Folklore and Psychoanalysis: The Swallowing Monster and Open-Brains Allomotifs in Plains

Indian Mythology
Author(s): Michael P. Carroll
Source: Ethos, Vol. 20, No. 3 (Sep., 1992), pp. 289-303
Published by: Wiley on behalf of the American Anthropological Association
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 Folklore and
The
Psychoanalysis:
Swallowing Monster and
Allomotifs
Open-Brains
in Plains Indian
Mythology
MICHAEL P. CARROLL

There are vast numbers of people in the scholarly community who

care little for psychoanalysis and even less for the psychoanalytic
study of myths or folktales. Many scholars will summarily reject
psychoanalytic explanations of a myth or a folktale, seeing such ex-
planations as simply "just so" stories, creations that reflect only the
ingenuity and preconceptions of the investigator. Indeed, the only
thing that many scholars seem willing to borrow from Freud is his
assertion that "sometimes a good cigar is just a good cigar." For
their part, psychoanalytic cognoscenti,after possibly pointing out that
Freud never said that, pay little attention to such wholesale rejection

MICHAEL P. CARROLL is Professor of Sociology at the University of Western Ontario in

London, Ontario, Canada.

289

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290 ETHOS

of their endeavors. This failure to respond to the wholesale rejection

of psychoanalytic arguments is, I would maintain, wrong: wrong be-
cause it goes against the spirit of the entire psychoanalytic enter-
prise.
Psychoanalysis was always meant by its founders, Freud in-
cluded, to be a liberatingscience. Psychoanalysis would shed light on
aspects of the human mind that had remained in the dark for (lit-
erally) eons and would enable us to understand experiences and
ideas that had shackled the human imagination and caused psychic
pain. It is no accident that Freud developed an increasing identifi-
cation with Moses over the decades: he clearly saw himself as a new
Moses, someone who was giving to the world a new truth and a new
hope, just as the original Moses had given to the Israelites an older
truth and had led them to a new and bountiful land. For psycho-
analysis to accomplish the aims of its founder, it could not be re-
stricted to a small group of believers and the neurotics they treated.
It had, and has, to reach a broader audience. Freud knew that,
which is why he consistently wrote his most important works in an
easygoing style, easily accessible to both experts and beginners
alike. Psychoanalytic investigators who fail to search for ways to
convince skeptics of the value and validity of psychoanalytic expla-
nations are doing no service to the important tradition of which they
are a part.

INTERPRETATION AND ALLOMOTIFS

When a psychoanalyst interprets a dream, there is a dreamer

whose mind can be probed through free association and the recall
of memories. The final interpretation of the dream uses these asso-
ciations and memories to account for the dream's manifest content.
But a myth or a folktale is not something uniquely associated with
a single person whose mind can be probed. Such folk narratives are
cultural products, and cultures cannot free-associate. The result, as
Paul (1987:83) notes, is that "with no feedback from the subject who
has produced the symbolism [of the myth, folktale, ritual, etc.], the
interpreterseems bound by no constraints to prevent him from plac-
ing on the material whatever interpretation he pleases." It is pre-
cisely this sense of things, that there are "no constraints" on the in-
vestigator who develops a psychoanalytic explanation of a myth or

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 FOLKLOREAND PSYCHOANALYSIS 291

folktale, that creates the perception that such explanations are ar-
bitrary.
There have been several proposals for reducing this perceived ar-
bitrariness.Carroll (1982, 1986) suggests that in some cases the psy-
choanalytic interpretation of a myth can be tested quantitatively,
using cross-cultural data. Paul (1987) has proposed merging psy-
choanalytic interpretations of cultural narratives, including myth,
with some of the methods associated with Levi-Straussian structural
analysis. My concern in this article, however, is with a proposal
made by Alan Dundes.
In connection, specifically, with folk narrative, Dundes (1987b)
has suggested that many psychoanalytic arguments might be vali-
dated by a careful consideration of allomotifs.In Dundes's scheme,
two elements are allomotifs if they are different but analogous inci-
dents in separate versions of the same folk narrative. If I understand
him correctly, he is suggesting that allomotifs involve substitutions,
that is, allomotifs are created during the process of oral transmission
when storytellers substitute one element in a given tale for another.
By examining allomotifs, Dundes argues, we can validate a great
many of the symbolic equations so important to psychoanalytic
interpretation.1
Dundes illustrates his method by considering The Rabbit Herd,
a narrative that corresponds to Tale Type 570 in the Aarne-Thomp-
son typology of European folk narratives (see Aarne and Thompson
1961). This tale involves a young hero who uses a magical object to
performan otherwise impossible task (usually herding rabbits) and
win the hand of a princess. When the magical properties of the ob-
ject become known, a number of characters-the last of which is
usually the king-try to get the object away from the hero. Quite
often the king threatens the hero in some way. In one version, for
instance, he threatens to cut off the hero's head, in another, to throw
him into a snake pit, and in yet another, to cut off his "pecker." The
apparent interchangeability of the items "head," "snake pit," and
"pecker" is evidence, Dundes argues, that they are symbolically
equivalent in the minds of those telling the story. He is quite em-
phatic on this last point, and his remarks are addressed directly to
those who consider psychoanalytic interpretations to be arbitrary
creations of an analyst's mind:

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292 ETHOS

Again, please note that these alleged equivalents come from versions of the tale
type, not from some armchair Freudian analyst. We may or may not choose to be-
lieve a psychoanalyst who tells us that decapitation can be a symbolic substitute
for castration, but we simply cannot ignore the relevant evidence from folklore it-
self. The folk, collectively, are giving us a range of allomotifs which structurally
speaking must be considered as functional equivalents. [Dundes 1987b:174]

Dundes never really lays out the theoretical backdrop that makes
this strong conclusion plausible, but such a backdrop is easily
sketched.
Folk narratives are transmitted orally, and this allows these nar-
ratives to be changed. Basic psychoanalytic principles, but most no-
tably the argument advanced by Freud in TheInterpretation of Dreams
(1953[1900]), lead us to expect that these changes will be such that
the narrative comes more and more to approximate a fantasy, that
is, a story that allows for the vicarious gratification of unconscious
wishes that are common to the members of the group within which
the narrative circulates. The process of oral transmission does not
stop here. Even when a narrative becomes a fantasy that allows for
the vicarious fulfillment of unconscious wishes, it continues to be
told and retold. When tellers replace one incident with another, the
only way to ensure that the underlying appeal of fantasy is main-
tained is to substitute psychologically equivalent elements. Main-
taining the appeal of a fantasy when retelling and modifying it is an
unconscious process, but no more mysterious than our use of lan-
guage, where we also find utterances being governed by unconscious
constraints.2
While the argumentjust sketched might justify using allomotifs to
validate psychological equivalences, there are, nevertheless, prob-
lems with the specific analysis that Dundes, himself, presents. For
example, although Dundes notes that there are over 350 different
versions of Tale Type 570, he discusses only about a half-dozen of
these in his article. This would not be problematic if the versions
discussed were representative of the entire sample, but my own re-
view of versions of Tale Type 570 suggests that this is not the case.
The "king threatens hero" incident, which is so central to Dundes's
discussion, does not appear in many versions of this tale and, in fact,
this motif is not a part of Tale Type 570 as outlined in the Aarne-
Thompson index. In some versions (see Parsons 1923:251-252) the
king's threat is present, but unspecific: the king simply threatens to
kill the hero. In still other versions, the hero is threatened with hang-

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 FOLKLOREAND PSYCHOANALYSIS 293

ing (Briggs 1970:336-338; Dorson 1964:426-427). In a Norwegian

version of the tale (Thompson 1968:258-265), a threat to throw the
hero into a snake pit is only the final element in a much longer
threat; the full threat is to cut three strips of skin from the hero's
back, rub salt and pepper into the wounds, thenthrow him into a
snake pit.
What are we to make of all this? That "flaying" and "hanging"
are also phallic symbols, just like "head" and "snake"? This, after
all, is what Dundes's statement concerning the "functional equiva-
lence" of allomotifs would suggest. But to see "flaying" and "hang-
ing" as phallic symbols would hardly seem to make sense. At the
very least, Dundes's analysis would be far stronger if it were estab-
lished that the incidents on which he focuses (cutting off the hero's
head, throwing him into a snake pit) are more common across
known versions of the tale than the incidents he ignores (flaying or
hanging the hero).
There is a second problem with Dundes's analysis: he is concerned
only with validating universal symbolism and offers no interpreta-
tion of Tale Type 570. While validating symbolic equations of the
"penis equals head" variety is undeniably a useful exercise, it would
be far more useful to demonstrate that the study of allomotifs can
make particular interpretations of particular folk narratives more
convincing.
With these mild criticisms in mind, what I want to do in the re-
mainder of this article is to demonstrate the general soundness of
Dundes's methodology by (1) developing a psychoanalytic interpre-
tation of a fairly well known myth and, then, (2) showing how a
careful consideration of the most common allomotifs associated with
this myth leads to evidence that makes the psychoanalytic interpre-
tation more convincing.

LODGE-BOY AND THROWN-AWAY

Quite some time ago, Gladys Reichard (1921) analyzed three sep-
arate myths that were widely distributed across North American In-
dian tribes. These three myths were concerned, respectively, with
the Star-Husbands, the Earth-Diver, and Lodge-Boy and Thrown-
Away. The story of the Star-Husbands has since been the object of
several investigations (see Young 1970, 1978; Carroll 1979), and
Dundes (1962) himself has published the most well known and im-

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294 ETHOS

portant study of the Earth-Diver myth. The third myth, involving

Lodge-Boy and Thrown-Away, has received less attention. This is
the myth that I want to consider here.
Reichard located versions of Lodge-Boy and Thrown-Away in 19
different Indian societies but noted that the myth seemed especially
popular among the Plains Indians. My only concern here will be
with versions collected in Plains Indian societies.3 The first half of
most Plains versions of this myth is fairly standardized and can be
summarized like this:
A hunter and his wife live alone. The wife is pregnant. The hunter warns his wife
not to speak to, or look at, a stranger who might come while he is gone. A stranger
(usually male) does come. The wife breaks the taboo. The stranger insists on being
given food, usually to be served on the wife's abdomen. After eating, he cuts her
abdomen and she dies. The stranger reaches into her and removes twin boys. One
of these is thrown into the lodge (and thus called Lodge-Boy). The other boy is
thrown outside (hence Thrown-Away) and falls into a log, a spring, and so on. The
wife is propped up to look as if she is alive. The husband returns. At first he does
think his wife is alive but, then, realizes she is dead. He discovers Lodge-Boy and
the two live together. Each day, when the father leaves, Thrown-Away comes and
plays with his brother. The father eventually discovers this. Thrown-Away is cap-
tured by a ruse and becomes "human." The twins restore their mother to life.
If, as already suggested, folk narratives are fantasies that have been
created during the process of oral transmission and that allow for
the vicarious gratification of unconscious wishes, what is the partic-
ular wish being gratified in this case?
To anyone familiar with Alan Dundes's work, there is an obvious
possibility: the tale is widely popular because it gratifies male birth
envy.In a series of articles, which now span nearly 30 years, Dundes
has consistently argued that male birth envy, or at least male envy
of the female's creative power, lies behind the popularity of any
number of myths. Thus, Dundes sees male birth envy lying behind
the Earth-Diver myth (Dundes 1962), traditions surrounding var-
ious male initiation ceremonies (Dundes 1976), and several Biblical
myths, including the Priestly account of Creation in Genesis and the
story of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden (Dundes 1987a).
These narratives may gratify other wishes as well, but it is Dundes's
claim that, for the most part, these fantasies are popular because
they gratify male birth envy.
In the case of Lodge-Boy and Thrown-Away, there are two ele-
ments that point to male birth envy. First, there is the nature of the
fairly unusual birth that initiates the story: a figure, generally male,

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 FOLKLORE AND PSYCHOANALYSIS 295

slices open a woman and removes her twin sons. The net effect of
this is to minimize the role of the mother in the birth process. What
follows is perhaps even more important: the twins resuscitate their
dead mother and the nature of the resuscitation process simulates a
birth process. In the most common case, for example, the mother's
corpse is enclosed in a sweat lodge. The boys take turns shooting
arrows that fall closer and closer to the lodge, each time announcing
aloud that the arrows are moving closer and closer. Finally, the
mother-presumably feeling threatened by the approaching ar-
rows-comes alive and leaves the sweat lodge. The imagery here
(causing the mother to emerge from an enclosed space) seems a
clear simulation of the birth process. Even setting this aside, the fact
would remain that the opening episode and the resuscitation epi-
sode both suggest that the twins (both male) are far more instru-
mental in giving birth to their mother than she is in giving birth to
them. For that reason, males identifying with the twin heroes can
vicariously gratify their envy of the female capacity to give birth.

THE SWALLOWING MONSTER

In the versions of Lodge-Boy and Thrown-Away found among
the Plains Indians, the story does not end with the resuscitation of
the mother. On the contrary, the resuscitation of the mother is usu-
ally followed by a series of adventures that all have the same for-
mula: The father tells the twins notto go to a place where a danger-
ous monster lives. When the father leaves, the twins make a point of
doing just the opposite of what the father had said: they confront
and defeat the dangerous monster, usually bringing home to the fa-
ther some object that establishes that they have, indeed, killed the
monster. The father issues another injunction, telling them not to go
to where another monster lives, and the pattern repeats itself. The
total number of these monster-slaying incidents varies from version
to version, as does the nature of the various monsters encountered.
Notice that, from a structural point of view, the second half of the
myth is much the same as the first half: the father sets a taboo and
the taboo is subsequently broken. The difference is only that, while
the first taboo is broken by the wife, the second set of taboos is bro-
ken by the twins. Nevertheless, the structural parallelism between
the halves suggests (to me) that the second half is likely concerned
with the same underlying theme as the first half, namely, male birth

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296 ETHOS

envy. Some evidence in favor of such a conclusion emerges from a

consideration of the monsters slain by the two culture heroes.
It happens that one of the most frequently encountered types of
monster is a "Swallowing Monster." A summary of each of the
Swallowing Monster incidents that appear in Plains versions of
Lodge-Boy and Thrown-Away4 is given in Table 1. The basic pat-
tern is the same in all cases: the twins are swallowed by the monster;
they kill the monster from the inside, usually by cutting off its heart;
they then make a hole in the ribs and escape, along with the other
people and animals trapped inside.
At the symbolic level, what is the Swallowing Monster? In
Freud's (1953[1900]:154-155, 354) own analyses of both dreams
and myths, enclosed spaces-like ovens, rooms, boxes, and hollow
spaces, generally-were usually seen to be uterus symbols. Since the
Swallowing Monster not only encloses the twins, but encloses them
within its own body, in the way the uterus encloses the placental sac,
the uterine symbolism in this case would seem especially strong.
The result is that here, again, we have a male birth fantasy similar
to the one that opens the narrative: a male actor (one of the broth-
ers) cuts open a uterus (= the Swallowing Monster) and allows liv-
ing beings to escape.
While the explanation just offered will likely seem at least plau-
sible to most psychoanalysts, it is precisely the sort of explanation
that so often meets with skepticism among those not psychoanalyt-
ically inclined. In this case, however, a careful examination of al-
lomotifs turns up one bit of evidence that should make the argument
more convincing. As Table 1 indicates, the name of the Swallowing
Monster in the Iowa version of the tale is U'ye. In a footnote to the
text, Skinner (1925:429) tells us that the U'ye was "the female organ
of generation of the world." The U'ye, in other words, was called
"Uterus." But if the Swallowing Monster in the Iowa version is so
explicitly a "uterus," then it is that much more plausible that the
Swallowing Monsters in other versions of the myth (though called
water serpents, fish, buffalo, etc.) are also uterus symbols.

MORE ALLOMOTIFS
There are four Arapaho versions of Lodge-Boy and Thrown-
Away. In noneof these four versions is there a Swallowing Monster
episode like the ones in Table 1.5 The monster who figures most

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 FOLKLOREAND PSYCHOANALYSIS 297

TABLE 1
SWALLOWING
MONSTERINCIDENTSIN PLAINSVERSIONSOF LODGE-BOYAND THROWN-AWAY

Version Summary of incident involving swallowing monster

Crowl The twins went to a hilltop to confront a monster. The monster sucked in air
and the twins were drawn in. Inside they found other people and animals, some
dead and some dying. The monster was an alligator-like serpent. One of the
boys cut off the monster's heart, killing it. They escaped by cutting between the
monster's ribs, and liberated those who had been trapped inside. They took the
heart home to show their father.
Crow2 The brothers went to a high hill and confronted a buffalo. The buffalo opened
its mouth and sucked them in. All kinds of animals were inside. The brothers
killed the monster by cutting off its kidneys, its heart, and its windpipe. They
escaped by cutting a hole between the monster's ribs. Thrown-Away took the
heart home.
Crow3 The brothers confronted a buffalo, who then swallowed them. There were other
people inside. Some were dead, some weak, and some just swallowed. The
brothers killed the buffalo by cutting off its heart and kidneys. They escaped by
cutting its ribs open and cutting their way out, taking out the other people who
were in the monster.
Iowa The brothers confronted the U'ye, which sucked in animals who came near to
it. Although the monster told the boys to stay away, they challenged it to swal-
low them. They stripped and then rolled around in flint rocks. The rocks ad-
hered to their bodies. The monster sucked them in, but spit them out immedi-
ately. Then it blew away the rocks and swallowed them again. They found them-
selves in a dark place with many people and animals. Some were dead, some
were dying, and some were newly captured. One brother found a bit of flint
under his foreskin and used it to cut the monster's diaphragm. This only tickled
it. Then the brother cut off its heart, and the U'ye died. He then cut a hole in
the monster's side, through which the twins and all the other captives escaped.
Northern The brothers were chasing a netted hoop southward. The hoop rolled into a lake
Shoshone and turned into a water buffalo. Thrown-Away ran into the monster's anus. The
next morning, when the monster came ashore, Lodge-Boy shot and killed it. He
skinned the monster and cut it open. Thrown-Away emerged with his hoop.
Pawnee, Twins go to a steep bank, where they encounter a water monster that has swal-
lowed their father. They fill their pockets with stones, slide down a beaver path,
and turn into foam as they touch the water. The foam floats into the monster's
mouth. The boys become human again, but do not find their father. They exit.
Thrown-Away breaks his bow and arrows and "plays with them" in the mon-
ster's mouth. He then uses a flint to make a spark, which he throws into the
monster. The bow and arrows burn, causing the monster to burst. The brothers
drag home its skin and give it to their father to use as a tobacco pouch.
Pawnee2 The boys go to a steep bank and are told by a monster that it has devoured their
father. [Monster is slain as in preceding incident, except that fire is kindled from
within the monster.]

onnextpage)
(continued

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298 ETHOS

TABLE 1 (CONTINUED)

Version Summary of incident involving swallowing monster

Wichita The brothers rolled a netted ring into a lake. In following it, they found them-
selves inside a great water monster. Thrown-Away swung his bow around and
struck something. This killed the monster, who fell down on dry land. The
brothers came out through "the hind part" of the monster [presumably its anus]
and realized that it was a great fish.

Sources:Crowl: Simms (1903:305); Crow2: Lowie (1918:90-91); Crows3:Lowie (1918:95-

96); Iowa: Skinner (1925:429-430); Northern Shoshone: Lowie (1909:281); Pawneel: Dorsey
(1906:493); Pawnee2:Dorsey (1906:494); Wichita: Dorsey (1904:101).

often in Arapaho versions of the myth is a being whose tangled hair

covers a hole in the top of its head and who is usually called Open-
Brains.6 A summary of each of the four incidents involving this
monster is given in Table 2. In all cases, Open-Brains is killed in the
same way: the twins put him to sleep by taking lice from his hair,
the hair is disentangled to expose the hole in his head, and a hot rock
is inserted into the cavity. I suggest that this incident, too (like the

TABLE 2
SUMMARYOF THE OPEN-BRAINSINCIDENTIN FOUR ARAPAHOVERSIONS
OF LODGE-BOYAND THROWN-AWAY

Version Summary of incident

Arapaho The twins entered a tipi that was swarming with rectum snakes. Each boy sat
on a flat stone to prevent the snakes from entering his anus. The tipi was also
inhabited by Open-Brains, a man with a hole in the top of his head. The twins
picked lice from Open-Brains's hair, and he went to sleep. While he was asleep,
they killed Open-Brains by placing a hot rock into the hole in his head. They
then cut off his tangled hair, which they carried home.
Arapaho2 The twins went into a tipi inhabited by a man with tangled hair. His hair cov-
ered a hole in his skull. They put the man to sleep by picking lice from his hair,
then killed him by placing hot stones into his skull.
Arapaho3 The twins entered the tipi of a woman named Open-Brains, who had a hole in
the top of her head. They put her to sleep by taking lice the size of toads from
her head. While she was asleep they took advantage of her. Then they put a
circular piece of sandstone in the fire. When it was heated they placed it in her
head, killing her.
Arapaho4 The Twins went to the place where a man lived. He had two names: Open-
Brains and Tangled Hair. They put him to sleep by taking lice from his hair.
While he was asleep they killed him by placing hot stones in the opening in his
head.

Source:Dorsey and Kroeber (1903:345, 353, 368, 381).

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 FOLKLOREAND PSYCHOANALYSIS 299

one involving the Swallowing Monster), is a fantasy that gratifies

male birth envy.
In his work on both dreams and neurosis, Freud (1953
[1900]:387) argued that one of the most common methods of dis-
guising an unconscious sexual wish was through "displacement up-
wards," that is, substituting some part of the head for the genitals.
Thus, a penis might become a nose, a vagina might become a
mouth, and so forth. In this case, I suggest that a vagina has become
a cavity at the top of Open-Brains's head. Making the possessor of
this symbolic vagina a male (in three of the four versions) is entirely
consistent with the hypothesis that the story is a male birth fantasy.
Specifically in connection with birth imagery, Freud
(1953[1900]:350-404; 1963[1916-1917]:144-169) also argued that
the "directionality" of the birth event was often reversed, so that
"exit from" became "insertion into." Thus, for Freud, an uncon-
scious concern with birth could give rise to a dream involving, say,
entrance into a body of water or into an enclosed space. Similarly,
I interpret the insertion of a hot stone into Open-Brains's head cav-
ity as, also, reflecting reversed birth imagery.
In summary, I am suggesting that the Open-Brains incident, like
the Swallowing Monster incident, is a birth fantasy that maximizes
the role of males in the birth process. In both incidents, the agent
who "causes" the symbolic birth (= "leading people out of the
monster" in the case of the Swallowing Monster; "inserting a stone
into a head cavity" in the case of Open-Brains) is a male. Males who
identify with the story's male protagonist(s) can, thus, vicariously
gratify their unconscious envy of the female ability to give birth.

ONE FINAL THING

The argument presented so far leads us to see the Swallowing

Monster (in the non-Arapaho versions) and Open-Brains (in the
Arapaho versions) as uterus symbols. It would certainly strengthen
my argument if I could demonstrate that the equivalence of these
two monsters was recognized by the people who told and heard the
story of Lodge-Boy and Thrown-Away. Here, again, attention to al-
lomotifs proves useful.
Consider a version of Lodge-Boy and Thrown-Away collected by
Matthews (1877:63-70) from the Hidatsa. In this Hidatsa version,
the brothers confront and slay only one monster. This one monster

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300 ETHOS

is called "Big Mouth," and is described as someone "who had a

great mouth and no head." That Big Mouth is a Swallowing Mon-
ster like those described in Table 1 is made clear by the way it ate:
He simply lay on his back, and when a herd of deer came within sight of his lodge,
or a flock of birds flew overhead, no matter how distant, he turned toward them,
opened his great mouth, and drew in a large breath, when instantly they fell into
his mouth and were swallowed. [Matthews 1877:68]

Notice that the "hole" through which Big Mouth sucks people is
located at the top of its body, just like the "hole" associated with the
Open-Brains character in Table 2. Big Mouth, in short, possesses
characteristics of both of those monsters-the Swallowing Monster
and Open-Brains-who appear in the corresponding allomotifs in
other versions of the myth.
Big Mouth's composite nature is also reflected in the events as-
sociated with its death, which can be summarized as follows:
The twins heat some small boulders, then confront Big Mouth. Big Mouth begins
to suck them in, but they step aside and throw in the hot rocks. Big Mouth roars
in pain and starts drinking enormous amounts of water. When the water hits the
hot rocks, it turns to steam. This causes Big Mouth to swell up until it bursts.

Thus, hot rocks are shoved into Big Mouth just as hot rocks were
shoved into Open-Brains's head cavity in the Arapaho versions of
the myth. Big Mouth is killed by something it, itself, draws in (enor-
mous amounts of water), just as the Swallowing Monsters of Table
1 were killed from the inside by something that they ingested.
Nearly fifty years after Matthews had collected this myth, Beck-
with (1930:3-43) collected another version of Lodge-Boy and
Thrown-Away from the Hidatsa. In the version presented by Beck-
with, the number of monsters slain has increased, but one of those
monsters is still Big Mouth, though that name is not used, and it is
still clearly a composite of the Swallowing Monster and Open-
Brains. Thus, the monster in this later version is "a monster without
a head who carries his mouth on his shoulder," and it is killed as in
the first myth (a hot stone down the throat; it swallows water; the
water boils in its stomach and the monster bursts).
The fact that the Hidatsa versions collapsed these two particular
monsters, the Swallowing Monster and Open-Brains, is evidence
that there was some sort of affinity between the two monsters in the
minds of those telling and hearing the myth. Such an affinity would
be expected under the hypothesis offered here, namely, that these

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 FOLKLOREAND PSYCHOANALYSIS 301

two monsters, and the incidents associated with each, were symbol-
ically equivalent.

CONCLUSION
I have argued that the myth of Lodge-Boy and Thrown-Away be-
came one of the most popular folk narratives among the Plains In-
dian societies because it is a fantasy that allows for the gratification
of male birth envy. My interpretation rests heavily upon two link-
ages, namely, (1) that the Swallowing Monster, one of the most
commonly encountered monsters found in non-Arapaho versions of
this myth, is a uterus symbol, and (2) that the Open-Brains char-
acter found in Arapaho versions of the myth is symbolically equiv-
alent to the Swallowing Monster. A careful consideration of the al-
lomotifs associated with each monster turned up two bits of evidence
in support of these linkages: in an Iowa version of the myth the Swal-
lowing Monster is actually called a uterus, and in a Hidatsa version,
the one monster who appears is clearly a composite of the Swallow-
ing Monster and Open-Brains. While such evidence in no sense
proves the overarching psychoanalytic interpretation that I have of-
fered for Lodge-Boy and Thrown-Away, it does make the linkages
just mentioned more plausible and, thus, strengthens that overarch-
ing interpretation. More generally, this exercise demonstrates the
essential soundness of the methodology proposed by Alan Dundes:
a careful consideration of the variation that occurs in folk narratives
can be, indeed, a useful way of validating psychoanalytic arguments
that might otherwise be dismissed as figments of the investigator's
imagination.

NOTES

'Though my concern in this article is only with folk narrative, Dundes, himself, believes
that folklore can be useful in validating almost any psychoanalytic interpretation of any cul-
tural product. Some time ago, for instance, Dundes (1978) argued that the American game
of football is best understood as a ritualized encounter that can be used by male observers to
discharge vicariously a repressed homosexual cathexis. In a later article (Dundes 1985), he
considers a folk game played by boys in which everyone jumps on whoever happens to be
holding the ball. This game is most commonly called "Smear the Queer" and is often iden-
tified as a form of "folk football." The game, in other words, explicitly associates the label
"football" with a term ("queer") often used in derogatory manner to refer to homosexuals.
Dundes argues that this explicit association of the words "football" and "queer" provides
support for his earlier interpretation of American football.

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302 ETHOS

2Theanalogybetweenthe unconsciousprocessesregulatingthe transmissionof folknar-

rativeandthoseregulatinglinguisticutteranceswas suggestedby Paul(1987:89).
3Plainsversionsof Lodge-Boyand Thrown-Awaywerelocatedusingthe referencespro-
vided by Reichard,as well as the referencesprovidedby Thompson(1929) and Wycoco
(1951).
4Forease of exposition,I have consistentlyused the names"Lodge-Boy"and "Thrown-
Away"in summarizingall versionsof this myth. In someversions,however,the namesac-
tuallygivento the boysaredifferent.Thus,the "Lodge-Boy"charactercanbe called"Hand-
someBoy,""Thrown-Behind-the-Curtain," andso on, whilethe "Thrown-Away" character
can be called"Long-ToothBoy,""Thrown-in-the-Spring," and so forth.
5Dorseyand Kroeber(1903:382)reportone Arapahoversion(but only one) in whichthe
twinsdo confronta monsterthatis saidto swallowpeople,but thismonsterdoesnot swallow
thetwins.Rather,thetwinsenterthewaterandrideon themonster'sback.Whenthemonster
growstired,theykillhim.
6Themonsteris calledOpen-Brainsin two of the fourversionsand Tangled-Hairin one.
In the remainingversion,bothlabelsareused.

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