OF EXTERNAL HABITS AND MATERNAL ATTITUDES: MARGARET MEAD, GESTALT PSYCHOLOGY, AND THE REPRODUCTION OF CHARACTER

Authors

Gerald Sullivan, Collin CollegeFollow

Abstract

Some critics have thought of Margaret Mead’s research in culture and person- ality as a mechanical reduction of character types to child-rearing techniques. However, a closer reading of her work reveals that, by 1938, Mead understood character to arise in the social and communicative interactions between caregivers and their charges. For Mead, techniques such as swaddling were powerful means by which caregivers communicated attitudes to children, but those same techniques were not sufficient to either form a child’s character or produce an attitude within a caregiver. This article takes up the examination of this more psychologically dynamic Mead. It attends to her rare but express statement of the influence by the gestalt psychologist, Kurt Koffka, as well as to the similarities between Mead’s thought and that of Kurt Lewin, another important gestalt psychologist.

Recommended Citation

Sullivan, Gerald (2009) "OF EXTERNAL HABITS AND MATERNAL ATTITUDES: MARGARET MEAD, GESTALT PSYCHOLOGY, AND THE REPRODUCTION OF CHARACTER," Pacific Studies Journal: Vol. 32: No. 2, Article 5.
Available at: https://digitalcollections.byuh.edu/pacific-studies-journal/vol32/iss2/5