Devereux] MOHAVE ETHNOPSYCHIATRY AND SUICIDE 123 



activities in the dream. Instead, they have a (tension?) headache. This is 

 clearly a description of the repression of the dream on awakening, which is made 

 necessary by its painful or embarrassing (latent?) content. (Cf. Hivsu: 

 Tupo : ma's account.) The inability of the dreamer to communicate the name 

 of the hiliwi : r is strongly reminiscent of the Mohave belief that a bewitched 

 person knows the name of his magical foe, but cannot tell it to the therapist, 

 either because the shaman "sealed the victim's lips" or else because the victim 

 is actually willing to become the witch's beloved prey and a member of his 

 faithful retinue of ghosts (pt. 7, pp. 383-386). Since the Mohave explicitly 

 state that the mutual attraction between witch and victim is usually a sexual 

 one, and is implemented in dream (Devereux, 1937 c), the dreamer's inability 

 to recall the name of the hikwi : r must be related to the dreamer's repression 

 of the snake's actions in the dream. While these remarks are admittedly 

 speculative, they are not too fanciful to deserve consideration, at least as work- 

 ing hypotheses. The fact that the snake assumes in dream the form of a person 

 has a twofold significance. We already saw (pt. 2, pp. 42-46) that, according 

 to the Mohave, the only animal people dream of is the bull, and that the bull 

 is a shaman in disguise. By contrast, in this instance it is a supernatural 

 snake which is "disguised" — or would it be more correct to say "unmasked"? — 

 as a person. The specification that the snake is recognized as a person only 

 when it tells its name is also significant. Tcatc specifically said that this snake 

 first appears in dream in a disguise, i.e., in the form of a snake ; only as the 

 "dream work" progresses (and as the mounting excitement overcomes the 

 "dream censor") is the real identity of the snake revealed. Indeed, it is hardly 

 necessary to argue the reasonableness of the assumption that only a person 

 whom one does not wish to recognize needs to be smuggled into the dream in a 

 disguised form. Were it otherwise, there would be no need for a disguise. 

 Taking into account that, on awakening, amnesia partially blankets both the 

 actions and the identity of the snake, and considering the nature of the attrac- 

 tion that, according to the Mohave, exists between witch and victim, the sugges- 

 tion that such dreams may be oedipal ones does not seem farfetched. Indeed, in 

 terms of what is known of dream symbolism, the "king" of snakes can only be 

 the father's phallus, while the two-headed snake almost certainly symbolizes the 

 primal scene. 



One minor, but interesting, point to be stressed is that the hikwi :r snakes 

 appear in dream disguised as persons. This belief may be related to the 

 Mohave Indians' (erroneous) conviction that the only animal they dream about 

 is the bull, and that the dream bull is but a shaman in disguise (pt. 2. pp. 42-46). 

 This belief is complemented by the thesis that the hikwi :r, who have all the 

 characteristics of supernatural shamans, appear in dreams in a human guise. 



Eilyera Anyay's statement (1988). — This statement is of special significance, 

 in that it was made by a person who claims to have the hikwi :r hahnok ailment. 



[What makes people go insane?] A person may be sane to start with, but 

 when he is (in a state of, or afllicted by) suma : tc itcem (dreams evil) (Wallace, 

 1947) sickness comes to him and he goes insane. When he is insane, they some- 

 times say that he is hikwi :r hahnok (snake contamination). Such people 

 have bad dreams. When these dreams stop, they seem to get better. But 

 If they keep on dreaming, having such dreams time and again, they naturally 

 get worse. At that point it is no longer a plain (or 'straight') sickness like 

 pains, or hemorrhages, as it was in the first stages. Yet it sometimes happens 

 that when people grow old hikwi : r hahnok does not (any longer?) have an 

 effect on them. On the other hand, if these bad dreams keep on coming, 



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