Devereux] MOHAVE ETHNOPSYCHIATRY AND SUICIDE 219 



certain Indian tribes (Devereux, 1951 a). True phobias appear to 

 be absent in Mohave society. 



Isolated, pseudo-phobic symptoms are, however, known to occur in 

 various mental disorders of the Mohave. Thus, numerous case his- 

 tories specifically mention a strong aversion to food which, in some 

 instances, borders on anorexia nervosa. Persons and objects ha- 

 bitually dreaded by the Mohave are, likewise, known to appear in 

 pathogenic dreams. These items include: Ghosts, witches, aliens, 

 snakes, blood, secretions, etc. Although all of these items are dreaded, 

 it is of the utmost importance that not one of them is a formally 

 tabooed person or object. This suggests that the lack of genuine 

 phobias in Mohave society cannot be due to the great flexibility of their 

 ritual and taboo system. This is not surprising, since taboos are 

 psychologically more closely related to obsessive and compulsive phe- 

 nomena (Freud, 1924 a) than to phobias, and, even though severe 

 phobics sometimes also have obsessions and compulsions, the psycho- 

 logical mechanism that actuates obsessive compulsive symptoms is 

 distinct from the one that actuates phobias. 



We must therefore content ourselves with pointing out the ab- 

 sence of true phobias, at least among Mohave adults. 'Whether or not 

 typical childhood phobias occur in Mohave children was not 

 investigated. 



THE PROBLEM OF OBSESSIVE-COMPULSrVE STATES 



Perhaps the most striking result of the investigation of mental dis- 

 orders among the Mohave Indians was a negative finding. The most 

 persistent inquiries, fully explained, and illustrated with concrete 

 examples, failed to disclose the occurrence of genuine obsessive-com- 

 pulsive states. Furthermore, it soon became obvious that, for the first 

 and only time, every single informant failed to grasp the meaning 

 of these questions. Their answers consisted either of a description 

 of the unceasing and vigilant concern of the chief for his tribe, or 

 else of remarks about the "constant worrying" of adults over the 

 major problems of life (pt. 5, pp. 212-216) . Since the Mohave did not 

 hesitate to describe any other mental disorder, and since, furthermore, 

 they specifically stated that the symptomatology of many disorders 

 includes a constant preoccupation with, e.g., certain dreams, it is 

 quite evident that the obsessive-compulsive symptoms that I de- 

 scribed did not resemble anything loiown to them. Their answers to 

 my questions are given in part 5, pages 213-216, 



These negative findings shed a great deal of light both on the basic 

 orientation of Mohave culture and on the structure of the Mohave 

 basic personality. Were Mohave culture a highly ritualistic one, it 



492655—61 15 



