Weston La Barre

The Influence of Psychotropic Flora and Fauna on Maya Religion [and Comments and Reply]

An examination of Maya art from southern Mesoamerica shows the following art motifs appearing with some regularity throughout the archaeological record, from Pre-Classic to Post-Conquest times: (a) mushroom stones and mushroom pottery, (b) the frog/toad motif, and (c) the water lily motif. The thesis of this papers is that these flora and fauna represented in art are related to and influenced by the psychotropic properties of the mushroom, toad, and water lily. It is hypothesized that such properties were known to the Maya shaman, priest, and artist as well as being generally diffused at a folk level in Pre-Classic times. The paper examines certain Maya religious beliefs and practices believed to be influenced by and possibly derived from such psychotropic use.An examination of Maya art from southern Mesoamerica shows the following art motifs appearing with some regularity throughout the archaeological record, from Pre-Classic to Post-Conquest times: (a) mushroom stones and mushroom pottery, (b) the frog/toad motif, and (c) the water lily motif. The thesis of this papers is that these flora and fauna represented in art are related to and influenced by the psychotropic properties of the mushroom, toad, and water lily. It is hypothesized that such properties were known to the Maya shaman, priest, and artist as well as being generally diffused at a folk level in Pre-Classic times. The paper examines certain Maya religious beliefs and practices believed to be influenced by and possibly derived from such psychotropic use.

The Narcotic Complex of the New World

Exorbitant attention has been paid to the nature of gods, whose character it is to be inacessible to examination, but relatively less attention has been paid to the impresarios of gods, viz. prophets and shamans and priests-the de facto sources of all our religious information-who are available for study. It is our contention that the nature of deities is to be sought in the psychic disposition of their exponents and, more than this, that the ancestor of the god is the shaman himself. The vatic personality is often known to be psychologically abnormal, or perhaps only temporarily in such a state as the dream or the vision, and doubtless often in response to the pressure of some current crisis, personal or social or both. But the conditions for hallucinatory contact with spirits and gods may easily be gained by psychically quite ungifted per-

MATERIA MEDICA OF THE AYMARA

SUMMARY The Aymara Indians, of the Lake Titicaca plateau in Bolivia, have perhaps the largest materia medica ever reported from any native tribe. Their doctors or «Collawayus» from Charazani (Munecas Province) are famous all over South America, even as far as Ecuador and Argentina; and even middleclass townspeople commonly consult them for cures. The botanical specimens here reported were collected by the ethnologist Professor Dr. Weston LA BARRE (now of Duke University) as Sterling Fellow of Yale University, and identified by the botanist Dr. Richard E. SCIIULTES, Curator of the Botanical Museum of Harvard University. Admittedly, empirical medicines are probably not all effective scientifically; and yet this list of plants must be expected to yield a higher percentage of valid drugs than a random sample of the flora of the country. For these people discovered and used quinine for malaria in pre-Colombian times; seaweed, for the cure of goitre; a mercury-pomade in llama-fat, for syphilis; ipecacuana as an...

Adolescence, the crucible of change

With no absolute model of adulthood in our society, alienation tends to become complete, identity a crisis, and freedom a burden

Anthropological views of cannabis

Vera Rubin, ed. Cannabis and Culture. The Hague and London: Mouton Publishers, 1975. A volume in the World Anthropology Series, Sol Tax, general editor. Distributed in North America by Aldine Publishing Co. vii + 589 pp. Tables, illustrations, biographical notes, and indexes.

Book Review: The Mind Game: Witchdoctors and PsychiatristsThe Mind Game: Witchdoctors and Psychiatrists. By TorreyE. Fuller. New York: Emerson Hall Publishers, 1972. 236 pp.

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new methods. Especially helpful were Stollers articles on videotape feedback and Forers article on the use of physical contact; in these the authors were specific about the application of the tools. The examples of group experiences in the final section are useful individually as each one provides an illustration of the formation of groups for a specific purpose and the results of the process. The emphasis in these articles is not on method or technique, as they all seem to be reflective discussion groups, but on the purposes. Some unusual purposes were established -for example, a black leader organized a racially mixed group to discuss racial feelings and prejudices. Groups in industry made efforts to improve team functioning, while groups within grade schools focused on developmental tasks rather than on problems. This book can best be appreciated as a smorgasbord of articles to be sampled individually or in combination, as they appeal to the reader. It contains many thoughtful articles which should be of interest to social workers who have been or will be working with groups.

“The Worm in the Honeysuckle”: A Case Study of a Child's Hysterical Blindness

THE PHILOSOPHICAL background of social casework, nurtured by the descriptive sociologyof the early twentieth century, has been enriched in recent decades by the study of anthropology. Cultural concepts, particularly as they have been integrated with psychoanalytic concepts, have deepened the caseworkers awareness of the molding influence of tradition and the tribe upon patterns of child care, the development of roles in the family and the group, and social resolutions of conflicts between impulses and cultural demands. Caseworkers may also make a contribution to the study of the complex and profound relation between psychic and cultural factors by analyzing case data in both cultural and psychological terms. We also struggle constantly to learn to use our deepened understanding creatively in the service of the client. Cultural factors are more easily indentified in the lives of people reared in a traditionbound racial, regional, or national subculture and transplanted to a fluid, transitional environment. The heterogeneity of the adaptive patterns they encounter in their new environment clearly plays a: dynamic role in the inner psychic stress of the individual and may also affect his resistance to, or readiness to accept, professional help. For example, classical hysteria, as Freud described it, has rarely been encountered in psychiatric practice in urban areas in recent decades, but in some sections, notably in the southern United States, its incidence is significantlyhigher.* With children at the Child Psychiatry Unit, Department of Psychiatry, University of North Carolina Medical School, clinical experience has shown that, in mild cases, symptom relief sometimes occurs quickly, spontaneously, or with a minimum of psychiatric intervention. The staff has found it difficult, howeverindeed, impossible, with very few exceptions -to engage the patients family in plans for extended psychotherapy for the child. This resistance seems to be related to cultural attitudes, which have been recognized in the etiology of hysteria.f How the realities of the family culture are related to dynamic processes in the individuals neurosis requires further elucidation. The case study presented in this article illustrates the interplay of external and internal stresses in the etiology of a childs hysteria and in the choice of the conversion symptom; the meaning of the symptom to the child, her family, and the social group; and the roles played by the childs family, religious belief,

Book Review: Integrating Sociological and Psychoanalytic Concepts; an Exploration in Child PsychotherapyIntegrating Sociological and Psychoanalytic Concepts; An Exploration in Child Psychotherapy:PollakOtto284 pp., 1956. Russell Sage Foundation, New York, or SOCIAL CASEWORK.

the problems of public relief during the great depression and other crises. During its seventy-eight years, family social work has adjusted its program to war, inflation, depression, and a defense economy. In A Belief in People we have a picture of persons, lay and professional, who served with a devotion akin to religious dedication. I am convinced that Miss Richs book will prove to be an invaluable source of historical information for those associated with family service work and for all students of social work. It is indeed an outstanding contribu tion to the entire field.