Deverenx] MOHAVE ETHNOPSYCHIATRY AND SUICIDE 263 



by the rest of the tribe. This meant in practice that, in some instances, 

 they were less frequently shmited from household to household than 

 were some orphaned f ullblood Mohave cliildren, because fewer people 

 were willing to care for such "carriers of the foreign illness." Thus, 

 "affect hunger" often became a major factor in shaping such children's 

 lives and ideologies."^ 



It is on tliis screen, to which Mohave generosity and improvidence 

 contribute further elements, that the following case histories should 

 be projected. 



The preceding observations are of great importance also for a 

 deeper imderstanding of Mohave society and culture. Indeed, it 

 should be borne in mind that child behavior is a significant and re- 

 vealing part of the tribal culture pattern. Hence, any attempt to 

 define certain modes of behavior as "normal" or as "abnormal," in- 

 dependently of the characteristic themes, interests, and value-systems 

 of Mohave culture, would automatically result in a gross distortion 

 and misevaluation of the life and role of children in Mohave society. 

 It should be added, however, that this specification does not imply 

 cultural relativism in psychiatric diagnosis and should be considered 

 simply as a corollary of the general theory of actual differences be- 

 tween normal and abnormal (Devereux, 1956 b) . 



An important point to be stressed is that the Mohave tend to 

 consider as neurotic only those children who are, at the same time, 

 also delinquent by tribal standards. This finding obliges us to dis- 

 cuss, at least briefly, the real meaning of delinquency. 



"Social negativism" is necessarily present in all symptom forma- 

 tion (Devereux, 1940 a, 1954 a), so that all neurotics are also more 

 or less deviants. Hence "delinquency" is, of necessity, a highly 

 elastic term, whose primary meaning is a strictly sociocultural 

 one. We therefore cannot consider any Mohave child as "delinquent," 

 miless it was specifically called a delinquent either by older persons 

 (Cases 76 and 77), who are less contaminated by American views 

 than are the younger members of the tribe, or else by a playmate 

 (Case 78). Thus, sexual activities, unless carried to certain ex- 

 tremes, are not defined by the Mohave as tokens of maladjustment 

 or of neurosis. However, when the sexual activity of a Mohave 

 child exceeds certain limits, the Mohave themselves are the first 

 to define such misconduct as maladjusted and neurotic. It must 

 be explicitly stated that, in terms of Mohave standards, the sexual 

 behavior of the three boys discussed in this section was neither 

 deviant nor delinquent. This is proved by the fact that, by his own 

 account, no adult Mohave ridiculed Hamteyaru for having con- 

 tracted gonorrhea at the age of 10 (Case 77), because, by Mohave 



** Ideologies can be shown to result from childhood sltnatlons (Scbllder, 1936). 



