56 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 175 



then a final decompensation of these defenses. The pathogenic process 

 itself is, from the cultural point of view, activated primarily by the 

 subject's overt actualization of his powers. The fact that the singing 

 of certain other — nonshamanistic — songs does not actuate a similarly 

 fatal drift into a shamanistic neurosis and self-destructiveness may 

 simply mean that harmless songs are dreamed only by persons whose 

 anxieties are more moderate than those of persons who dream the semi- 

 shamanistic cycles. Such relatively stable persons may require less 

 extreme defenses for the control of their internal conflicts and are 

 therefore less likely to experience an ultimate decompensation of their 

 psychic defenses and balance. Whether or not a given person uncon- 

 sciously chooses to dream a semishamanistic or a nonshamanistic cycle, 

 because of some hitherto undiscovered differences between the latent 

 contents of these two types of songs, is a question that cannot be 

 settled in this context, since a detailed search for possible systematic 

 differences between these two types of songs is beyond the scope of the 

 present study. We simply suggest that the problem of possible basic 

 differences between these two types of song cycles is a challenging 

 one, which deserves the attention of the psychologically sophisticated 

 anthropologist. 



It should be emphatically stressed that the unity of this cultural 

 process, in the course of which a Mohave drifts from singing to 

 healing and then to witchcraft, was established by means of unequivo- 

 cal anthropological field data. Only the psychodynamics of this 

 drift have been afterwards elucidated psychologically. Hence, here 

 too, the psychological analysis of data simply substantiates, and lends 

 an additional depth to, findings that have been first formulated in 

 purely anthropological terms. This proves that, instead of seeking 

 to supersede the anthropological approach to cultural data, the psy- 

 chological approach simply supplements and gives a broader meaning 

 to anthropological findings and formulations. 



THE CORRUPTION OP SHAMANISTIC POWERS 



The involuntary process whereby a healing shaman turns into a 

 witch who, after a while, seeks to be killed by his victims' relatives, 

 is described elsewhere (pt. 7, pp. 387-426). Various limited aspects 

 of this process, wliich the Mohave call nyayu : hudhu : tc takavekam 

 (then his-power turns-against-him, or comes-back-on-him), are also 

 mentioned in part 2, pages 54-56, 57-71, and 83-89. 



PATHOLOGICAL SEQUELAE OF INHIBITED AGGRESSIVITY OR POWER 



The Mohave belief that the actualization of certain powers, or else 

 prolonged contact with power-laden objects, can have psychiatric 



