Devereux] MOHAVE ETHNOPSYCHIATRY AND SUICIDE 167 



of drinking unusual types of water, such as stagnant water or water found in 

 the hills (which may symbolize the water drunk by the dead)." The various 

 cannibalistic dreams reported in connection with nyevedhi: taha:na (pt. 4, 

 pp. 175-184) suggest that eating the food of the dead symbolizes eating the dead 

 themselves. This meaning of ghost food is so close to consciousness that one 

 woman actually saw that the fish she ate had the head of her dead mother 

 (Case 47). The feeding of the dreamer by the ghosts of his relatives, which 

 causes him to lose his appetite for earthly food, is clearly part and parcel of 

 the ghosts' attempt to lure their children, etc., to the land of the dead, by 

 providing them with imaginary (infantile?) oral gratifications. 



(5) Coitus with the dead also appears to be a means of luring the living to 

 the land of the dead. It is also to be noted that witches begin to long for 

 death after cohabiting in dream with the souls of theii* dead victims, who 

 often happen to be their close relatives. The dead sex partner acts either like 

 a succubus or like an incubus, regardless of his or her real sex.®" 



(6) Incest with the dead appears to be the principal form of coitus with the 

 dead and the one whose effects are most likely to be fatal. It is interesting 

 to note that Harav He :ya took pains to stress that in such dream intercourse one 

 allows the saliva of one's ghostly sex partner to dribble into one's mouth ; this 

 combines the sexual and oral devices by means of which the dead lure the living 

 to the land of ghosts. 



(7) Pregnancy, childbirth, and motherhood dreams occur chiefly in women 

 who lost both their baby and their husband. The dead baby reenters the 

 mother's womb in order to kill her and take her to the land of the dead. Since 

 unborn shamans, who do not wish to be born, also seek to kill their mothers 

 during childbirth, it may conceivably be relevant in this context that evil shamans 

 are said to be prone to commit incest (Devereux, 1937 c and 1939 a). 



(8) Incest with a living person occurring in dream causes hiwey lak, but not 

 hiwey lak nyevedhi : (Case 42). 



On the whole, the dead are believed to resort to a variety of means 

 to lure their living relatives to the land of the dead. These means 

 range from persuasion to oral and incestuous sexual gatifications, or 

 else involve dreams related to mourning. Apparently the manner in 

 which the deceased person died does not affect the quality or intensity 

 of his wish or ability to lure the survivors to the land of ghosts. 

 Thus, it was specifically ascertained that the ghosts of women who 

 died in childbirth are no more eager than other ghosts to induce the 

 living to follow them to the land of the dead. A partial exception to 

 this rule may be the ability of bewitched persons to make their killer 

 long for death (Devereux, 1937 c) . 



The two physiological means of luring the survivors to the land 

 of the dead, and of arousing in them a desire to die — i.e., by incestuous 

 coitus and by feeding them aboriginal food (= milk) — reflect a re- 

 markable insight into the oral components of the Oedipus complex, 



** Thus, twins in heaven drink rain water (Devereux, 1941). 



^ This point was made when I mentioned to the Mohave the Navaho belief (Bailey, 1950) 

 that in coitus inversus the man may become pregnant, a notion which made the Mohave 

 laugh out loud. 



