Note 9 — PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF PEYOTISM

E.g., Charles Lonewolf (Kiowa) in Peyote as Used in Religious Worship, 53; Hoebel, Comanche Field Notes. Again, all the prestige of the culture itself was behind Old Man White Horn’s pronouncement to the psychotic Oto, R. E., that peyote would protect him. This individual suffered apparently from an obsessional neurosis (stereotyped actions, collecting string, rolling and unrolling balls of it, persecutory fears, avoidance of people, fear of being pursued etc.). If his difficulties had originally arisen from real or supposed aggressions upon him of members of his group, the therapeutic value of the assertion that the fetish would protect him is obvious. For the belief that it would protect him was shared by all the others present, and he had the support of the enormous impetus a deep-seated culture-pattern possesses. The importance of the fetish plant as a psychic “authority” should likewise not be minimized.