ABSTRACT
The island of New Guinea is only a hundred miles off the north coast of Australia, across the Torres Strait. In 1920 Australia was granted a mandate by the league of Nations to administer that area as well, and until World War II treated the two parts as separate entities. The gradual Increase in mission activity in the Pacific Islands continued for two hundred years but the Mainland of East New Guinea was not the object of earnest missionary effort until the late nineteenth century. The University of Papua New Guinea (UPNG) was opened in 1965, and teaching commenced in 1966. The increase in the number of students majoring in psychology has caused a renewed interest in a journal which UPNG plans to launch in 1984, to be called the South Pacific Journal of Psychology. As an academic discipline, psychology has grown more than any other in the history of UPNG.
