The Relation of Personality Structure to the Structure of Culture

Bibliographic Data

ID4889963
AuthorsJ W Woodard (0009-0003-9580-4158, corresponding author)
Year1938
Volume3
Issue5
Pages637
Publication date1938-10-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueAmerican Sociological Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0003-1224 • E-ISSN: 1939-8271
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/2084683
OpenAlexW2313206589
LanguageEN
Citations received7
References cited1

J UST as astronomy smashed our geocentric illusion that our world was the center of the universe, just as biology undermined our anthropocentric reification of the specially created and divine nature of man, so cultural anthropology undermines our ethnocentrism, and shows us that our own institutions, ideals, and ways of life are quite as apt to be full of sanctified absurdity as those of other peoples. In the same way, psychoanalysis has undermined our naive egotism and has put the rational mind in the perspective of its co-acting irrational and unconscious elements. At present, pushing toward the limits of this general theory of relativity at its socio-psychological level, we are beginning to put the total structure of the personality into the perspective of individual difference, age level, sex and class membership, historic period, and culture.' Recognition of this relativity was inevitable. Even though psychoanalysis started from biological premises, it was evident from the first that some social (usually familial) factor produced the distortion or thwarting of the biological need or impulse. As evidence mounted, three very important further steps had to be taken: one was to see that the parents had gone through a similar process at the hands of others who had done likewise, and so on, until the network reached out to the total group milieu, whatever the culture, the subculture, or the historical setting; second, it became apparent that not only could the social-cultural milieu block or repress biological needs, but that it could also exaggerate some of those needs in turn and displace or distort their expression, indeed, in some directions, it

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