I 



APPENDIX 

 THE FUNCTION OF ALCOHOL 



PREFATORY NOTE 



As stated previously (pt. 4, p. 212), it was decided to dis- 

 cuss Mohave alcoholism in an Appendix, because the Mohave them- 

 selves view excessive drmking not as a type of neuroticism 

 (yamomk), but simply as misconduct (ala:yk=bad.), though, need- 

 less to say, the psychiatrically informed anthropologist cannot 

 concur with this Mohave evaluation of drinking behavior. 



The material presented in this study pertains to conditions which 

 prevailed at a time when the American Indian could not yet obtain 

 alcohol lawfully. 



Given the special position of alcoholism in Mohave psychiatric 

 theory, it was deemed desirable to make the Appendix a self- 

 contained unit. This explains why a few of the cases about to be 

 presented are nothing more than abstracts — slanted so as to empha- 

 size incidents involving alcoholic excesses — of cases already reported 

 in full elsewhere in this work. Of these overlapping cases only 

 Case 137 — identical with Case 64 — contains new material, because 

 the inclusion of that material in the text of the already very long 

 Case 64 would have interrupted the orderly presentation of those 

 aspects of Case 64 which were directly relevant to its central theme. 



INTRODUCTION 



Glover's (1932) appeal for anthropological contributions to the 

 psychoanalytic study of various forms of addiction has, so far, 

 elicited only a meager response. This may be due in part to the 

 difficulty anthropologists have experienced in deriving a systematic 

 theory of alcohol addiction from the maze of the literature on alco- 

 hol; in spite of Horton's (1943) valuable attempt to test certain 

 general propositions in cross-cultural terms, the comparative study 

 of alcohol addiction is still in the fact-collecting stage. The anthro- 

 pologist must therefore restrict his interpretations to the culture 

 from which his own data have been drawn, and refer to existing — 

 and by no means generally accepted — theoretical interpretations in 

 the most tentative manner. Accordingly, the sole aim of this Appen- 

 dix is a systematic presentation of concrete data, with a limited 



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