Welcome to PEP Web! Viewing the full text of this document requires a subscription to PEP Web. If you are coming in from a university from a registered IP address or secure referral page you should not need to log in. Contact your university librarian in the event of problems. If you have a personal subscription on your own account or through a Society or Institute please put your username and password in the box below. Any difficulties should be reported to your group administrator. Username: Password: Can't remember your username and/or password? If you have forgotten your username and/or password please click here and log in to the PaDS database. Once there you need to fill in your email address (this must be the email address that PEP has on record for you) and click "Send." Your username and password will be sent to this email address within a few minutes. If this does not work for you please contact your group organizer. Athens user? Login here. Not already a subscriber? Order a subscription today.

(1949). Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 18:538

Mental Hygiene. XXXII, 1949: The Age Period of Cultural Fixation. Weston LaBarree. Pp. 209–221.

Joseph Lander

The basic character structure of an individual is inculcated in the earliest years of life. What distinguishes one group or tribe from another with respect to aggression, competition, sexual mores, etc., is related to the culturally patterned ways of bringing up children. For this reason the age period in which such cultural fixation occurs is obviously of the greatest importance. 'To the extent that we have stereotyped ways of bringing up children, to that extent will we have stereotypes of preferred character structure in the adults of that society.'

Some tribes or nations stress one set of qualities, other groups stress other traits. It is this rather than 'racial inheritance' which determines the volatile qualities of one group, the submissiveness and mildness of another. One can only agree, therefore, with LaBarre's statement that the single most important thing in human cultural behavior is literally and specifically the way we bring up our children, the kind of human being, temperamentally, that we produce. Each culture produces its misfits. 'If cultures corset human beings in differing ways, and at different points, then we must expect the bulges to show up in different places.' We tend to overlook the cultural dimension in such psychological disorders.

Man's further evolution will be psychological, not physical to any significant extent. The key to this further evolution lies in his own hands. We have the technical knowledge to meet this problem, but not the social implementation: what shape of human personality shall we strive to create? Man is actually free to make alternative choices of mankind's future evolution, to select and emphasize the value systems which may perhaps lead him to a truly human dignity. The child is not merely father of the man; he is the father of all future mankind.

WARNING! This text is printed for the personal use of the PEPWeb subscriber and is copyright to the Journal in which it originally appeared. It is illegal to copy, distribute or circulate it in any form.
- 538 -

Article Citation

Lander, J. (1949). Mental Hygiene. XXXII, 1949. Psychoanal. Q., 18:538