C5ERTAIN CONSIDERATIONS OF THE PRESENT STATUS OF STUDIES OF NATIONAL. CHARACTER

Several disciplines, notably history, sociology, social psychology, psychoanalyticpsychiatry,

and

anthropology,

have

for

some

timebeen interestedinthe subject thathas beencalled"national character."

The term

"national character"

may

be understood to

mean

the peculiar distribution of individual personality traits or types

which

distin- guishes a population; it

may

also

mean

that broad organization of psychocultural patterns

which

distinguishes a people,

embracing

at- tributes

which

cannot properly be ascribed to individuals in the group.^^

In

thewriter'suse of the

term "modal

personality structure"

he is explicitly referring to the former

phenomenon,

since the latter involves sociological

and

cultural connotations

which

arenotintrinsic tothe

Rorschach

data.

On

theotherhand,thesection entitled

"Some

Characteristics of Tuscarora Life in 1949," describes

what

could be called"nationalcharacter"

from

thesecondviewpoint.

Anthropology

has undertaken a share of the responsibility for reconceptualizing

and

systematically exploring this ancient area of speculation.

Perhaps

the

major

contribution of the anthropologists has been to emphasize the fact that differences in character between the populations of different regions are largely a function, not of

"race," or

"group mind"

or climate, or geography, but of culture.

This realization

—

^{that the} long-recognized cultural differences be- tweenpopulations arehighlycorrelatedwithdifferencesincharacter

—

has been

accompanied by

the corollary assertion (which to

many

is

thecornerstone of the culture-and-personality

movement)

that culture

molds

the personality oftheindividual.

Anthropologists have derived their concepts

and

vocabularies of personality

from

a

wide

variety of sources, but the

most

important source,

by

all odds, has been psychoanalytic psychiatry (Kluckhohn,

"See Klineberg, 1944, 1949, for summary reviews of the scientific literature on national character. Klineberg's distinction of 1944 (following Ginsberg, 1941) between

thetwo senses of theterm"national character" isparaphrased abovein thetext.

Wallace]

MODAL PERSONALITY OF TUSCARORA

ESTDLVNS

51

1944). Psychoanalysis, of course, is not a

homogeneous

discipline,

and

its various schools have been unevenly sampled. Jung, for in- stance,

had an

earlyinfluence

on

both Seligman

and

Sapir, Seligman in 1924 characterizing the "savages"

whom

he

knew

in

Jungian

terms as primarily "extravert" (Seligman, 1924),

and

Sapir labeling the

Eskimo

culture as"extraverted," incontrastto

Hindu

culture,

which

he felt fitted Jung's description of the "thinking introvert" (Sapir, 1934).

By and

large,however, Jung'sinfluence

on American

anthro- pology has been

more

indirect than direct, operating through the

medium

of the Rorschach test,"

whose

rationale represents a partial

and

none-too-explicit assimilation of Jung's concept of the libido as generalized psychic energy,

and

of the introvert-extrovert polarity.

Adlerian formulations

have

apparently

had

little effect on

American

anthropology. Anthropologistsingeneralhavealsoshied

away from

talkabout

Oedipus

complex,Eros

and

Thanatos,

and

other substantive elements of orthodox

Freudian

theory, leaving this

somewhat

special vocabulary to the professional analysts.^^

But

anthropologists have

made

free allusion to

many

of the psychic

mechanisms

described by

Freud —

"repression," "sublimation," "superego," "projection," etc.

They

havealsobeenratherliberalinthe use of diagnosticcatchwords in analytic vogue

—

^"obsessive-compulsive," "oral

and

anal," "para- noid," etc.

— ^and

^{have even}

become

almost fetishistic about infantile disciplines, assuming that infancy

and

early childhood are the time

when

culture

molds

the personality.

The group

of culturological psychoanalysts,

among whom may

bementioned

Fromm, Horney, and

Kardiner,early imbibed the culture-molds-personality doctrine

from

the social sciences (as well as

from

Freud,

who

gave, however, rela- tively

more

weightto the ontogeny-recapitulates-phylogenyschema).

They have

fed back thisteaching into anthropological theory. Neo-

Freudian

formulations,

which

dispense with

some

of the substantive elements of orthodox theory, have heavily encouraged

many

anthro- pologists tolooktothe culture pattern ofinfantile

and

childhooddisci- plines as the explanation of an almostmonistic national character.

The method by which many

formulationsof national characterhave been derived is chiefly deductive.

From

descriptions of the culture, whether

made by

psychologically trained fieldworkers or not, is de- duced

what

has to be the personality structure of "normal" adult

members

of the society. These deductions take the general

form

of the statement,

"Any

infant

who

undergoes experience-series

x

^{will in} adulthooddisplay personality

syndrome X"

^; or,

"Any

^adult

who

be-

"_SeeHalloweU, 1945a,fora reviewof anthropological Rorschachwork.

««Mention should certainly be made of Roheim in this connection. He and his col- leagues in "psychoanalytic anthropology" have been carrying on an enormous amount of study,littleofwhich hasbeen assimilatedbyoflacialanthropology. (Cf.Roheim,1932.)

52 BUREAU

OF

AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY

[Boll. 150

haves in

manner _{y must}

have the underlying personality-syndrome y." Since the formative experiences of all

normal

infants

and

the behavior of all

normal

adults are

assumed

to be set forth in the de- scription of the culture, the national character is evidently being in- ferred incircularfashion

from

a description of the culturewith

which

it is

assumed

apriori tobecorrelated.

In most

of thesestrivingsthere

is

some

efforttosecure psychological dataindependentof the cultural data themselves; but such independent psychological information

(e. g., test results, biographies, sample partial psychoanalyses) are usually introduced

by way

of illustration or of confirmation of con- clusionsalreadyarrivedat. (Cf.

Mead,

1939;DuBois,1944;Kardiner, 1945.)

The

studyof the relationshipbetweenculture

and

national character (insofar as they can be conceived as different classes of

phenomena)

has thusalways been hindered

by

thenecessity ofinferring bothcul- ture

and

personality

from

the

same

set of observations.

In

unfor- tunate cases, this

meant

that descriptions of the culture

were

simply

reworded

so as to

make them

descriptions of the

group

psyche.

Benedict (1934), for instance, describes the potlatch after Boas's ethnographic accounts,

and

then infers the psychological trait of

megalomania from

these cultural data.

No

onedenies that personal- ity is a function of

(among

other variables) culture; but if one con- ceptualizesthe

two

asdifferent sortsof

phenomena,

thentheinvestiga- tion of

how

this functional interrelationship

works

requires that different data be used to evaluate the

two

variables

and

define their

modes

of interaction. Otherwise, one is simply describing the

same phenomenon

with

two

vocabularies.

One way

of securingindependentpsychologicaldataistousepsycho- logicaltests, of

which

the "projective teclmiques" are onekind.

The Rorschach

testis one such projective technique,

which

has been used, inbothresearch

and

clinicalpractice,as atoolfordifferentialdiagnosis

and

for securing insightsintothe structural interrelationships ofcer- tain key personality characteristics.

With

the

Eorschach

(and with other protective techniques) the psychologically trained anthropolo- gistisabletogain,in a

few

months,fairly reliable

and

validinforma- tionabout

some

aspectsofthepersonalitiesofa large

number

ofindi- divuals

—

^{letussaybetween50and. 150,depending}

^on

^{thetestused,field}

conditions, etc.

Thus

one of the peculiar virtues of the

Rorschach

technique,forthe anthropologist,isthatit

makes

itpossibletoacquire empirical, comparable information,

some

of it quantitative,

on

a re- spectable sampleofindividuals.^^

The

intelligent use of projective techniques requires a systematic understandingof the administration

and

evaluation of theteststhem-

••Againsee Hallowell, 1945a,fora reviewoftheRorschachinanthropology.

Wallace]

MODAL PERSONALITY

OF

TUSCARORA

INDIANS

53

selves, as well ^as an acquaintance with

some

branches of personality psychology.

The

difficulties

and

timerequiredingiving thetests,

and

inhandling

and

interpreting the records,are probably one reason for the rareness of formal, detailed reports

on

the results of Rorschach

work

in anthropological literature.^" Allusions abound; "con- clusions" (usually in very general terms) are easily found; but the vastbulkof anthropologicalRorschach

work

has never beenpublished.

This study is, therefore, to be considered as

an

attempt systemati- cally todescribe the personality

syndromes

characteristicof

members

of a sociological

community

(as distinct

from

a clinical

community,

of schizophrenics,e. g.)

from

psychological ratherthan culturaldata.

It will inevitably be

found wanting

in

many

desiderata. Psycholo-

gists, let alone anthropologists, have not seriously attempted to cope with the considerable problems, statistical

and

conceptual, presented

by

this sortofresearch. Theseproblems,

and

the solutions adopted, willbe discussedin later sections.

The

writerfeels,however, that in spite of the difficulties involved, culture-and-personality studies

now

need, in additiontothe culturological deductions of personality,care- ful

and

detailed descriptions of the personalitytype,

and

deviations

from

that type, characteristic of a

number

of both "primitive"

and Western

communities, taken

from

psychological not cultural data.

These descriptions should ideally

compare

in scope

and

detail with the standard ethnography.

Whether

these psychological investiga- tions are the business of the psychologist or the anthropologist is, of course, a matterof personal opinion.

But

as the matter stands now, the anthropologists as well as the psychologists are undertaking the job.