ABSTRACT
This chapter explores certain aspects of the nexus between cultural schemas and personal experiences of the self among the Bimin-Kuskusmin of the West Sepik hinterland of Papua New Guinea. It focuses on aspects of the individual, individuality, and individuation as manifested in representations of the self. The social communities of the living and the dead together give shape and vitality to the finiik in its passage through the life-cycle. Among the living, the finiik is a medium or channel of communication with the ancestors, especially when it is condensed and invigorated in the heart during participation in ritual performances. During dreams, certain illnesses, trances, forms of spirit possession, and other genres of mystical experience, the finiik may temporarily depart from the body to wander abroad and even to visit the ancestral underworld, and there is always the danger that some misfortune may obstruct its return, bringing derangement or death.
