate culture. However he did not confine himself to Australia but also studied certain African tribes, chiefly Somali, and

he also spent some time in New Guinea, and two months were spent at the Yuma Indian reservation in Arizona. The present volume is largely a rewritten series of lectures which have come out of his observations. A wide gulf, he writes in his