Derek Freeman
In autobiographical statements, Derek Freeman used the religious term “conversion” to characterize a dramatic subjective experience in March, 1961 that was the turning point in his intellectual itinerary. His signature achievement, the “refutation” of Margaret Mead’s Samoan ethnography, was the end point of this experience. Colleagues and observers, however, assessed the experience as a “breakdown” indicative of the bizarre behavior that prompted the opinion among anthropologists that Freeman was “crazy.” This article uses evidence from Australian National University archive records and interviews to argue that the experience was an episodic abnormality having no etiological relation to his recently identified chronic condition, Narcissist Personality Disorder. The article concludes with an assessment of the influence of this condition on Freeman’s “refutation” of Mead’s Samoan ethnography.