The Swaddling Hypothesis: Its Reception

Abstract

N THIS paper' I propose to deal with some of the confusions which have I arisen during the last four years regarding the study of cultural character and which have been given their most definite expression in misrepresentations of the swaddling hypothesis developed by Geoffrey Gorer.2 It seems important to clear these up not only for the sake of the general development of theory, but also because they provide an unusually good opportunity to examine the cultural setting within which theoretical approaches flourish or wither, pass unchallenged or attain ready acceptance. It should be the responsibility of professional students of culture to take into account this question of the effect of cultural setting on ideas. Conspicuous examples of this relationship are the heated tones in which questions of Old World origin of New World traits were discussed in the period of American isolationism, and the atmosphere of disinterested academic controversy in which such discussions are conducted today. Even the dramatic popularization of Kon-tiki fails to stir the same excitement that much milder speculations aroused in academic circles in the early twenties.The principal misunderstandings have clustered around two foci: the difference between the history of a culture and the history of an individual personality, and the difference between hypotheses which attribute high efficacy to single causes and hypotheses involving circularity and dynamic equilibriums. Stated briefly, Gorer's hypothesis is that an unusually long swaddling experience is a significant aspect of the educational process by which human infants, born to and reared by Russian parents, become Russians. By analyzing the way in which Russian swaddling differs from the swaddling in surrounding areas, the special features of Great Russian swaddling are identified and related to other aspects of Russian child rearing. Gorer then invokes developmental theory from another field, that of psychoanalytically oriented studies of character formation in children in our own society, to provide a theoretical basis for hypothesizing the intrapsychic mechanisms involved in the process of the formation of Great Russian character, one expression of which can be found in the traditional attitudes of Great Russians toward external authority as being both hateful and essential.Before discussing the assumptions involved in this hypothesis, it is important to dispose of the two principal misunderstandings. The first comes mainly from the fields of history and political science, where biology or psychology usually are not taken systematically into account. It is not, perhaps, surprising that some historians and political scientists have been unable to distinguish between statements about Russian culture or specific Russian institutions and statements about the Russian people. When Gorer discussed the way 395

Culture and Personality Studies, 1918–1960: Myth and History

“…Furthermore, Mead (1953aMead ( , 1953bMead ( , 1954 vigorously defended the swaddling hypothesis, together with national character research and the study of culture at a distance, at great length, in publications reaching all American anthropologists. Defending what others considered indefensible did not make matters better and may well have made them worse.…”

Swaddling: A Systematic Review

“…Another influence could be the "swaddling hypothesis." [11][12][13][14] According to this hypothesis, the restraint of swaddling leads to an adult personality structure that inclines people to alternate meek submission and ambivalently regarded authority, with explosive, excessive expression of emotion. "Adult Russians and Eastern Europeans who were swaddled, learned that passivity and restraint are necessary to secure milk, love and freedom, which can then only be enjoyed in excessive outbursts of emotion which are ambivalent nonetheless, for the mother is both the cause of 'imprisonment' and the release from it."…”

On the character of character: an immodest proposal

“…In devising Soviet attitudes toward authority: an interdiscip linary approach to problems of Soviet character (1951), Margaret Mead collaborated with Gorer. She also defended his work (Mead 1954). Before and after her defence, however, most other anthropologists would read Gorer as unwittingly providing a reductio ad absurdum of the anthropology of national character as either etically or emically anthropologically sound.…”