Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University Department of English and American Studies BACHELOR’S DIPLOMA THESIS Tomáš Lintner Pibloktoq: A Result of Western Ethnocentrism Brno, 2017 1 Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University Department of English and American Studies BACHELOR’S DIPLOMA THESIS Tomáš Lintner Pibloktoq: A Result of Western Ethnocentrism Supervisor: Jeffrey Alan Vanderziel, B.A. Brno, 2017 2 I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography. …………………………………………………….. 3 Tomáš Lintner 4 I would like to thank Jeffrey Vanderziel for his time, patience, and valuable advice. I would like to thank my family for taking care of me while dealing with hardships of writing the thesis and allowing me to fully focus on the needed work. TABLE OF CONTENTS 1 Introduction: “Learn a Language, Learn an Illness” 6 2 Pibloktoq 10 2.1 How Pibloktoq Was Constructed . 10 2.2 How Pibloktoq Was Maintained . 24 3 Culture-bound People Assessing Culture-bound Syndromes 26 4 Conclusion 31 Appendix I - List of Pibloktoq Reports 33 Works Cited 47 Résumé 53 Summary 54 5 1. Introduction: “Learn a Language, Learn an Illness” The period of first contacts between Western explorers and Inuit, and the period of gradual influence of Western culture on Inuit culture was marked by clashes of the two cultures. While most Western explorers of the eighteenth to early twentieth centuries considered traditional Inuit culture savage, for Inuit, it was a complex of beliefs and practices adapted to extreme polar conditions. Pibloktoq – by many scholars considered culture-bound syndrome – a mental condition unique to Inuit culture – is the result of these clashes – or more specifically – the result of assessing Inuit behavior through Western lenses. In my thesis, I aim to investigate pibloktoq in the context of cultural differences and Western ethnocentrism. I aim to investigate the ways pibloktoq was made culture- bound, and I aim to investigate the reasons which preceded it. I argue that even some contemporary analyses of pibloktoq are permeated by racism rooted in ideas of previous centuries, and that the condition was constructed on the basis of few minority cases – mostly reported by explorers and other nonprofessionals written in diaries – later published as books. These explorers lacked medical, anthropological, or psychological education, and often saw pibloktoq as an entertaining peculiarity of the exotic Inuit. I do not aim to assess whether pibloktoq is mental disease or not. I focus on assessing the relevance and result of Western point of view in constructing the illness. 6 Culture is a phenomenon universally occurring among all human beings – it is a “pervasive influence on all aspects of human behavior” (Alexis and Fraser 422). Whether it is a businessman living in metropolitan apartment, a farmer working fields in rural area, or a member of hunter-gatherer native tribe, to some degree, culture influences behavior of all of them. Of course, depending on a specific person, culture, or society they live in, their behavior will be influenced to various extents and the effect of culture will be manifested in different ways. For some, it may be barely a reminder of country’s history, on the other hand, culture may well manifest itself as an illness impairing behavior of individuals. As C. Hughes notes: “learn a language, learn an illness” (6) – a simplified account of theory behind a concept of culturally triggered illnesses. The way culture can participate on illnesses as well as the degree to which it can influence one has been a subject of interest of many scholars in a broad range of academic disciplines for hundred years – extending - but not limited to - psychiatry, anthropology, history, and culture studies (Simons and C. Hughes xiii-xiv, Waldram 190). First, it was the missionaries and explorers in the Age of Exploration who became interested in effect of culture on one’s behavior. They were the people in direct contact with cultures which had never been encountered by Westerners before, the cultures which might have seemed very strange to colonizers, the cultures very often called primitive and childish as a result of prevalent beliefs of European cultural superiority (Waldram 105). Later on, the travelers who had encountered exotic illnesses seen then for the very first time and seen only among peoples’ untouched by Western civilization brought colorful reports of men changing into cannibal monsters and women running naked in snow at freezing temperatures (Waldram 192-195). The reports were then analyzed by European scholars of the early twentieth century, classified, and incorporated into newly emerging scientific disciplines (see Brill 1911 and Kloss 1923). 7 With a dawn of cross-cultural psychiatry, the research on culturally influenced illnesses got a new direction. In decades after the Second World War, researchers became aware that when dealing with patients - members of cultures different from the Western one – the one in which psychiatry evolved – it is of vital importance to take into consideration one’s cultural background with all the norms and concepts present as they influence every aspect of illness – from what illness really is to the way it manifests itself (see J. Hughes 1960, Parker 1962, and Vallee 1966). In 1967, psychiatrist Pow Meng Yap coined term “culture-bound reactive syndromes”. After “reactive” was omitted, the most used term for describing these illnesses to the end of twentieth century evolved – “culture-bound syndromes” (Waldram 191). This term was then generally accepted and used for classification of psychiatric illnesses worldwide in the fourth Edition of DSM published by American Psychiatric Association and in ICD 10 published by WHO. However, in the recent years, an increasing number of voices are calling for revision of these ideas and the American Psychiatric Association is one of them when it abandoned the “culture-bound syndrome” classification and replaced it with a three-staged “cultural concept, cultural idiom, and cultural explanation” model in its newest – fifth edition of the DSM (758). Furthermore, some authors see culture-based categorization redundant, as these illnesses can already be encompassed into other – “standard” – DSM illnesses (Blease 334, 336). In “Pibloktoq” chapter, I study the evolution of pibloktoq in Western literature. The chapter is further divided into “How Pibloktoq Was Constructed” where I explore all the first-hand reports from the eighteenth century until present which were later quoted in scientific literature - together with all the major analyses of latter scholars which led into incorporating the condition into the major psychiatric classification manuals – and “How Pibloktoq Was Maintained” where I explore the condition’s presence in the APA’s and 8 WHO’s manuals. In “Culture-bound People Assessing Culture-bound Syndromes” chapter, I analyze the sources in the context of Western ethnocentrism, racism, and generalizations about Inuit, and explore the validity of pibloktoq. Furthermore, I also included a list of first-hand reports together with their place, date, and person affected in “Appendix I”. As a basis for primary sources, I decided to include every single report of pibloktoq which was later cited in the scholarly works, and all the major scholarly works which were later cited in the manuals or major publications dealing with pibloktoq. This ensures the complex scope of my pibloktoq analysis and takes into consideration every major theory behind the condition. 9 2. Pibloktoq “In a state of perfect nudity she walked the deck of the ship; then, seeking still greater freedom, jumped the rail, on to the frozen snow and ice. It was some time before we missed her, and when she was finally discovered, it was at a distance of half-a-mile, where she was still pawing, and shouting to the best of her abilities.” (Peary Nearest the Pole 384-385) Pibloktoq has long been cited as a perfect example of culture-bound syndrome (Waldram 195). The unique state of mental distress found only among Inuit was described by the Europeans as soon as in the eighteenth century. A person suffering from pibloktoq (also spelled piblokto, piblockto, piblerortoq, problokto) is in a state of trance, is unaware of the surroundings, tears off their clothes, exhibits glossolalia, often runs naked kilometers in the snow in arctic temperatures, and has no memories of the amok afterwards (Simons and C. Hughes 278 – Ch. by Gussow). However the illness has a common manifestation, e.g.: it is “composed of a series of reactive patterns, any number of which may combine with other symptoms in each seizure performance” (Simons and C. Hughes 271 – Ch. by Gussow), rather than being one uniform illness every time. In other words, there is a pool 10 of pibloktoq symptoms, but person having the amok may exhibit only some symptoms which change from case to case. 2.1 How Pibloktoq Was Constructed The illness as culture-bound syndrome in Western medicine was constructed as a combination of first-hand reports written in diaries and published in world literature, later analyzed by Western scholars, and taken as an example of a unique demonstration of mental distress in exotic cultures. Before the Peary’s expeditions of 1886-1909, the name - pibloktoq - was unknown to scholars, nevertheless, even before Peary, the Inuit were portrayed as ferocious people with childish-like mind, often prone to hysterical behavior. After the early twentieth century expeditions brought accounts of, again, mostly primitive and amusing Inuit, the analyses of the early twentieth century were consistent – the scholars thought of Inuit as uncivilized tribes whose mental illnesses demonstrates the undeveloped culture and minds so contrasted with the Western one. Even though seeing Inuit and Inuit culture in modern practice as inferior is nowadays undoubtedly out of question and professionals studying the illness have since no longer seen Inuit and Inuit culture as savage, most of them took over the basic concepts and ideas of their predecessors ultimately rooted in seeing Inuit behavior through Western lenses, rather than seeing it through the Inuit ones.