Devereux] MOHAVE ETHNOPSYCHIATRY AND SUICIDE 233 



years when, due to an economic crisis, all adult members of the household had 

 to work away from the home. Hence, John not only had to amuse himself all 

 day long, but also had to perform a variety of household chores, which were 

 relatively onerous for a small boy (see above). He therefore craved attention 

 and — since the adults were usually quite tired when they got home after a hard 

 day's work — he soon discovered that he could get a suflSciently massive dose 

 of attention only by making himself obnoxious. 



(&) Retaliation. — Since John felt "deserted" by the adults, he was quite 

 hostile to them (see dreams) and manifested his anger by means of temper 

 tantrums. 



(c) Expiation of guilt. — John was extremely angry with the adult members 

 of the household, and therefore harbored strong death wishes toward them. At 

 the same time — as is shown by the terrible things that happened to him in his 

 dreams — he also felt extremely guilty for harboring such wishes, so that, in 

 order to alleviate his feelings of guilt, he had to force his mother and other 

 adults to punish him. However, since Mohave parents only punish children for 

 extreme forms of misbehavior, the only way he could force adults to punish 

 him was to develop extremely destructive temper tantrums, which, needless to 

 say, only made him feel even more guilty. This interpretation of the facts is 

 not only plausible in terms of our data regarding John's temper tantrums, but 

 is also fully compatible with what is known of the dynamics of temper tantrums 

 in general ( Devereux, 1956 a ) . 



(d) Need for external controls. — The average child learns to control its im- 

 pulses (temper) by identifying with the adults or with older children who pro- 

 vide certain external controls. Unfortunately, during this crucial period, the 

 older members of the household were absent most of the time, so that John's 

 ego received relatively little external suppoi-t in its struggle against ego-dys- 

 tonic impulses. He therefore had to explode periodically, so as to force the 

 adults to provide, in a single massive dose, the amount of external control 

 which, had the older members of the household been present in the home all 

 day long, he would have received in a series of small doses, throughout the 

 day. This "call for help with the control of impulses" is a well-established 

 function of temper tantrums (Devereux, 1956 a). 



(e) Identification with the ''enemy" (Anna Freud, 1946). — Repeated refer- 

 ences were made to the fact that John's mother is a fine, generous, warm- 

 hearted but also extremely quick-tempered person, whose sudden explosions 

 frightened John a great deal. In fact, as one of his dreams (see below) indi- 

 cates, John at times visualized her almost as a kind of ogress, capable of tearing 

 down the house with her bare hands. One way in which a young or psychologi- 

 cally relatively simple individual can protect himself against an ogreish aggres- 

 sor is to identify with the "enemy," so as to acquire the aggressor's irresistible 

 strength and seeming invulnerability.'* Otherwise expressed, the threatened 

 individual seeks to turn the tables on the aggressor : He borrows the enemies 

 means, the more effectively to resist his ends. This protective device can also 

 be observed on the social level, where it manifests itself in the form of antago- 

 nistic acculturation (Devereux, 1943 a). In brief, in developing temper tan- 

 trums John appears to have identified with his mother's sudden outbursts which, 

 to judge by his dreams, must have paralyzed him with fright. 



The inferences stated above regarding the dynamics of John's temper tantrums 

 are strongly supported by the following considerations : 



•5 Identification with the enemy and the uncontrollable compulsion to Imitate his words 

 and actions (echolalla, echopraxla) are highly characteristic of such ethnic neuroses as 

 latah (Malay), imu (Ainu), and myriachit (some Siberian tribes). 



