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In this article, I would like to present some data collected during my current residence in Kenya, a third-world African nation with a population whose role structures and cultural cues differ markedly from our Western systems of direction (M. C. Nelson, 1984). This material, exemplified in the lives of individuals who would not be classified as psychologically disturbed here or in the West, raises some valid questions concerning psychoanalytic theories of identifi-catory and defensive processes as well as derivative criteria for optimal child rearing, ego maturation, and the concept of self. For readers unfamiliar with traditional structures of African thought, I shall first offer some introductory remarks on those aspects which inform our understanding of the African personality and which, following the presentation of five life experiences, provide support for my concluding discussion.
At the outset it must be recognized that the psychological dimension of thought and its specialized language employed throughout the Western world are typically absent from the African structures of consciousness. When, for example, one of my African friends heard a radio talk in which the speaker emphasized that