Devereux] MOHAVE ETHNOPSYCHIATRY AND SUICIDE 153 



the psychiatric aspects of hiwey lak, he did not, in an overcompliant 

 manner, improvise a psychiatric approach to this group of ilbiesses, 

 but simply provided additional information that he had neglected to 

 give at a time when he was asked to discuss hiwey lak as a sexual 

 illness. In brief, the psychiatrically oriented leading questions, asked 

 in 1938, did not put words into his mouth but simply served to focus 

 his attention on the psychosomatic and psychiatric aspects of this 

 ilhiess.^^ Had Ahma Huma:re been simply suggestible, he would 

 not, in 1932-33, have spontaneously related hiwey lak to obstetrics, nor 

 would he, in 1938, have discussed this illness psychosomatically (i.e., 

 with reference to the role of ghosts in an organic illness) in such a 

 manner as to make a supplementary inquiry into its purely psychi- 

 atric aspects mandatory. 



What is to be retained here is that the data obtained when hiwey lak 

 was being discussed as an (organic) venereal disease are not, in an 

 absolute sense, more authentic or more important than the data ob- 

 tained when tliis illness was discussed in, e. g., a psychiatric context. 

 The fact is that hiwey lak has at least four cultural matrices : venereal, 

 obstetrical (Cases 45 and 46), psychosomatic (ghost), and psychiatric. 

 Any investigation of this disease that fails to take into account all four 

 of these matrices is bound to yield only fragmentary data. 



In brief, the following accounts do not simply provide further 

 data belonging to one and the same matrix or cultural frame of refer- 

 ence, but reveal the functional nexus betw^een hiwey lak and its four 

 distinct cultural matrices and, implicitly, also the functional connec- 

 tion between these four matrices themselves. Thus, the additional 

 data not only increase our knowledge of the factual aspects of the 

 hiwey lak complex, but, above all, expand our insight into the nature of 

 Mohave cultural matrices and help us to understand the manner in 

 which these matrices are not simply juxtaposed, but also integrated 

 into a whole, both on the abstract level (Devereux, 1951 a) of the 

 cultural pattern and on the concrete level of actual belief and practice. 

 In addition — especially in the passage in which Ahma Huma:re 

 establishes a connection between hiwey lak and obstetrics — we also 

 gain insight into the manner in which personal interests and biases 

 can exploit a latent and implicit, but a priori logical, connection be- 

 tween two existing patterns so as to conjoin them in a manner which 

 is in harmony with the basic orientation of that culture as a whole. 

 Indeed, in postulating a necessary nexus between the practice of ob- 

 stetrics and the treatment of hiwey lak, Ahma Humarre did not 

 breach the latent cultural pattern underlying Mohave medical theories, 



'^ In the same sense, a good Internist, when asked to discuss peptic ulcer, will stress 

 primarily Its organic apects, but will, when asked about its etiology and prognosis, describe 

 also Its psychiatric aspects. 



