ABSTRACT
In 1929 Bronislaw Malinowski published his monograph The Sexual Life of Savages in Northwestern Melanesia. In this book the master of Trobriand ethnography describes comprehensively aspects of the Trobriand Islanders’ sexuality, covering topics like sexual behaviour in children, adolescents and adults, sexual innuendoes in games and verbal interaction, sexual taboos, rules for marriage and married adults, sexual aberrations, forms of, and variation in, sexual intercourse, and so on. One of the first, probably most influential, persons referring to Malinowski’s research on the Trobrianders’ sexuality was Wilhelm Reich. Reich states that Trobrianders are direct in their courting behaviour. Reich postulates that the Trobrianders’ erotic fantasies are ‘relatively slothful’; this is just ridiculous.
