ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the nature of the nativistic response to the phenomenon of “culture shock.” It suggests that nativism in its many guises is a group symptom of the inability to mourn. Nativistic responses by immigrants and by indigenous peoples in the midst of culture change in part can be explained by the denial of grief, that is, the inability to mourn. The attenuation and disruption of ties together with the ensuing reparative measures that accompany culture shock are incompletely explained without the dynamic concept of separation anxiety. The ambivalence toward objects from whom one cannot separate is managed by splitting: One’s cult or culture group represents “good” internal objects, and the outer or new cultural group represents “bad” internal objects. The “culture shock” wherein anthropologists first experience the natives as bizarre or exotic gives way to a sense of the native way of life as uncanny: Heimlich, Heimisch, and Unheimlisch at once, that is, secretly familiar.
