wendigo psychosis

English

Pronunciation

• (Received Pronunciation) IPA^(key): /ˈwɛndɪɡəʊ saɪˈkəʊsɪs/
• (General American) IPA^(key): /ˈwɛndiɡoʊ saɪˈkoʊsɪs/
• Hyphenation: wen‧di‧go psych‧o‧sis

Noun

wendigo psychosis (uncountable)

1. (psychology) A psychological condition specific to some Native American groups, in which a person in fever-induced delusions believes that he or she is 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.