The father in primitive psychology

1 Kinship and descent in a matrilineal society. 2 The male and female organism and the sexual impulse in native belief. 3 Reincarnation and the way to life from the spirit world. 4 The ignorance of physiological paternity. 5 Words and deeds in testimony. 6 Fatherless children in a matrilineal society. 7 The singular claims of sociological paternity

'The dependence of social organization in a given society upon the ideas, beliefs, and sentiments current there is a fact of which we should never lose sight. This refers especially to savage races, where we find quite unexpected and far-fetched views about natural processes, and correspondingly extreme and one-sidedly developed forms of social organization in kinship, communal authority, and tribal constitution. In particular the views held about the function of sex and procreation, about the relative share of father and mother in the production of the child, play a considerable part in the formation of kinship ideas....'

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