SEX AND TEMPERAMENT IN THREE PRIMITIVE SOCIETIES
By Margaret Mead
The aim of this-book (Routledge, 10s. 6d.) is laudable and original. From her expedition to New Guinea in 1931-3, Dr. Mead has tried to discover what differences of temperament savages attribute to sex. She finds that in two of the tribes among whom she lived no distinction at :all, i made between what we call " masculine " and -" feminine "-traits ; 'while in the third society our conceptions are reversed, for the men are coy, gentle and emotionally dependent, and the women. are- impersonal. and businesslike. Not that this is satisfactory. - The first tribe cultivated a kindly, child-infix._ ful the lieeotKi-st tuid;Witince-enF.; sex differences were not. recognised, the man or woman temperamentally oppoietiltoyl.he -tribe's ideal wag 'unhappy and neurotic. In the third tribe the men suffered from jealousies and hickeripg%even though the women enjoyed Dr. Mend sitows.kow some savages ascribe differences of temperament to age, to occupation, or other social condition, but throughout civilised Europe sex has been arbitrarily employed as a standard of behaviour. She argues that those ideals.-of male and female temperament, which eve- begin now to call " Victorian," are due far more to cries of " Don't behave like a girl," or " Girls don't do that," than to biologlal sex. She .hopes, therefore, that the civilisation of the future will treat everyone as an individual,, irrespective of artificial sex standards, for it seems clear that much of our present psychologicin unhappineSS is 'due to theSe false patternings. The book 'stimulates, but as a contribtition to science it is too undocumented, too slipshod In method and treatment to be taken very Seriously., HoW- well Dr. Mead knew-the native language, how her infOrmati3n was: obtained, are points very ill-defined ; and she writes -in an 'easy-, swinging journalese, with a cheerful disregard Of good English, shciwn in such a phrase as profoundly uninterested." But -who looks now for a nervous style in'a popular work, of science:?
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