Abstract
The Clear and the Hidden: Person, Self and Suicide Among the Telefolmin of Papua New Guinea
Jorgensen D
Among the Telefolmin, women’s suicide is culturally recognized while men’s suicides are held to be exceptional; contrary to cultural expectations. Analysis of motives reveals that men tend to commit suicide in the face of rupture in marital relations. Marriage affords a priviledged relation in which a man’s self is permitted to emerge, while marital disruption jeopardizes this emergent self. In such circumstance suicide is the final act in an already advanced process of destruction of self.(DD)