ABSTRACT
I have been asked to discuss the social and cultural implications of psychoanalysis. This ambiguous title permits me to address myself to any aspect of psychoanalysis in so far as it has any bearing on the social sciences. The limitations of time necessitate selectivity. I have, therefore, chosen to discuss with you a certain impasse that has been reached both by psychoanalysis and correspondingly by the anthropologists or students of culture. Small and simple cultures give us an opportunity to get certain holistic impressions that larger and more complex cultures do not. And such cultures provide an ample testing ground for the uses of psychodynamics in elucidating some aspects of the social processes.
