Devereux] MOHAVE ETHNOPSYCHIATRY AND SUICIDE 6 



serious skepticism. Thus, some 99 percent of my data were collected 

 in a distinctly antianalytic frame of mind. In addition, I was at that 

 time so ignorant of psychoanalysis that, to take a concrete example, 

 I could not possibly have suggested to my Mohave informants their 

 theory of convulsions, for the simple reason that I did not even know 

 at that time that there existed a similar psychoanalytic theory of 

 such seizures. In brief, not only did I not seek to "prove" psycho- 

 analysis by means of tendentiously gathered field data, but would 

 have been incapable of doing so, because of my ignorance of psycho- 

 analysis. Thus, the congruence of my Mohave data with psycho- 

 analysis is not the result of a preexisting bias. On the contrary, it 

 was my dawning awareness of this congruence that caused me to 

 become interested in psychoanalysis in the first place. 



Having shown the lack of a systematic (psychoanalytic) bias in the 

 fieldwork technique, I should say a few words about the inherent 

 validity of the data themselves. 



The most important factor which vouches for the validity of the 

 data was the attitude of the Mohave themselves. All major inform- 

 ants and interpreters were not only devoted coworkers, but also 

 close friends. Many casual informants refused to accept pay for 

 whatever bit of information they provided, while regular informants 

 sometimes spent their evenings tracking down further sources of in- 

 formation or clarifying moot points by consulting various experts. 

 When I commented on their cooperativeness, Hama: Utce: seemed 

 quite surprised that I thought this matter worth mentioning; "And 

 why shouldn't we cooperate with you? You are our friend. With 

 other anthropologists we work. With you we visit." In fact, the 

 only relatively unwilling informant was the witch Hikye : t, who, like 

 all witches, was afraid to talk too openly and who may have agreed 

 to see me only because he thought that his refusal would make him 

 even more suspect of witchcraft than he already was. I think it is 

 reasonable to assmne that such devoted coworkers would give only 

 information that they sincerely believed to be correct. 



The second factor guaranteeing the validity of the data is their 

 high degree of intrinsic plausibility. Their anthropological plausi- 

 bility is shown by the fact that practically every single new trait 

 mentioned in this work could be readily correlated either with the 

 findings of other Mohave experts or with data that I had obtained in 

 different contexts. As regards the psychiatric plausibility of the 

 data, special pains were taken to indicate, e. g., that the "hearsay" 

 dream of a woman suffering from nyevedhi : taha : na (Case 47) could 

 not possibly have been invented even by a psychoanalytic expert on 

 depressions, and that this dream satisfied all cultural expectations 

 regarding "typical" nyevedhi : taha : na dreams, which further in- 



