Boas to Mead - July 14, 1925:

My dear Margaret,

I suppose the time is drawing near when you want to leave. Let me impress upon you once more first of all that you should not forget your health. I am sure you will be careful in the tropics and try to adjust yourself to conditions and not work when it is too hot and moist in the daytime. If you find that you cannot stand the climate do not be ashamed to come back. There are plenty of other places were you could solve the same problem on which you propose to work.

I am sure you have thought over the question carefully, but there are one or two points which I have in mind into which I would like to call your attention, even if you have thought of them before.

One question that interests me very much is how the young girls react to the restraints of custom. We find very often among ourselves during the period of adolescence a strong rebellious spirit that may be expressed in sullenness or in sudden outbursts. In other individuals there is a weak submission which, however, is accompanied by repressed rebellion that may make itself felt in peculiar ways, perhaps in a desire for solitude which is really an expression of desire for freedom, or otherwise in forced participation in social affairs in order to drown the mental troubles. I am not at all clear in my mind in how far similar conditions may occur in primitive society and in how far the desire for independence may be simply due to our modern conditions and to more strongly developed individualism.

Another point in which I am interested is the excessive bashfulness of girls in primitive society. I do not know whether you will find it there. It is characteristic of Indian girls in most tribes, and often not only in the relations with outsiders, but frequently within the narrow circle of the family. They are often afraid to talk and are very retiring before older people.

Another interesting question is that of crushes among girls. For the older ones you might give special attention to the occurrence of romantic love, which is not by any means absent so far as I have been able to observe, and which, of course, appears most strongly where the parents or society impose marriages which the girls may not want.

I presume your work will be of such a character that a great deal of what you are particularly interested in can be obtained only indirectly, and this will leave a lot of time for other things. Here there is a practical danger that when this happens some of the regular ethnological questions may become so attractive to you that you may be tempted to slight the principal object of the trip. I wish you would always bear in mind that whatever you decide to do in addition to the principal object of your journey, the most important contribution that we hope you will make will be the psychological attitude of the individual under the pressure of the general pattern of culture. It is, of course, impossible to tell from here what the most promising lines of attack may be. I am, however, clear in my mind that anything that pertains to the subject will be of greatest importance for the methodological development of ethnological research. Such studies like that of the behavior of the individual artist to his or her work, his preferences, the character of his inventiveness, his dependence or independence of prevailing patterns, such as Ruth Bunzel in the puebloes and Haeberlin on the Northwest coast tried to solve, are the kind of thing I mean. The same problem of course will appear in the attitude towards members of the family, in religious affairs and so on. I believe you have read Malinowsky’s paper in Psyche on the behavior of individuals in the family in New Guinea. I think he was too much influenced by Freudianism, but the problem which he had mind is one of those which I have in mind.

Good luck. I hope you’ll let us know soon how you are getting on. I trust that your trip will be successful in every way. Don’t forget your health.