Book Reviews : Politics, Personality, and Nation Building: Burma's Search for Identity. By LUCIEN W. PYE. (New Haven : Yale University Press, 1962. Pp. 307. $7.50.)
| DOI | 10.1177/106591296401700130 |
| Date | 01 March 1964 |
| Published date | 01 March 1964 |
| Author | James C. Davies |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
153
Politics,
Personality,
and
Nation
Building:
Burma’s
Search
for
Identity.
By
LUCIEN
W.
PYE.
(New
Haven :
Yale
University
Press,
1962.
Pp. 307.
$7.50.)
In
the
slowly
spreading
exploration
of
political
action
outside
the
Occident,
this
book
is
a
very
large
landmark.
It
makes
the
politics
of
a
non-Western
nation
scrut-
able
to
Westerners,
not
by
analogizing
to
familiar
American
and
European
phe-
nomena
but
by
applying
knowledge
of
basic
mental
processes
that
has
developed
in
the
West
to
explain
the
roots
of
behavior
of
human
beings
raised
in
the
Far
East.
One
result
of
such
application
could
have
been
a
Procrustean
analysis
that
re-
duced
all
Burmese
behavior
to
Freudian
or
Marxian
or
Gorer-esque
terms.
We
could
have
been
told
that
all
the
trouble
goes
back
to
the
Oedipus
complex,
the
ensemble
of
class
relations,
or
the
practice
of
swaddling.
Indeed
the
subtitle
suggests
that
it
all
amounts
to
a
search
for
identity
-
the
term
that
has
replaced
authoritarianism
as
a
psychological
shibboleth
in
recent
years.
But
the
author
avoids the
stereotype
and
reductionism.
He
does
trace
back
to
childhood
and
infancy
as
sources
for
explaining
behavior
of
adult
Burmese.
But
he
also
examines
Burmese
history
and
indicates
the
impact
of
British
colonial
rule,
World
War
II,
and
the
influx
of
peasants
into
the
big
city.
He
thus
repeatedly
mentions
the
role,
in
a
matrilocal
society,
of
the
powerful
mother
who
alternates
in
her
mood
toward
her
child
between
warmth
and
coldness,
affection
and
rejection.
The
child
from
infancy
develops
the
expectation
of
external
capricious
omnipotence.
The
mother
is
neither
controllable
nor
predictable.
The
original
source
of
need
satisfaction,
she
is
also
the
central
source
of
rejection
and
of
general,
chronic
insecurity.
The
adult
Burmese
finds
himself
mentally
in
an
unpre-
dictable
world
composed
of
the
omnipotent
other
and
the
impotent
self;
he
fears
power
and
control
by
others
and
fears
abandonment.
He
wants
independence
and
fears
loss
of
the
affection
and
respect
of
others.
If
the
real
world
is
not
quite
like
the
mental
world
-
if it
is
not
altogether
powerful,
unpredictable,
and
alienating,
the
individual’s
mental
set
established
in
infancy
finds
it
hard
not
to
see
it
so
and
accord-
ingly
tends
to
make
it
so.
It
is
to
these
roots
of
behavior
that
the
author
has
probed,
by
interviews
of
97
political
elitists
in
and
out
of
government
and
by
extensive
living
among
Burmese,
for
explanations
of
politics
in
a
nation
moving
from
long-established,
static
tradi-
tionalism
to
exciting,
fluid
modernity.
The
desire
for
independence
and
progress
accompanies
a
habit
of
dependence
on
powerful
leaders
and
powerful
foreign
na-
tions.
Suspicion
of
foreigners
accompanies
suspicion,
in
the
big
city,
of
those
outside
one’s
own
district,
and
generally
of
those
outside
one’s
own
family.
Political
oppo-
nents
are
part
of
the
suspicious
picture:
as
members
of
another
party,
they
are
automatically
suspected
of
malignant,
capricious,
mysterious,
and
subversive
power.
Impotent
subordinates
in
government
cannot
communicate
with
their
omnipotent
administrative
superiors.
Political
leaders
who
sense
the
necessity
of
establishing
a
public
cannot
easily
communicate
with
ordinary
people
on
anything
like
a
spontane-
ous
equalitarianism
and
rely
on
district
headmen
to
act
as
usually
one-way
communi-
cators
of
the
leader’s
wishes
to
the
city-district
inhabitants.
The
peasantry
-
the
bulk
of
the
population
-
is
largely
ignored
by
and
largely
ignores
the
city
politicians.
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