Devereux] MOHAVE ETHNOPSYCHIATRY AND SUICIDE 91 



not always involve primarily cardiovascular reactions to emotional 

 stress. The fact that they were nonetheless diagnosed as disorders 

 of the hi : wa (heart) simply shows that, in Mohave psychiatry, the 

 term "hi : wa" has lost its specific and literal cardiovascular conno- 

 tation and acquired the broader meaning of one type of psychosomatic 

 reaction to emotional stress. In the same way our own term "hys- 

 teria" (from: hystera= uterus) has also lost its original anatomical 

 connotation, so that this technical term is now simply a holdover from 

 an obsolete theory of hysteria.''^ 

 Strictly speaking, there are only three genuine hi : wa disorders : 



(A) Hi:wa itck, or else hi:wa itce itc hi : m=lieartbreak. (Hi:wa 

 suh itck=he has heartbreak.) 



( B ) Hi : wa mava : rkh. 



(C) Hi : wa hisa : kh= (roughly) heart rot. 



At the same time, the emotional component of psychiatric illness is 

 so routinely correlated with the "heart" that : 



(A) Laymen tend to apply the nontechnical term "Hi : walyk yamomk 

 hi : m" to almost any mild emotional or neurotic disturbance. This term, 

 first mentioned by Tcatc, who — significantly — was not a shaman, was 

 originally translated as "in-his-heart a-little-crazy," and was retrans- 

 lated by the linguistic informant Pulyi : k as "in-his-heart will-be- 

 crazy (oris-crazy)." 



(B) Incidental references to the patient's hi: wa (heart), or to "cardiac" 

 symptoms, occur even in shamanistic — i. e., supposedly "technical" — 

 descriptions of a variety of psychiatric conditions, which definitely do 

 not rate as disorders belonging to the "hi : wa" group. 



HI : WA ITCK (hi : WA ITCE ITC HLM) 



The type of subjective experiences about to be described is recog- 

 nized as abnormal by the Mohave themselves, who apply to it the term 

 "lii : wa itck." This term may be freely translated as "heartbreak" 

 and is applied to certain psychotic, or possibly neurotic, episodes, 

 which occur chiefly when an elderly Mohave man is deserted by his 

 young wife. It rarely follows the desertion of a Mohave husband by 

 a v/ife belonging to his own age group. 



The social Ijackground. — Mohave marriages are extremely unstable, 

 and, like all other interpersonal relations in that tribe, are character- 

 ized by only moderate object-cathexis (Devereux 1939 a, 1942 d). 

 Marriage implies little more than common residence and continued 

 sexual relations, which, in theory, should be limited to married 

 couples. Divorce means simply that one of the spouses moves out 



" It Is Interesting to recall In this context that when Freud first spoke of hysteria In 

 men, a disingenuous critic ridiculed his views by resorting to the footless etymological 

 argument that men could not have hysteria, since they had no uterus. Cf. also Usener's 

 (1896) theory, that the most ancient Gods are those whose names have become true 

 personal names and no longer have a known meaning. 



492665—61 7 



