Young about Mead's Benedict

According to Virginia Heyer Young (2005:76) Margaret Mead’s two books on Benedict show only ‘scant knowledge of Benedict’s contributions’ during the latter half of the 1930s and first half of the 1940s. An explanation that Young suggests is that in that period Mead had a really busy life (among other things she gave birth to her daughter in 1939). Young goes on to say that in her books Mead was more preoccupied with Benedict’s more psychologically troubled early life and was ‘either disinterested in or uninformed’ on Benedict’s latest research. This is in contrast to the fact that Benedict and Mead kept up a very lively correspondence (giving ‘many insights into their intellectual work’) and that they were in close contact otherwise as well.

An additional tentative explanation of my own is that it might have been the case that each woman took from the other only what she thought she needed and each gave away only what she thought was relevant to share. I don't think that that is in conflict with the close relationship the two women had. I think it's impossible for a person to be in ‘total share mode’ all the time. Unless people are actually working together on a specific collaborative project, discussing each and every sentence that is put to paper, the sharing of information is bound to be incomplete.

I must say I am greatly impressed with Young's approach to Benedict's work, which focusses very much on retrieving and analysing Benedict's latest work, which as a result of Benedict's early death is rather fragmented and mostly unpublished. Apart from Young's analyses a great feat is her reconstruction of lectures by Benedict from the period 1946-1947, resulting in 110 pages of text.

Virginia Heyer Young, Ruth Benedict : beyond relativity, beyond pattern. University of Nebraska Press, 2005.