A Psychotic Personality in the South Seas

Spiro, Melford E. (May 1950). "A Psychotic Personality in the South Seas". Psychiatry. 13 (2): 189–204. doi:10.1080/00332747.1950.11022773. ISSN 0033-2747.

Abstract: THE question of the incidence and kinds of mental illness found among primitive peoples has resulted in a respectable literature and has occasioned heated discussions. 1 It is not the purpose of this paper to enter into these many controversies or to discuss the problem of clinical versus cultural criteria of abnormality. Its nature is much less ambitious, being an account of just one abnormal personality in one primitive culture. It is the writer's hope that this paper will serve to re-emphasize what a number of writers have previously emphasized-the lack of concrete data on the nature of psychopathology among primitivepeoples. 2 With almost pathetic regularity, anthropological discussions of the nature of abnormality have been characterized by the absence of any intensive study of, or reference to, concrete individuals.

This lack of detailed information, while in itself of no great consequence, becomes gravely serious when this very lack of information becomes the basis for building theories of the nature of abnormality from a cross-cultural perspective. It seems obvious that all theoretical formulations based on ethnographic data will remain mere verbal exercises until we shall have collected a large number of concrete cases in the field which can be subjected to scientific analysis. Impressionistic observations of an ethnographer, however competent he be, do not in themselves constitute objective evidence; and yet they are used by otherwise careful scholars as proof of or documentation for their theories. 4 This paper, then, is an attempt to begin to fill in this lacuna in our knowledge. The case to be presented is chosen because of its incontrovertible character. Tareveliman, the subject, is looked upon as abnormal by the members of his society, by the two anthropologists-Dr. EG Burrows and the writer-who studied the society, and by Tarev himself.

Extra details:

PMID: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15430504
MAG: 1518233919
OpenAlex: W1518233919
CorpusID: 34477437
QID: Q52184265