64 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 175 



result of tliis unwarranted expansion of its applicability, turns at this 

 point into a neurotic cliaracterological defense.** 



(2) Sublimations tend to provide permanent solutions, while symp- 

 toms gradually lose their effectiveness and become stale, so that, even 

 if no new conflicts arise — which is unlikely, since symptoms themselves 

 always create additional difficulties — they must eventually be supple- 

 mented by new, or more incapacitating, symptoms.*^ 



(3 ) Defenses consmne psycliic energy ; sublimations do not. 



Given these inherent inadequacies of even socially sanctioned de- 

 fenses, which are also in many ways quite ego-dystonic, since, as Lowie 

 (1929) put it, "man is not a total abstainer from reason although he 

 indulges with fanatical moderation," at least some potential shamans 

 reject this defense altogether. However, if such a person is then unable 

 to evolve a sublimation, or cannot find less ego-dystonic defenses 

 against his conflicts, he will inevitably decompensate and become 

 psychotic. Indeed, no matter how irrational it may be to believe 

 oneself endowed with shamanistic powers, this symptomatic defense 

 often does hold in check possibly even more irrational unconscious 

 fantasies. Hence, when a potential shaman refuses to become a prac- 

 ticing one, his impulses, denied a socially sanctioned outlet, ultimately 

 erupt in a wholly idiosyncratic form, and with a much greater irration- 

 ality and intensity than if they had not been first suppressed and/or 

 repressed (Freud, 1925 a, 1925 b) . Thus, modern psychiatry supports 

 the Mohave Indian view that the person who received shamanistic 

 powers, but refuses to become a practicing shaman, will become 

 psychotic. 



The preceding considerations will enable us to obtain a genuine 

 understanding, both anthropological and psychological, of the case 

 of Apen Ismalyk, who was believed to have become insane as a 

 result of his unwillingness to become a practicing shaman. 



CASE 4: 



Apen Ismalyk (Beaver's ear), gens Melyikha, is a widowed and childless 

 fullblood Mohave male born in 1889. He is related to a notoriously trouble- 

 some family (pt. 5, pp. 245-247). 



Data. — Apen Ismalyk is one of the few Mohave psychotics for whom detailed 

 medical records were available. The following sources of information were 

 available : 



(a) Colorado River Indian Agency Individual History Card (Form 5- 



153, Allotment No. 148T) (Card No. 180 B). 

 (h) Indian Field Service Field Matron's report (1931). 



** While this theory of the transformation of symptomatic into characterological de- 

 fenses is relatively novel, It is wholly compatible with the classical psychoanalytic theory 

 of symptoms. 



*^ Thus, an agoraphobic may first refuse to leave his home town, then his street, then his 

 apartment, then his room and then perhaps even his bed, thereby creating Increasingly 

 severe socioeconomic difficulties for himself. 



