Deverenx] MOHAVE ETHNOPSTCHIATRT AND SUICIDE 267 



CASE MATEEIAL 



The case material about to be presented was obtained from three types of 

 sources : 



(1) The principal of the reservation school named three boys who, from 

 the point of view of the school, were "problem children." 



(2) All three boys were discussed with reliable adult Mohave informants, 

 who considered Nepe:he (Case 76) and Hamteya:u (Case 77) as neurotic 

 delinquents, but did not think that Case 78 — the only one of the three who hoped 

 to become a shaman — was truly neurotic or deviant, though one of his playmates 

 did consider him a delinquent or, at least, a problem child. 



(3) All three boys were interviewed personally — two of them being seen 

 more than once — with one of their friends and age mates, Hitcu:y Kutask(w)- 

 elvc\, acting as interpreter and social mediator on all occasions except one, 

 when this role was performed by a friendly and tactful adult, E. S. 



It was found in every case that, even though these children spoke fluent 

 English, they answered some questions in English less freely than questions 

 put to them in Mohave by the intermediary. However, one cannot exclude a 

 priori the possibility that they were somewhat timid and therefore "slow on 

 the uptake," so that the fact that a question was first put to them in English and 

 was then repeated in Mohave, gave them more time to grasp its full meaning, 

 and to formulate a satisfactory answer. This, however, is not the whole story, 

 since it is easy to observe that questions which, when asked in English were 

 either not answered at all or else were answered in the negative, but, when 

 asked in Mohave, were answered quite readily and in the affirmative, usually per- 

 tained to activities which are known to be condemned by whites, though not by 

 the Mohave. It is quite probable that the child experienced such acts in the 

 Mohave way and even in the Mohave language, which means in practice that he 

 experienced these acts without an occidental sense of guilt. However, questions 

 regarding such acts, when asked in English, inevitably evoked for the child 

 also a halo of disapproving occidental ways of visualizing these acts or experi- 

 ences, which were simply not part of the actual experiences. This meant in 

 essence that there was a real affective discrepancy between the act experienced 

 in the Mohave manner and the questions pertaining thereto, which — being asked 

 in English — seemed to demand that the child shoidd think of his act in occidental 

 terms of sin and guilt. Given this incompatibilty between the (Mohave) act 

 Itself and the (English=puritanical) questions pertaining to the act, the child 

 was affectively truthful in giving a negative answer to such an English question 

 and an aflirmative answer to the same question asked in Mohave. In the same 

 sense, a young and chaste bride, very much in love with her husband, would an- 

 swer the question: "Did you make love with your husband?" aflSrmatively, but 

 might answer a crudely form\ilated question of the same kind in the negative, — 

 and would be right in so doing, since what she did, in fact, experience was a 

 genuine act of love and not a "dirty" gratification of "base" impulses. This in- 

 terpretation of the facts is greatly strengthened by my personal observation that 

 similar obstacles to communication are quite common also in psychoanalytic 

 work, and especially when one tries to confront the patient with the fact that his 

 loay of reporting and interpreting certain of his activities is incompatible with 

 the knovm oijecflve aspects of the reported experience. 



A very young girl, who had been sexually involved with one of the aforemen- 

 tioned boys (Case 77), was seen, but could not be interviewed, because she was 

 simply speechless with shyness. Although it would have probably been possible 

 to Induce her to talk eventually, by making her realize that the Interviewer was 



492655—61 18 



