Arctic amok
C. Boden Kloss’s brief note “Arctic Amok” (p. 254) draws a comparative parallel between the Eskimo nervous condition piblokto, as described by Robert Peary, and the Malay states of latah and amok.
Summary
Kloss quotes at length from Peary’s The North Pole (pp. 156–7), which describes piblokto as a hysterical affliction affecting adult Eskimos—typically women—who scream, tear off clothing, and run naked on the ice in extreme cold, sometimes to the point of freezing to death if not restrained (p. 254). Kloss notes that Peary also records an instance of a piblokto sufferer killing a companion, and argues that despite superficial resemblance to latah in its female manifestations, the Eskimo condition is not triggered by suggestion or shock and is therefore more akin to amok (p. 254). He closes with the observation that both Eskimos and Malays are Mongoloid peoples, despite the vast geographic separation between the Arctic and the Equatorial belt.