ABSTRACT
I am convinced that a knowledge of unconscious mental processes gained from the practice of psychoanalysis can deepen and enrich understanding of social behaviour. But I have not written this paper to prove or even to illustrate this conviction. I have written it in an attempt to understand a particular event, the kava ceremony of the Kingdom of Tonga in the South Pacific. This ceremony is a social event and as such involves groups, roles, and social differentiation as well as conscious and unconscious feelings. In order to understand it 'to my satisfaction I found I had to use ideas derived both from social anthropology and from psychoanalysis.
