A Primitive Slip of the Tongue

Data on the psychopathology of everyday life' have become increasingly rare in psychoanalytic publications, and are almost nonexistent in psychoanalytic studies of primitives. The following slip of the tongue is, so far as the writer knows, the only one reported from a primitive tribe. The data about to be presented concern the village of Tea Ha, Sector of Dak To, Annam, Indochina, inhabited by members of the Central branch of the Sedang, a Mon-Khmer speaking agricultural and headhunting jungle tribe. The slip was made by Ndat, a youth in his late teens, son of the widowed sorceress A-Rua. Ndat was probably the most outstanding young man of his generation, whose vigorous character, eloquence and natural leadership assured him a position in the tribe which was out of proportion with his age. Ndat had been in love with, or had at least been very interested in marrying, A-Hloa, eldest daughter of the headman of another one of the three longhouses composing the village. A-Hloa was a singularly attractive but somewhat reticent girl, and somehow the marriage never came off. She eventually married, under circumstances which are not quite clear, the writer's headboy and interpreter, who may have taken advantage of his prestige to persuade the girl to marry him. At any rate relations between the writer and his headboy on the one hand, and Ndat on the other, remained cordial. Ndat frequently visited the writer's house and was usually among the first to see new batches of photographs, whenever they were returned from the coast developed, printed and ready to be pasted in an album. It should be added that since the Sedang have no painting, and are therefore not trained to

Linguistics · Physics · Slip (aerodynamics · Thermodynamics · Tongue · Geology · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · Philosophy · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies