ABSTRACT
Reprinted from Human Relations, Vol. 8, pp. 345-384. Copyright 1955, Tavistock Publications. (Footnotes have been renumbered.) Elizabeth Bott Spillius is a social anthropologist and psychoanalyst; she lives in London. Her professional experience includes field research among the Ojibwa Indians, in Chicago and in Tonga, and in a mental hospital in England. Her principal anthropological interests concern the relationships of groups to the environment and of rank and environment in Polynesia. Her publications include Family and Social Network: Roles, Norms, and External Relationships in Ordinary Urban Families.
