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Boas and Freud, a match never thought possible. They would seem to be natural born enemies, Freud the very essence of what Boas seemed to be fighting against yet despite many differences Boas found fundamental similarities with Freud. The fact that Boas was interested in the personalities of individuals inside a culture made him and his students unable to resist the lure of Freud. This affair changed both the faces of anthropology and psychology forever and the offspring was none other then culture and personality. (Harris 2001:393)

Culture and Personality is a facet of anthropological theory that developed early mid-century. A combination of anthropology and psychology it attempts to explain culture by looking at the individual characters and personalities in hopes to find general traits repeating in a culture to lead to a discovery of a national character, configuralist personalties and model personality types. Child-rearing practices were analyzed in cultures in hopes to find patterns that could lead to explanation for national character. This was done in an attempt to avoid hierarchal or racist models, though it seems that by creating national characters and modal personality types that it could be quite easy to slip into racist and hierarchal models.(Harris 2001: 393-4)
Freud, one of the more controversial and overly cited members of academia, is known most for his psychoanalysis. "A nineteenth century leftover" he accounts every problem in a individuals psychological life back to childhood and repressed sexual desires. Freud's concepts state that all humans are the same at the beginning but the child-rearing and development cause deviations in behavior and possibly personality disorders. Child-rearing, to Freud, is the only reason why humans vary from each other and cultural differences to him are just illusions. This evolution he justifies with his own breed of cultural evolution. (Harris 2001: 422, 425)
Freud believed that mankind began with a patriarchal rulers that had sexual rights to his sisters and daughters. Other sons and brothers in the clan that were sexually repressed planned one night to kill the patriarch and eat him but after completing this act, felt guilty so they created the taboo of not sleeping with daughters and sisters. The patriarch was also transformed to a totem animal creating meat taboo except for certain ritual occasions. From this, Freud concludes, family organization, the infamous Oedipus complex, group exogamy, totemism

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