Devereux] MOHAVE ETHNOPSYCHIATRY AND SUICIDE 35 



Harav He : ya's and Alima Huma : re's accounts of their respective 

 therapies of hiwey lak and hiwey lak nyevedhi: (pt. 4, pp. 150-175). 



The initial treatment is ahnost always administered by a shaman. 

 Only if shamanistic treatments conspicuously fail to help the patient 

 is the sufferer hospitalized. Any attempt to short-circuit this round- 

 about way of getting modern medical treatment is usually frowned 

 upon by the more conservative members of the tribe. The only 

 exceptions are extremely serious surgical emergencies, such as acci- 

 dents and attempted suicides. Thus, when "Mrs. Smith's" son be- 

 came temporarily acutely psychotic, she was severely blamed by her 

 relatives for hospitalizing her son without first trying to have him 

 treated by a shaman (Case 64) . 



In addition, as already stated, patients in extremis are usually 

 withdrawn from the hospital against medical advice, partly in order 

 to try shamanistic treatment once more and partly in order to allow 

 the patient to die in familiar surroundings. 



The near-identity of the shamanistic method of treating psychiatric 

 (or, rather, psychosomatic) illnesses with the one used to cure organic 

 ailments not only proves the fundamental homogeneity of all Mohave 

 medical techniques, but also reflects the Mohave shaman's essential 

 failure to differentiate in a fundamental way between psychiatric and 

 organic illness. This is due not only to a lack of sophistication but, 

 presumably, also to the fact that, as among all primitives, organic ill- 

 ness invariably elicits psychic responses of some magnitude, and vice 

 versa, of course. 



THE POSITION OF THE INSANE IN MOHAVE SOCIETY 



Before the age of witch hunts, Koman law summed up the prevail- 

 ing sensible attitude toward the insane in the sentence "f uriosus satis 

 ipso furore punitur" (the madman is already sufficiently punished by 

 his madness) (Krafft-Ebing, 1875) . This humane view was probably 

 due to the fact that these legislators believed insanity to be a natural 

 phenomenon rather than a consequence of personal sin. 



The Mohave attitude toward psychotics is somewhat similar. They 

 do not condemn the insane, just as they do not criticize those kinds 

 of suicide which, in their opinion, are determined by the nature of 

 the individual involved. ("It is their nature. They can't help it.") 

 On the other hand, the Mohave condemn, e. g., voluntary suicide, in- 

 cest (Devereux, 1939 a), and alcoholism (Devereux, 1948 i) because, 

 in their estimation, such actions are not characterologically deter- 

 mined. On the whole, the Mohave are not only lenient toward the 

 insane but are mildly amused by their odd behavior. Thus, while 

 narrating a certain case history (Case 21) both my informant and 



