Patterns of Culture was an extremely popular book from the time
it was published in 1934. Translated into a dozen languages, issued in 1946 as a paperback that sold for twenty-five cents, as of
1974 Patterns of Culture had sold 1.6 million copies (Mead
1974:1). It is still in print. The ideas of the book spread outside of
academia into the American society in general. Because the ideas
have permeated modern American culture, we now take them as
commonplace. Patterns of Culture was written for the nonanthropologist, and as Caffrey observes, “it acted as a signal of and a
catalyst for the final acceptance of a profound paradigm change
in the social sciences and in American society” (1989:209). Benedict found alleviation from suffering, in Nietzsche’s phrase, in
the creativity of intellect; Patterns of Culture is clear evidence of
that intellect at work.
First, it emphasized the importance of culture versus biology; by contrasting the starkly different patterns of life among
the Zuni, Dobu, and Kwakiutl, Benedict demonstrated the
causal primacy of culture in understanding differences between
modern humans. By extension, the profiles of these three soci-
eties so different from American society further weakened the
grip of Victorian mores on American life.
Second, Benedict’s emphasis on patterns of culture was a
new twist on a fairly twisted idea. The concept of patterns was
similar in some ways to the culture-element complexes that
Kroeber and others had discussed (see pp. 67–69): patterned cooccurrences of cultural traits that marked different cultural
groups. For example, anthropologist Clark Wissler described the
horse complex among Plains Indians, a constellation of cultural
practices including the tepee, travois, buffalo hunting, raiding,
and the Sun Dance—all of which revolved around the horse.
Similarly, we could define an American car culture in which a
wide range of cultural elements—billboards, cellular phones,
commuter schools, and so on—are all linked by the presence of
automobiles.
But Benedict and other anthropologists were searching for
something more subtle and profound, the relationship not only
between a set of things and behaviors, but between the underlying ideas, values, and mores that characterize a particular society.
The notion of the “Gestalt” configuration was influential at this
time. Coming from the German word for the outline of a physical shape, psychologists had applied the notion to experiments in
learning behavior that suggested people learn in response to underlying patterns called forth by a specific event rather than by
direct stimulus response. Thus we learn that boisterous behavior
is inappropriate in a church, but then extend that knowledge to
cathedrals and synagogues, certain public monuments (the Lincoln Memorial), backyard weddings, and so on. Even in new situations we follow previously learned instructions because the
new situation calls forth a basic learned pattern. “The Gestalt
idea of configuration,” Margaret Caffrey writes, “fell on open
minds in America. A configuration was a form of pattern that
linked facts and events with the attitudes and beliefs underlying
them” (1989:154). Ruth Benedict made this notion of the
Gestalt/configuration/pattern central to her work:
Gestalt (configuration) psychology has done some of the
most striking work in justifying the importance of this point
of departure from the whole rather than from the parts.
Gestalt psychologists have shown that in the simplest senseperception no analysis of the separate precepts can account
for the total experience. It is not enough to divide perceptions
up into objective fragments. The subjective framework, the
forms provided by past experience, are crucial and cannot be
omitted. (1959:51)
When Benedict contrasts “objective” and “subjective,” she is
not using “subjective” as a synonym for “mere opinion” or an
ethnocentric projection; she is attempting to characterize the
subjective values that explain why members of a particular society behave in certain ways. Benedict used the concept of pattern
to refer to a society’s underlying “values of existence.” She
wrote, “Cultures . . . are more than the sum of their traits. We
may know all about the distribution of a tribe’s form of marriage, ritual dances, and puberty initiations and yet understand
nothing of the culture as a whole which has used these elements
to its own purpose” (1959:47).
Benedict exposed the differences in cultural patterns by contrasting three relatively well-studied and markedly different societies: the Pueblo Indians (Zuni and Hopi); the Dobu, who live
on an island east of New Guinea; and the Northwest Coast Indians (Tsimshian, Kwakiutl, Coast Salish) who live between Puget
Sound and southwestern Alaska. The three ethnographic cases
were based on research by anthropologists whose work Benedict
trusted: Reo Fortune had studied the Dobu (he was married to
Margaret Mead at the time, see p. 106–7), Boas had worked on
the Northwest Coast, and Benedict herself had conducted research at Zuni Pueblo. They were also completely different societies with fundamentally different cultural configurations.
Marshaling extensive ethnographic detail, Benedict sifted out
the fundamental elements of the cultural pattern. For example,
she wrote of the Dobu:
The Dobuan . . . is dour, prudish, and passionate, consumed
with jealousy and suspicion and resentment. Every moment of
prosperity he conceives himself to have wrung from a malicious world by a conflict in which he has worsted his opponent. The good man is the one who has many such conflicts to
his credit, as anyone can see from the fact that he has survived
with a measure of prosperity. It is taken for granted that he has
thieved, killed children and his close associates by sorcery,
cheated whenever he dared. (1959:168–169)
Contrast this with the Zuni ideal of the good man:
The ideal man in Zuni is a person of dignity and affability who
has never tried to lead, and who has never called forth comment from his neighbours. Any conflict, even though right is
on his side, is held against him. . . . He should “talk lots,” as
they say—that is, he should always set people at their ease—
and he should without fail co-operate easily with others either
in the field or in ritual, never betraying a suspicion of arrogance or a strong emotion. (1959:99)
Benedict was not just reciting her own prejudices about people; she was proposing ethnographically informed generalizations about the distinct values of different societies. Such
societies were so fundamentally different that Benedict turned to
Nietzsche’s work to borrow two concepts: the Apollonian and
Dionysian approaches to existence. Benedict contrasted the configuration of the Zuni and other Puebloan Indians with that of
the Kwakiutl and many other North American groups in their
pursuit of
the values of existence. The Dionysian pursues them through
[as Nietzsche observed] “the annihilation of the ordinary
bounds and limits of existence”; he seeks to attain in his most
valued moments escape from the boundaries imposed upon
him by his five senses, to break through into another order of
existence. The desire of the Dionysian, in personal experience
or in ritual, is to press through it toward a certain psychological state, to achieve excess. [The Dionysian] values the illuminations of frenzy. The Apollonian distrusts all this. . . . He
knows but one law, measure in the Hellenic sense. He keeps
within the middle of the road, stays within the known map,
does not meddle with disruptive psychological states. In Nietzsche’s fine phrase, even in the exaltation of the dance he “remains what he is, and retains his civic name.” (1959:78–79)
“The Southwest Pueblos are Apollonian,” Benedict wrote,
and in contrast to many North American groups, “Zuni ideals
and institutions . . . are rigorous on this point. The known map,
the middle of the road to any Apollonian, is embodied in the
common tradition of his people” (1959:80). Outside of the Pueblos, and despite the many differences in Native American language and culture, Benedict saw a common emphasis on
Dionysian behavior: “They valued all violent experience, all
means by which human beings may break through the usual
sensory routine, and to all such experiences they attributed the
highest value” (1959:80). The most conspicuous evidence was
the vision quest, in which an individual—through fasting, drugs
(tobacco), and self-mutilation—attempts to break through commonplace existence and obtain a personal vision through direct
contact with the supernatural. Such a set of core values shaped
larger cultural practices, resulting in distinctive patterns of culture.
Yet, not all individuals comfortably fit into the accepted patterns of cultural life, and Ruth Benedict knew this from her own
experience. She had, as a person, reached a point when she could
no longer conform to the normal values for American women in
the 1920s; she had not accepted all the core values of her own
culture. Benedict saw the potential for conflict between the individual and culture in her own life and assumed that this would
occur in other societies. One of her students would state, “Ruth
pursued anthropology to answer her own private questions
about the individual’s fate” (Cole 2002:533).
Thus, the final part of Patterns of Culture addresses this problem. “We have seen that any society selects some segment of the
arc of possible human behavior,” Benedict wrote, “and in so far
as it achieves integration its institutions tend to further the expression of its selected segment and inhibit opposite expressions” (1959:254). Human nature is so malleable, the lessons of
one’s culture are so explicit, and the sanctions for disobedience
so severe that the vast majority of people not only accept the core
values but assume that “their particular institutions reflect an ultimate and universal sanity” (Benedict 1959:254). And yet not
everyone finds the institutions of a given culture “equally congenial . . . favored are those . . . whose potentialities most nearly
coincide with the type of behavior selected by their society”
(Benedict 1959:255). Benedict argues that “deviation” is essen-
tially a conflict between individual personality and a given culture’s values and not a singular dimension true for all humans.
The deviant in Dobu society is “the man who was naturally
friendly” (Benedict 1959:258); the honored man in a Dionysian
society is the despised pariah in an Apollonian culture.
So Patterns of Culture poses an interesting conflict between
the individual and culture: on the one hand, culture is an expression of core values that most people learn and absorb; on the
other hand, there are individual personalities that lie outside the
particular segment of the arc of possibilities that defines that culture. Therefore, not only are cultural values relative, but the very
definition of deviance as well. Benedict’s book is one of the
founding anthropological texts on the relationship between culture and personality