Deverenx] MOHAVE ETHNOPSYCHIATRY AND SUICIDE 275 



(Mohave vs. Chemehuevl). This boy's four outstandingly atypical symptoms 

 are: 



(1) Theft— which is almost unheard of among the Mohave and which is 

 invariably a symptom of emotional deprivation. 



(2) Spontaneous and voluntary— i.e., neurotic— oscillation between several 

 homes, the mobility cycle being apparently synchronized with the differential 

 availability of MoJiave playmates during the schoolyear, as against the vacation 

 period. 



(3) A degree of sexual inhibition which is atypical for the average Mohave 

 boy approaching puberty. 



(4) A tendency to overreact to material deprivation of a type that many full- 

 blood Mohave children also experience without a comparable sense of frus- 

 tration. This overreaction to material deprivation must be viewed as a displaced 

 manifestation of his sense of emotional deprivation. 



CASE 77 (Informants: Hamteya :u of the Mah gens and Hitcu ;y Kutask- 

 (w)elva) : 



Preliminary comment. — The two interviews with Hamteya :u were highly 

 productive, which is noteworthy, since both the school principal and the Mohave 

 described him as negativistic and uncooperative, and the Mohave emphasized 

 especially that he hardly spoke at all. (Neurotic mutism.)^ The productive- 

 ness of the interviews was largely due to the great skill of my teenage interpre- 

 ter. At the same time, the length of the interviews, the large number of persons 

 mentioned in them, and the constant shifting from topic to topic made it inex- 

 pedient to reproduce the material in the order in which it was obtained, or in the 

 form of a dialogue. Instead, the material was reorganized and is presented in 

 the form of a systematic narrative, with occasional passages in dialogue form. 

 Family 'background: 



Father.— E. Sr., of the Mah gens, is a member of a notoriously troublesome 

 family (pt. 5, pp. 245-247). He deserted his wife, Hamteya :u's mother, named 

 Nyoltc, when Hamteya :u was (allegedly) 3 years old, because there was some 

 question regarding the paternity of Nyoltc's last child, M., who, in 1938, was 

 roughly 2 years old. Since, despite doubts regarding his paternity, M's English 

 surname is the same as that of E. Sr., Hamteya :u was presumably 10, rather 

 than 3 years old when his father left his mother. "I see my father occasionally 

 and I like him. He stays with Uta :c." (See below.) 



Mother.— Njo\tc of the Nyoltc gens, married C. M. after being deserted by E. 

 Sr. "I like my mother best." 



Stepfather.— G. M. "He is a good man and I like him, even though he is only 

 my stepfather." * 



Siblings: 



(1) Mah (W.) is a middle-aged woman. (Hamteya :u mistakenly said her 

 name was Nyoltc, which is not the name and gens of his sister, but of his 

 mother. As in Case 78, the mistake is socially due to the absence of the father ; 

 it is symptomatically a perseveration and dynamically a manifestation of the 

 oedipal tendency to equate an older sister with the mother.) Mah never 

 married and has a bad reputation, partly because of sexual misconduct (Dever- 

 eux, 1939 a) and partly because she is believed to be a witch. She lives in the 



* Compare pt. 5, pp. 248-251 for a clisonssion of the Mohave tendency to consider any 

 speech disturbance as a major symptom of "crazlness" (yamomk). 



« Mohave boys especially are often devoted to their stepfathers (Devereux, 1948 1, 1950 f ). 



