Hello, you have come here looking for the meaning of the word
wendigo psychosis. In DICTIOUS you will not only get to know all the dictionary meanings for the word
wendigo psychosis, but we will also tell you about its etymology, its characteristics and you will know how to say
wendigo psychosis in singular and plural. Everything you need to know about the word
wendigo psychosis you have here. The definition of the word
wendigo psychosis will help you to be more precise and correct when speaking or writing your texts. Knowing the definition of
wendigo psychosis, as well as those of other words, enriches your vocabulary and provides you with more and better linguistic resources.
English
Pronunciation
Noun
wendigo psychosis (uncountable)
- (psychology) A psychological condition specific to some Native American groups, in which a person in fever-induced delusions believes that they are possessed by a cannibalistic wendigo spirit, or in which members of the groups hysterically believe a person to be so possessed.
1982 August, Lou Marano, “Windigo Psychosis: The Anatomy of an Emic–Etic Confusion”, in Current Anthropology, volume 23, number 4, →JSTOR, abstract, page 385; reprinted in Ronald C. Simons and Charles C[ampbell] Hughes, editors, The Culture-bound Syndromes: Folk Illnesses of Psychiatric and Anthropological Interest (Culture, Illness, and Healing), Dordrecht, Netherlands: D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1985, →DOI, →ISBN, page 411:"Windigo psychosis" has been the most celebrated culture trait of the Northern Algonkian peoples for almost half a century. […] The conclusion reached is that, although aspects of the windigo belief complex may have been "components in some individuals' psychological dysfunction" (Preston 1980: 128), there probably never were any windigo psychotics in the sense that cannibalism or murder was committed to satisfy an obsessional craving for human flesh. It is argued, rather that windigo psychosis as an etic/behavioral form of anthropophagy is an artifact of research conducted with an emic/mental bias.