[Book Reviews]

Abstract

IN this volume Prof. Malinowski restates his position in relation to the Freudian doctrine of the GMipus complex, showing how that theory of father-and-son antagonism and a mother-and-son attraction based upon a sexual impulse, having been formulated in relation to a patrilineal society, breaks down when applied to the behaviour of peoples organised on matrilineal lines. He then passes on to the consideration of the nature of the influence of the family complex on the formation of myth, legend, and fairy tale, on customs, form of social organisation, and achievements of material. culture, and finally passes to what is the most important contribution of his book to this subject, the consideration of the origins of culture, where he finds himself on the borderland between the animal and the human.

Sex and Repression in Savage Society.

By Bronislaw Malinowski. (Interatonal Library of Psychology, Philosophy and Scientific Method.) Pp. xv + 285. (London: Kegan Paul and Co., Ltd.; New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., Inc., 1927.) 10s. 6d. net.