ABSTRACT
The title of a recent comprehensive cross-cultural psychological treatment of friendship reflects friendship's implication of a corresponding dark side of enmity. Friendship, including self-friendship, is a mainstay of mental health. Friendship may span species and, through the medium of cultural and educational exchange, is one of the surest routes to intercultural understanding in humans. Examine the texture of friendships in the immediate environment by creating sociograms of friend networks. Extend the findings of Lessard, Kogachi, and Juvonen about in- and outside-of-classroom friendships among adolescents to other areas of differential contact, such as work settings. Individuals who have been exchange students themselves or who are members of families who have been exchange hosts often have formed durable friendships, and their stories can illustrate the successes as well as the challenges of friendship across borders. For an artistic approach, curate and discuss the role of friendship as represented in examples of art celebrating international friendship—for instance, the Statue of Liberty.
