Sociocultural influences, or the collective unconscious of young people raised in multiple-mother families, still practicing initiation rites (i.e., circumcision) of young boys and other tribal customs, give them a supportive base from which to confront the world of the streets and the larger social environment. Social workers entering this self-contained microcosm, the dynamics and structure of which are practically unknown to them, feel excluded and kept at a respectful distance by family members. The social worker or educator meets with a lack of response on the youthful client's part, while the family politely declines to play any part in the reeducation, claiming ignorance and inadequacy. These people are obviously destined to fail both as individuals and as a group in any attempt to become part of the mainstream of the alien society in which they find themselves. The North African adolescent is caught in a double bind: on one hand his family appears to push him to become a successful member of the new society, while silently commanding him to preserve his allegiance to the ethnic group and culture of his birth. In order to succeed, at least partially, in the objective of reeducating a young client from such a background, the social worker/educator must be able to play a creative role, to create a psychological setting in which not only the adolescent, but the entire group can regain a long-lost flexibility and capacity for role-playing and creative, dynamic interaction.