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Ethnopsychiatry in Central Australia

II. the Evolution of Illness in a Walbiri Lineage

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2018

J. E. Cawte
Affiliation:
Prince Henry Hospital, Little Bay, New South Wales, Australia
M. A. Kidson
Affiliation:
Prince Henry Hospital, Little Bay, New South Wales, Australia

Extract

Psychiatrists who have written about the Australian Aborigines have been less concerned with the psychiatry of this people than with the significance of their practices and beliefs for psychological and psychoanalytic theory. (Freud, 1913; Roheim, 1945; Fry, 1953). This outlook is reflected in the subsidiary title of Freud's Totem and Taboo: “Resemblances Between the Psychic Lives of Savages and Neurotics”. It was hoped that the analogies between “primitive” practices such as sub-incision or totemism and the repressed complexes of modern civilized peoples might shed light into the recesses of the modern mind.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1965 

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References

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