Revenge of the Windigo: The Construction of the Mind and Mental Health of North American Aboriginal Peoples (review)

The cryptic title of this excellent book refers to windigo psychosis, a culture-bound syndrome that has long fascinated psychiatrists and anthropologists. Afflicted patients fear that they have become a windigo, an ice-hearted cannibal that haunts Algonkian mythology. Recent studies have shown that windigo psychosis is as mythic as the windigo itself, existing only in the imagination of white researchers. James Waldram uses this case to introduce the sweeping arguments of his book, a comprehensive review that documents how anthropologists, psychologists, and psychiatrists have misunderstood and misconstructed aboriginal mental health.

Waldram, a medical anthropologist who has long worked among the aboriginal peoples of Canada, poses a simple question: "What do we think we know about North American Aboriginal mental abilities, mental health, and mental illness, and on what basis do we think we know it?" (p. 3). He takes the role of a "literary archeologist, peeling away discursive layer after discursive layer" to create a "genealogy of ideas" (p. 13). The result is a critical intellectual history of twentieth-century research about American Indian mental health. Waldram begins with an examination of studies of native culture and personality, from Ruth Benedict's archetypes to the use of Rorschach tests on Indians. He then deconstructs crucial topics of Indian psychopathology, including alcoholism, acculturative stress, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, and culture-bound syndromes. He concludes with an analysis of treatment programs, from psychotherapy to cultural competence. Along the way he critiques the work of Franz Boas, Sigmund Freud, and anyone else who has studied Indian mental health. Waldram shows how researchers have treated Indian groups as homogeneous entities, reducing them to a few essential characteristics and basic narratives (e.g., psychopathology as the inevitable consequence of rapid cultural change): psychiatrists' fascination with the exotic allowed the persistence of unsubstantiated culture-bound syndromes; alcohol researchers relied on vague assertions of biological susceptibility and simplistic models of Indian drinking behaviors. Similarly, programs of cultural competence reduce tribal cultures to caricatures and stereotypes.

The book is based on extensive research: the fifty-seven-page bibliography on its own would be worth purchasing. The breadth and depth of Waldram's sources give him the credibility he needs when he argues that most existing knowledge about aboriginal mental health is a "house of cards" (p. 13), inconsistent, implausible, and based on faulty research. He blames everyone—anthropologists, psychologists, and psychiatrists—for their unquestioning acceptance of existing research and their willingness to perpetuate gross generalizations about native cultures. Waldram makes no pretense of providing a fair or balanced review of the existing literature, admitting that he felt "free to nip and tuck my way through their work to support the points I feel need to be made" (p. 5). Some of the authors he discusses could argue that he has oversimplified or even misrepresented their work. However, no amount of revision or nuance would undermine the overall strength of his conclusions: he convincingly demonstrates the pervasiveness of fundamental flaws in nearly every area of aboriginal mental-health studies.

Revenge of the Windigo will not be the last word on this subject. Waldram limits himself to an intellectual history of twentieth-century psychology, psychiatry, and anthropology. He provides little information about researchers' social and political contexts, nor does he examine Indians' reactions to what has been written about them. These are not weaknesses of the book so much as indications of how much work remains to be done. Waldram's book will be an essential resource for anyone interested in continuing this work, whether in history of medicine, Indian studies, anthropology, psychology, or psychiatry.