| Abstrakt: |
'Totally discouraged' is a pattern of disorder discovered among the Dakota Sioux. It is described and briefly analyzed by D. L. JOHNSON and C. A. JOHNSON. In their article on the vicissitudes of the aggressive drive among the Mescalero and Chiricahua Apaches, L. B. BOYER and R. M. BOYER compare the pre- reservation period when hostility created by socialization could be discharged through traditional channels, with the present-day situation where these channels have disappeared, but where the same hostillity is engendered during childhood. MURDOCK'S article is an ethnographic study of an Indian shamanistic system. It has a bearing on transcultural psychiatry because it deals with relationships between this system and native conceptions of disease and healing practices. Also of interest is the manner in which, in the Tenino society, a person becomes a shaman and is accepted as such. Protestant and Jewish schizophrenic patients of different social classes are compared by Victor D. SANUA. Major differences were found in the familial characteristics of patients of different social and ethnic groups as well as in sub-categories of schizophrenia (see also this Review, No. 12, April 1962, p. 12). In order to compare the conceptions of mental health of four Asian and two American groups, THAVER and his coworkers administered to them a questionnaire previously adapted to American subjects. Significant differences were found between the Asian and the American groups. However, these differences might have been due to different cultural reactions to the questionnaire itself. The final article in this section deals with Afro-Asian students in a Canadian University. Their behaviour and attitudes are described by R. C. A. HUNTER in relation to magical beliefs still prevalent among them, to their conception of physiology and disease, and to health facilities made available by the University. |
