A Group's Bad Self in Papua New Guinea: A True Home in the Modern World?

Abstract

In an analytic research group with young males and females from the Sepik area in Papua New Guinea, the group's bad self is projected onto a member who has left the group. This is not just another case of the scapegoat mechanism. These adolescents, who have just stepped out of an ethnic culture and `stone-age economics', identify with the whites, their individual freedom and choice. However, white culture destroys traditional ways of bonding which give the individual some security. The phantasy of black magic being used against the group must be seen as the symbolic key to an unconscious inner image of the self, while the person or the group is under threat of cultural loss.¹