Culture as an internal representation

IN ADDITION to many of the more traditional anthropological views of culture, it may be understood as a phenomenon in the minds of individuals. This "internal representation" of culture may be seen as the product, viewed from the inside, of the experience through the life cycle of the emotional attachment to a cultural group. Not only does the internal representation of culture play a role as carrier of values, attitudes, and other such phenomena usually relegated to the realm of the superego, but it also has a significant psychological function in individual development. This may be demonstrated especially with regard to the development and maintenance of a cohesive sense of self. In this brief paper, I would like to present an instance of what may be understood about the development of this internal, experientially based self from the point of view of a psychoanalytically informed anthropological research model.