ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the very different contributions that Frantz Fanon and Fritz Gracchus have made to the debate. It also examines Bronislaw Malinowskii's own position and its more immediate repercussions: not only because it is the starting point for the whole debate about the relevance of psychoanalysis to non-Western societies, but more especially because its argumentation displays a characteristic that will recur throughout the subsequent confrontations in the debate. Sigmund Freud hypothesis was first challenged by the ethnographer Malinowski in 1924; then, is another instance of the interface between psychoanalysis and ethnography, but a far more antagonistic one—apparently, at least—than the combinations effected by the Tropiques. A psycho-analyst cannot fail to be Struck by the unmistakable symbolism these ignorant savages display when propounding their views on procreation, symbolism of so accurate a kind as to indicate at least an unconscious knowledge of the truth'.
