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PARTISA N R EVIEW
who, by reason of temperament, is alienated from the cultural activities
which are believed by his social group to be exclusively appropriate
to his sex. Thus, according to Dr. Mead, of two musically-gifted men,
the one raised in, say, a continental culture where from earliest child–
hood he is surrounded by men with a trained enthusiasm for music, and
the other reared in a frontier society where an interest in music is
considered unmanly, the former is able to keep unimpaired his masculine
image of himself, whereas the latter is pushed to inversion. Such a view
of homosexuality is no doubt useful in arguing against the taking too
strictly of the sex stereotypes of a culture, which can force the individual
of unusual gift to reject a precious part of his particular endowment, with
consequent personal suffering and loss to the community.
It
is effective,
that is, in propagandizing a greater tolerance of individual aberrancy.
But as an explanation of the source of the homosexual neurosis it is
utterly inadequate, for it leaves unanswered the pressing question of
what it is that determines the life-preferences of the individual-the
desire of one girl to climb trees where another is satisfied to play with
dolls, or of one boy to caress fabrics where another cannot wait to
be given a gun. Differences like these Dr. Mead would apparently assign
to the genes-which is to leave the whole problem of personal determina–
tion exactly where it was before Freud ever undertook its study.*
But this evasion is not quixotism or carelessness on Dr. Mead's
part, as we recognize when we read back from her last chapter. It is in
the light of the conclusion of
Male and Female
that we see the regularity
in Dr. Mead's irregular commitment to Freudian doctrine. Because
Dr. Mead desires a certain social-sexual fluidity for our own society,
she can admit into her purview only such degree of psychoanalytical
determination as supports this intention. There is a powerful motive in
Male and Female,
submerged through most of the book, out in the
open only at the end-to guarantee to women a full participation in
the life of culture. And this is why Dr. Mead, despite her emphasis
on sex differentiations, is so concerned to free men and women from
*
One of the many salient self-contradictions which Dr. Mead falls into and
which make her book so difficult to absorb is her own occasional departure from
this view of the homosexual deviation-in, for example, her discussion of the
Iatmul. Among this people boy infant and girl infant are treated alike, with
much maternal rudeness; and there is a strong taboo against any signs of male
passivity. Although the Iatmul men are heterosexual at home, they become active
homosexuals when they go among other tribes; and Dr. Mead would seem to
indicate that this is because of their handling in infancy.
I n arguing the Freudian view of personal determination against Dr. Mead's
begging of the fundamental question of determination, we should remember, of
course, Freud's own affirmation of the due importance of genetic influence.
