12 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 175 



overall patterning, if any, is primarily a product of Hikye : t's pri- 

 vate intellectual and emotional world. Indeed, it suffices to compare 

 this chaotic account, which treats a given entity now as a cause and 

 now as an effect, with any of the other accounts cited in this work, 

 to realize the extent to which Hikye: t's views are autistic." In 

 fact, Hikye: t's statement is so similar to the ruminations of cer- 

 tain types of hospitalized psychotics, that it provides support for 

 the thesis that the shaman, no matter how "well adjusted and so- 

 cially effective" he may be, is, in the last resort, a psychotic in partial 

 remission (Devereux, 1956 b). 



Yet, it is obvious that Hikye : t did wrestle with some of the major 

 unsolved problems of Mohave psychiatric and medical theory. His 

 failure to "make sense" is, however, due less to the fact that this 

 essentially supernaturalistically oriented body of beliefs is simply not 

 susceptible of being organized into a rational whole, than to his in- 

 tellectual limitations and fundamental autism. His case seems to fit 

 perfectly the Mohave belief that people may become mentally dis- 

 turbed if lyel3^edhu : tc hi : wa hakwi:lyk (their knowledge exceeds 

 their heart) which, colloquially expressed, means simply that they "bit 

 off more than they can chew." ^ As Hikye : t himself put it on an- 

 other occasion: "One cause of insanity is that sometimes a man's 

 knowledge exceeds his heart" (ego functions). (See Case 4.) 



These limitations notwithstanding, Hikye : t's account does have 

 the merit of stressing the keystone of the Mohave's world view in 

 relation to the etiology of mental disease. It is a basic principle of 

 the Mohave philosophy of life that everything on earth happens in 

 accordance with rules and precedents dating back to the time of cre- 

 ation. This Mohave axiom underlies that portion of Hikye : t's ac- 

 count which emphasizes the etiological import of these rules and 

 precedents (ku:na:v nyevedhi: = that which has been prophesied or 

 ordained by ghosts). In addition, Hikye :t also mentioned most of 

 the key concepts of Mohave etiology, such as: 



(1) Hahnok, which is the principle of contamination or causation (ahwe: 

 hahnolc, foreign contamination). 



* It may be of some Interest to mention that, in the course of years of fleldwork, I ob- 

 tained only one other equally disorganized statement. It was the account of a minor 

 Sedang Mol shaman of Tea Ha, Indochina, who, according to the members of that village, 

 had "power" but was, at the same time, "without ear" — 1. e., devoid of reason and thought 

 to be practically Insane. 



» This explanation is precisely the one which the Sedang of Tea Ha applied, to the con- 

 fusion of the shaman mentioned In the preceding footnote. The same phenomenon can 

 also be observed in severely disturbed morons, whose desperate attempts to transcend their 

 limitations are movingly characterized by Ivajos Zilahy (1949) in his novel "The Dulcays" : 

 "The darlt eaglewings of a senseless spirit flapped frantically in an effort to achieve the 

 most magnificent heights of sense." Goethe, too, refers to this phenomenon, when he 

 causes Faust to speak of his father as a man who "reflected conscientiously, though with 

 twisted obsessiveness, about Nature and her holy realms." 



