Devereux] MOHAVE ETHNOPSYCHIATRY AND SUICIDE 183 



Comment 



Mohave diagnosis. — Nyevedhi : taha :na. 



Tentative diagnosis. — Transitory manic-depressive psychosis, depressive phase, 



The pathogenic dream in question fully substantiates Abraham's (1927) well- 

 known interpretation of the psych ogenesis of manic-depressive psychosis. The 

 fact that in this particular "genuine ghost disease" dream the patient was not, 

 as in hiwey lak nyevedhi:, simply offered food by a dead relative, but was 

 actually induced to eat her mother's body, strongly supports Freud's (1925 d) 

 view that the mourning reaction is an attempt to incorporate the lost love object. 

 The choice of a fish to represent the dead mother may be partly determined by 

 the fact that the land of ghosts lies to the south and under the Colorado River 

 (Devereux, 1937 a) from which the Mohave obtain their fish. A further reason 

 why a fish is made to represent the dead ("phallic") mother is, presumably, the 

 fact that the fish is not only a common masculine symbol but, among the Mohave 

 at least, also a female symbol.' 



The suggested diagnosis, manic depressive psychosis, depressive phase, is 

 based both on this patient's symptoms and on the fact that the first symptoms 

 of this psychosis usually appear in persons 30 years old or less. 



To clarify further the cannibalistic element in this patient's dream, 

 it was deemed desirable to append to this case history summaries of 

 three cannibalistically tinged dreams of nondepressed Mohave indi- 

 viduals who, by Mohave clinical standards, did not have the ghost dis- 

 ease. These dreams show, on the one hand that, despite liis horror of 

 cannibalism (Devereux, 1948 d and 1951 b), even the "normal" Mo- 

 have has impulses of that kind and, on the other hand, that this de- 

 pressed patient's dream exceeds in explicitness and in the intensity of 

 affect the more allusive, and less anxiety- tinged, cannibalistic dreams 

 of nondepressed "normal" Mohave Indians. 



The occurrence of dream cannibalism is far from exceptional among 

 the Mohave. 



Dream D : 



The night of November 16-17, 1938, Hama : Utce : dreamed that she was rins- 

 ing meat in the bathtub and that there were lots of dead mice mixed up with 

 the meat. She felt disgusted and nauseated, and was sick the next day. She 

 told this dream in the presence of E. S., who, as he himself pointed out next 

 day, promptly responded to Hama: Utce:'s dream with a cannibalistic dream 

 of his own. 



Dream E: 



The very next night (November 17-18, 1938) B. S. had two dreams. The 

 first dream concerned his father's cremation ; it included the sudden appearance 

 of the father, who told E. S. that he had to leave, because some people (ghosts?) 

 were waiting for him. The father then went off. At this point, E. S. woke up, 

 but soon fell asleep again and then had a second dream, which, oddly enough, he 

 reported to me first.* In this dream he thought he saw a whole steer boiling 



" Thus, a Mohave greatly offended his host's wife -when he kept on saying : "Phew, you 

 women smell like fish" (Devereux, 1951 c). Note also that in this case the therapist was 

 someone who had had homosexual relations (Devereux, 1937 b). 



• The reporting of dreams In reverse order often means that the second dream is a more 

 diegrnised and therefore less embarrassing version of the first dream. 



