Devereux] MOHAVE ETHNOPSYCHIATRY AND SUICIDE 195 



A further comment concerns the fact that the ilhiess is called hiyam 

 ahwat — mouth red. This may or may not be related to the fact that 

 the "spirit language" spoken by the funeral orator is called ahwat 

 cukwarekwi kusumany (Fathauer, 1954). 



The preceding discussion suggests that much remains to be known 

 about the basic meaning of death and of fmieral practices in Mohave 

 society. The latter have, so far, been investigated chiefly from the 

 viewpoint of the ritual itself. Plowever, such a study is less likely to 

 yield deep insights in the case of an essentially unritualistic society, 

 such as that of the Mohave, than in the case of a higlily ritualistic 

 tribe, such as the Hopi. 



In summary, three types of mental derangements seem to be related 

 to various funeral observances. In some cases the derangement is 

 due to sexual activity at inappropriate times, such activity being, in 

 many groups, deemed to be incompatible with mourning. In other 

 cases the neurosis is caused by preserving items belonging to the dead, 

 which should have been placed on the funeral pyre. In still other 

 instances the disorder results from unauthorized contact with ritual 

 objects used in the memorial rites. Thus, the conmion denominator 

 of this group of ailments is tlie fact that all of them are caused by 

 violations of fmieral taboos. This fact, taken by itself, suffices to 

 lend plausibility to the basic hypothesis that unauthorized contact 

 with objects pertaining to funeral rites, and/or a failure to forgo 

 economic advantages or sexual gratifications during the mourning 

 period, comiteract the beneficial effects of the mourning ritual upon 

 the mourners' psyche. Deprived of the social support that com- 

 pliance with mourning taboos appears to provide, the mourner's cha- 

 otic grief reaction may get out of hand, transforming objectively justi- 

 fiable sadness into a psychotic depression, characterized by guilt 

 feelings (Cases 38, 47), panic and other forms of psychic self-aggres- 

 sion. Otherwise stated, funeral rites must be viewed as socially pro- 

 vided and culturally standardized defenses or "type solutions," which 

 society places at the disposal of individuals struggling with certain 

 statistically frequent "type conflicts" (Devereux, 1956 b). 



INSANITY CAUSED BY WH'CHCRAFT 



There are many indications that the Mohave expect victims of 

 witchcraft to display abnormal behavior. In fact, it is conceivable 

 that the abnormal behavior of a given patient may, in itself, be the 

 reason why his illness is attributed to the effects of witchcraft. Al- 

 though this inference is, admittedly, not supported by direct state- 

 ments, it is significant that many of the illnesses mentioned in this 

 work were diagnosed as being due to witchcraft at the time the pa- 



