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L. Bryce Boyer is a psychoanalyst and student of the Chiricahua and Mescalero Apache Indians. He has lived and practiced among them. In this compact volume, Dr. Boyer focuses his attention on the function of folklore within their society.
Dr. Boyer is clearly an ardent folklorist and compassionate researcher. He provides background material on folklore and psychoanalysis and gives simple examples for the beginner in one or both disciplines in examining fairy tales (e.g. themes of parricide and castration in “Jack and The Beanstalk”). He moves on to describe the history and social structure of these Apache, their child rearing practices and the dominant personality characteristics that ensue. He elaborates some of the symbology of folklore in general and specifically the key elements in the folklore of the Apache (lore of the Bat). Toward the end of the book, Dr. Boyer describes clinical examples of the folktale in the service of defense. This is an especially fascinating section, unfortunately brief, in which case histories of two related patients are given as well as their independent use of folktales to provide ego-bolstering views of their lives. Folklore is seen as a vehicle for adaptation, the expression of conflict, and as a method of augmenting dreams and fantasies. The concept of the personal myth is well explicated. Dr. Boyer ends with a chapter discussing the use of folklore knowledge as an adjunct to the understanding of the psychiatric patient. He draws attention to the “interplay between the total environment of a society, particularly its expressive modes of communication, and the idiosyncratic thinking and behavior of the individual within the culture.” Dr. Boyer reminds us that there is no room for ethnocentrism in our work, a lesson learned in training, but not always respted in practice.
This is a rich book which fulfills its stated purpose. More clinical vignettes, sociological and epidemiological data might have added other dimensions, but do not s