Devereux] MOHAVE ETHNOPSYCHIATRY AND SUICIDE 63 



process leading to a mere "social remission without insight." *^ Actu- 

 ally the disturbed adolescent's attempt to stabilize his psychic situa- 

 tion by becoming a shaman is only partly and temporarily successful. 

 Indeed, this socially sanctioned compromise solution does not protect 

 the psyche permanently, the way a true sublimation does (Jokl, 1950; 

 Devereux, 1957 a), against further crises and anxieties, to which the 

 psyche again reacts by developing further compromise solutions. 

 Thus, soon after the wife of Almia Huma : re, a shaman specializing 

 in the treatment of hiwey lak, died in childbirth while he stood by, 

 unable to help either her or the baby, which could be seen moving 

 in the dead woman's womb, the bereaved shaman "acquired in dream" 

 the power to treat also obstetrical conditions (Devereux, 1948 e). 

 In other instances the aggressive impulses eventually break through 

 the socially supported reaction formation represented by the urge to 

 cure, and cause the former healer to become a witch. This, in turn, 

 will involve him in a whole new series of subjective and social vicious 

 circles, actuated by the internal interplay between aggression and 

 feelings of guilt. For a time his feelings of guilt over his magical 

 aggression may find expression in the killing of witches; it being 

 a characteristic feature of Mohave shamanism that some witch-killing 

 heroes are themselves believed to be witches. Thus, when a young 

 visitor, belonging to a family of alleged witches (pt. 5, pp. 245-247) 

 left, Tcatc said that he, too, was a witch who, should the occasion pre- 

 sent itself, would, no doubt, also function as a witch killer. In other 

 words, witches, or potential witches, first seek to cope with their guilt 

 feelings by means of projection, i. e., by killing other witches. Later 

 on, even this indirect or vicarious means of self-punishment ceases to 

 be effective, and the witch eventually feels compelled to incite others 

 to kill him. 



This need to pile symptom upon symptom, e. g., by acquiring addi- 

 tional powers, as did Ahma Huma : re, or by becoming a witch, proves 

 conclusively that being a shaman is a neurotic defense and not a true 

 sublimation. The effectiveness of a neurotic defense differs from that 

 of a sublimation in three ways : 



(1) Sublimation is nonspecific; it controls a large variety of con- 

 flicts related to a given impulse. By contrast, a symptomatic defense 

 is relatively specific and effectively controls only a few types of con- 

 flicts. Hence, when new difficulties arise, they have to be dealt with 

 either by means of new symptomatic defenses, or else the new conflict 

 is artificially made to mean the same thing as the old one, in order 

 to deal with it by means of the same symptomatic defense that, as a 



" Ackeiknecht's (1943) view that becoming a shaman represents a recovery without In- 

 sight Is, psychlatrlcally, a contradiction In terms (Devereux, 1956 b). 



