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Psychiatric Interpretation of Russian History: A Reply to Geoffrey Gorer1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 January 2017

Irving Goldman
Irving Goldman*
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, Sarah Lawrence College
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Extract

A new approach to the study of national character is being developed out of principles and research methods drawn from psychoanalysis and cultural anthropology. This approach differs from its predecessors in that it seeks the key to an understanding of cultural and historical processes in the influences of early childhood upbringing upon the formation of adult personality. The work of Geoffrey Gorer illustrates, although in an extreme form, the principal lines of thought of this school. Thus, he has tried to explain some of the main features of American culture and history in terms of the child's rejection of the father. From severe toilet training he derives major clues to Japanese culture and history.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Slavic and East European Review , Volume 9 , Issue 3 , October 1950 , pp. 151 - 161
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies 1950

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Footnotes

1

For material on Russia I am indebted to Dr. Marc Slonim, Mr. Paul Aron, and Mrs. Hannah S. Goldman.

References

2 The American People (New York, 1948).

3 “Themes in Japanese Culture,” Transactions of the New York Academy of Sciences, Series II, V, No. 5 (March, 1943), 106–24.Google Scholar

4 “Some Aspects of the Psychology of the People of Great Russia,” The American Slavic and East European Review, VIII, No. 3 (October, 1949), 155–67.Google Scholar

5 Dennis, W., “Infant Reaction to Restraint; an Evaluation of Watson's Theory,“ Transactions of the New York Academy of Sciences, Series II, Vol. II, No. 8 (May, 1940).Google Scholar

6 Greenacre, Phyllis, “Infant Reactions to Restraint,” American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, Vol. XIV (1944).Google Scholar

7 Mowrer, O. N. and Kluckhohn, C., “Dynamic Theory of Personality,” Personality and the Behavior Disorders, Vol. I (New York, 1944).Google Scholar

8 Eggan, Dorothy, “The General Problems of Hopi Adjustment,” American Anthropologist, Vol. XXXXV (1943).Google Scholar

9 New Ways in Psychoanalysis (New York, 1939), p. 152.Google ScholarPubMed

10 Discussion by Margaret Mead in “Child Rearing in Certain European Countries,“ by Benedict, Ruth, American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, XIX, No. 2 (April, 1949), 79–93.Google Scholar