1988/01/01 by Robert Brightman · 3 citations
Psychology · #Psychedelics and Drug Studies
paper · doi:10.2307/482140
openalex publication_date 1988/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/03
Reconsideration of documentary evidence indicates that the Subarctic Algonquian complex was of probable prehistoric inception, that a cor- relative psychiatric disorder entailing cannibalistic ideation and behavior is his- torically demonstrable, and that existing ecological explanations of the complex fail to elucidate its origin, persistence, characteristics, and distribution. Exami- nation of the complex from structural, pragmatic, and ideological per- spectives suggests that instances of the psychiatric disorder were conditioned by Algonquian theories of dreaming and predestination The celebrated and its concomitant psychosis, perennial staples of Subarctic Algonquian ethnology and the literature on culture-specific psychiatric syndromes, appear of late as endangered species, Algonquian fictions uncritically taken as factual by credulous and subliminally biased anthropological consumers. At issue are whether ethnological writing has ever adequately elucidated the concept in Algonquian terms and more specifically whether such a phenomenon as ever occurred. The noun (Ojibwa wintiko, Cree wihtikow) refers to one of a class of anthropophagous monsters, supernatural from a non- Algonquian perspective, who exhibit grotesque physical and behavioral abnormalities and possess great spiritual and physical power. Either many or all windigos were once human beings, transformed, usually irrevers- ibly, into their monstrous condition. In some cases the transition was conceived as rapid while in others the condition could be covert and vo- litionally disguised. The phrase windigo psychosis refers in academic literature to an Algonquian-specific psychiatric disorder whose sufferers experienced and acted upon obsessional cannibalistic urges. Cases of the disorder (cf. Teicher I960), with few exceptions, occurred prior to the Ethnohistory 35:4 (Fall 1988). Copyright ? by the American Society for Ethno- history. ccc ooI4-80oi/88/i.5o.