If ever the lid gets off my head
And lets the brain away
The fellow will go where he belonged—
Without a hint from me.
- Emily Dickinson, 1863
I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
- Sylvia Plath, “Mad Girl’s Love Song,” 1953
This evening I unzipped my skin
And carefully unscrewed my head,
Exactly as always do
When I prepare myself for bed.
- Shel Silverstein, “Skin Stealer,” 1981
Returning to Shel Silverstein’s “Skin Stealer,” I have been thinking about what has been referred to as the wétiko cannibal psychosis. Its other name has been wendigo psychosis. I prefer the use of it by Jack D. Forbes in Columbus and Other Cannibals: The Wétiko Disease of Exploitation, Imperialism, and Terrorism, first published in 1979. Named after wétiko, in Cree, also windigo in Ojibwe or wintiko in Powhatan, this disease is characterized …
