Cooper (2006) maintained that there comes a time in the life of most individuals when the need for personal space or privacy becomes an important issue. Otto and Brown (2005) concurred, referring to the Taog Niatnuom mountain dwellers in the highlands of New Guinea, who have developed a set of strategies for encouraging their offspring to develop individualism. Fortune (2015) elaborated: "local haunts are earmarked for the particular and personal use of their kids" (p. 154). However, where some societies organise initiation ceremonies involving mutilation and dismemberment of bodily organs, the Taog Niatnuom progeny, upon reaching puberty, are allotted their own special places for the storage of treasures and the whispering of secrets (Mozart & Brown, 1996; O'Carroll & Brown, 1992). O'Carroll and Brown (1992) concluded and it is these storage compounds that have revealed to archaeologists a minefield of long-forgotten follies, that have enabled the systematic and chronological development of the Taog Niatnuom to be scientifically analysed from infancy through adolescence to adulthood.

In contrast, Smith (2000) commented that in more westernised societies, the privacy of progeny is a taboo issue: parents reject the idea of their kids harbouring secret devices and desires seeing these as a threat, a danger to family stability or even universal democracy. Some parents have been known to read cherished diaries hidden under mattresses, or follow up trails of unaccountable periodic disappearances into the realms of phantasia. Aoyama, Brown and Chan (1999) agreed and provided the example of Doug who resided with his family in a green and leafy suburb in a far-flung colonial outpost. Doug's journey through adolescence manifested itself in an obsessive desire, indeed almost disorder, for the closeting of his innermost secrets and stashes; a behavioural trait that was thwarted by his parents and three older brothers. His mother, infuriated by the frantic and constant digging up of her precious snapdragons in the front garden, acknowledged "By the judicious use of slingshots and catapults I eventually forced Doug into burying his bones in the laundry under the enormous piles of dirty washing" (N. Blearey, personal communication, February 31, 2007).

Given this level of obsession . . .