54 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 175 



and diA;dne heroes (such as Herakles) are also said to have had psy- 

 chotic or near psychotic episodes. Belief in such divine psychic 

 disturbances probably reflects the child's inability to comprehend the 

 behavior of adults (Devereux, 1955 b), as well as certain other early 

 conflicts whose analysis is beyond the scope of the present study. 



THE PSYCHOPATHOLOGY OF SINGERS 



A special form of the corruption of powers affects the singers of 

 certain major song cycles. According to Kroeber ( 1925 a ) , those who 

 receive the power to sing certain semishamanistic song cycles tend 

 to become doctors when they grow old. If we accept the thesis that 

 being a shaman is a neurotic defense against certain intensive intra- 

 psychic conflicts (pt. 2, pp. 57 — 71, and Devereux, 1956 b), the evolu- 

 tion of such singers into shamans is a special form of the corruption 

 of powers. Two factors favor such an interpretation. 



In the first place, several of the song cycles that Kroeber calls "semi- 

 shamanistic" are, in fact, directly related to various illnesses and to 

 their cure. These cycles include wellaka (hiwey lak, anus pain, pt. 

 4, pp. 150-175), hiku: ph (venereal disease), hayakwira (hikwi:r, 

 supernatural snake, pt. 4, pp. 117-128), apena (apen, beaver, perhaps 

 related to the foreign illness, since beaver is a nickname for whites, 

 pt. 4, pp. 128-150), ichulyuye (related to apen), humahnana (related 

 to the cure of both the ichudhauva illness caused by eating birds 

 wounded by hawks, and the ichiekanyamasava (pale) diarrhea of in- 

 fants whose fathers ate their own kill), ipam imicha (related to the 

 same illnesses and also to the foreign illness, pt. 4, pp. 128-150), and 

 yaroyara (likewise related to the foreign illness ).^*^ Thus, it is hard 

 to see why such song cycles should be called semishamanistic, rather 

 than shamanistic, since all shamans first acquire their powers, and the 

 songs related to them, in dream, and then, later on, begin to engage 

 overtly in therapeutic activities. Since these song cycles describe the 

 origin and nature of certain illnesses, and, when sung with thera- 

 peutic intent, can cure them, they are, figuratively speaking, no more 

 semishamanistic than a textbook of medicine, studied by a medical 

 student not yet engaged in the actual treatment of disease, is semi- 

 medical. 



The second point is that my informants more or less implied that 

 the singers of such cycles not only turn into shamans in due time, but, 



•• The differences between Kroeber's spelling and mine do not necessarily imply that one 

 of U8 misrecorded these names. They simply reflect the Mohave tendency to condense or 

 compress lengthy technical terms or personal names into a single word, or to abbreviate a 

 technical term by an elision of the first and/or last syllable (s). Thus, In 1933, 1 re- 

 corded hlwpy lak (Kroeber's wellaka) as weylak. Further differences In spelling are due 

 to an idiosyncratic tendency of linguistic informants, who, when asked to pronounce words 

 carefully, tend to tack terminal vowels onto words, or to Insert vowels Into the word itself, 

 80 as to separate two consecutive consonants. 



