Devereux] MOHAVE ETHNOPSYCHIATRY AND SUICIDE 345 



really ill. It will cry and cry and will make everyone wait on it. All such 

 infants are likely to feel sufficiently hurt to make themselves die, in order to 

 spite their parents, but twins, if they happen to be jealous of heart, will be 

 even more affected by their mother's new pregnancy than other children." 

 This does not mean that adult twins are more envious, or meaner, than other 

 adults. It only means that they are more sensitive than other children, whose 

 souls are not immortal and who do not come from heaven."* Moreover, twins 

 are not thought to be each other's rivals for the maternal breast. 



I must take all of these circumstances into account whenever I intend to treat 

 such a sick child. 



I obtained by power to cure this and other illnesses from Pahotcatc. When 

 he made them (the people) and divided them into different groups, he also ex- 

 plained the different diseases, including this one. If such a sick child is well 

 taken care of, and is taken to a competent shaman, to whom power was given 

 to cure this illness, it will recover, unless its parents dream of losing it.®* 



I impose neither food nor other types of taboos on anyone, and expect to 

 cure this illness without singing curing songs. I press the child's stomach with 

 my left hand, blow my breath on it, and smear my spittle on its belly. My 

 breath, spittle, and massage arouse the sick child from its drowsy state. While 

 I do all this, I do not sing songs, but simply tell about the origin of this illness 

 and mention everything related to its treatment. But it is a hard sickness to 

 cure ! Above all, I urge the child to have a good disposition and tell it not to 

 be jealous and resentful of the new baby's existence." (In other words, the 

 psychologically still infantile nursing child is invited to mature psychologically 

 and to display the culturally highly valued virtue of generosity.) 



The manner in which the preceding account — ^presented here in the first person 

 singular — was obtained, sheds some light upon the psychology of Mohave 

 shamanism. 



When asked to discuss the diseases of children, Hivsu : Tupo : ma described 

 tavaknyi : k, its treatment and the powers needed for effecting a cure with 

 scrupulous honesty, simply failing to mention that he, himself, was a tavaknyi : k 

 specialist. Some weeks later, after we had become friends, he spontaneously 

 told me that he, himself, had these powers and had reported them to me in the 

 third person only because he thought that I — who was at that time still a 

 stranger — might bewitch him if he discussed his powers too openly (Devereux, 

 1957 b). He then spontaneously repeated his entire account, as well as the rele- 

 vant case history (Case 84), in the first person, the two accounts matching in 

 every respect. 



The hey pathogenic factor in tavaknyi : k appears to be the strong 

 bond between the small child and the maternal womb. Indeed it is 

 said that the Mohave child is not wholly detached from the womb 

 mitil after it is weaned. Moreover, as long as it sleeps in its cradle, 



»7 Twins inevitably get less milk than other Infants. 



»« For a less honorific explanation of the origin of twins, cf. pt. 7, pp. 348-356. 



»» This specification has two important implications. In cultural terms, it proves that 

 ordinary Mohave dreams are not the causes of future events, but simply omens (Devereux, 

 1956 c). On the psychological level, death dreams usually reflect primary or secondary 

 hostility toward the person of whose death one dreams. Since such a sick child is quite 

 troublesome to begin with and since, moreover, the parents can blame only themselves for 

 the mother's new pregnancy, both primary and derivative (projected) hostilities toward 

 the child are bound to arise and to elicit dreams of death. 



