Devereux] MOHAVE ETHNOPSYCHIATRY AND SUICIDE 117 



marked by dreams that herald the overt psychotic break m rather 

 clear-cut terms.*^ 



Once we take into account these reservations regarding the real 

 meaning of Kroeber's data, it is quite certain that the belief that he 

 mentions is not incompatible, e.g., with the belief that the ghosts of 

 the dead may, in dream, induce in the living a sickness complicated 

 by a severe depression, which, according to the Mohave, indicates a 

 psychic compliance of the living with the wishes of the dead, who 

 desire to be joined by a beloved spouse, or relative, in the land of the 

 dead. (This illness will be discussed in part 4, pp. 150-186.) 



In brief, it is felt that dreams about Mastamho in his psychotic 

 fish eagle (or osprey) avatar — though not necessarily dreams in which 

 knowledge of the relevant portion of the Creation myth is acquired — 

 may actually precede a psychotic break, since it is known that motifs 

 derived from folk tales are often utilized both by occidental (Freud, 

 1925 c) and by Plains Indian (Devereux, 1951 a) dreamers. Other- 

 wise expressed, certain Mohave Indians may dream of the insane 

 Mastamlio because — albeit unconsciously — they sense that they are 

 about to have a psychotic break. In this respect the psychiatric 

 interpretation of such a dream differs from the Mohave interpreta- 

 tion thereof only in that the Mohave consider it etiological, whereas 

 modern psychiatry considers it as the first warning symptom of an 

 impending psychotic break. 



HIKWI : E HAHNOK 



The disease caused (halinok) by supernatural snakes (hikwi : r) was 

 somewhat arbitrarily fitted into the class of mental diseases by the 

 Mohave on the grounds that the dreams causing or heralding it are 

 of a rather peculiar kind, and also because the physical illness some- 

 times involved delirium. The material obtained is rather instructive 

 in several respects, but especially because : 



( 1 ) Hivsu : Tupo : ma's account seems to differ in every respect from 

 the other three accounts of this illness, but becomes fully compatible 

 with the latter if one assumes that the snake symbolizes the male organ. 



(2) Ahma Huma : re's account contains several acculturation items 

 fitted into a traditional pattern, thus illustrating the "gallant rear 

 guard action" of Mohave culture that Kroeber (personal communica- 



^ This la also true of Indians. When I analyzed a Plains Indian woman, who had had 

 three previous transitory psychotic episodes, she once reported a dream, In w hich there was 

 much about doorknobs, locked doors, and hospital rooms. Having been at that time only 

 a beginner — hers being my first psychoanalytic case — I analyzed only the latent content 

 of the dream, expressed by means of symbols, but failed to take adequate notice of the fact 

 that this dream's manifest content clearly Indicated that she expected to be locked up in 

 the near future. This experience taught me to emphasize (Devereux, 1951 a) the im- 

 portance of analyzing also the manifest content of dreams, especially in the case of 

 primitives. 



