(Dick, p.7)
Pivloktoq-like Behavior has less to do with the spirit or unconscious, but more connected with how human body interact with the demand of subsistence activity through seasonal climate change in the Arctic, such as intense work load and interrupted sleep pattern during summers, and in the winter, as Richard G. Condon concludes, “activity rhythms tend to take on free-running characteristics during the dark period as people stay up later in the night and sleep correspondingly later into the day (p.135)”. One of the characteristics of AH that commonly recognized by researchers is “slept for 15 hours after the attack” (Gussow, p.274). While sleep for 15 hours appears abnormal and symptomatic through western lens, the dark …show more content…
After seeking explanation from an local Inuit lady, Mane, who offered the pronunciation of “piblokto” without a culture definition, Peary spelled out “pibliktoq” based on what she heard, and defined this term based on her own experience and interpretation. With her own definition of “pibloktoq” as AH, she further documented and identified more cases as AH during his explorations of the arctic through 1909 (Wallace and Ackerman, p.252). It is challenging to verify whether these cases are true “pibloktoq” as they may appear to be hysteria to Peary, but not necessary appear to be pibloktoq to local community members. When a community member is truly suffering from a pibloktoq, family and fellow village members generally do not appear surprised as it is viewed as a relatively common occurrence (Higgs, p3). Higgs pointed out rightfully that pibloktoq does not appear to be stigmatized by native populations, but most likely would be in the Euro-American world as Western-researchers stigmatize many mental illnesses that occur in the Western world, and “they are quick to judge a disease from a distant culture (p.8).” Although certain behavior patterns have been generated and categorized as symptoms of AH, researcher are no closer to the native understanding of true pibloktoq. Some researchers have moved on trying to discover the root cause of hysteria behavior in the Arctic. Due to the lack of evidence to confirm the existence of pibloktoq before contacting non-Inuit population, Lyle Dick suspects that the hysteria behavior is constructed by European-Inuuit Relations after examining 40 AH cases. He suggest that AH were introduced by the stresses of early contact between Euro-Americans and Inuhuit between 1890 and 1920. However,