Citation

Lester D. Am. Anthropol. 1972; 74(3): 386-390.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1972, American Anthropological Association, Publisher John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

It has frequently been observed that members of primitive societies have died under the influence of a "voodoo" or a "hex." (Indeed, one can find historical references in less primitive societies to individuals dying as a result of "black magic".) For example, Spencer and Gillin (1899) reported that members of the tribes in Central Australia often attributed deaths to the use of a poison bone. All that was necessary was for an enemy to point the bone at you and intone a curse for a rapid death to overtake you.

Criticisms of the validity of the phenomenon of death by suggestion are reviewed and rebutted. Two theories of the mechanism of death by suggestion, proposed by Cannon and Richter, are described, and a new theory is proposed. The new theory is based on Engel's concept of the giving up-given up complex in medically ill patients and is shown to be capable of generating testable predictions about the phenomenon of voodoo death.