Devereux] MOHAVE ETHNOPSYCHIATRY AND SUICIDE 347 



therapeutic effectiveness from that myth. The last person who knew 

 the songs in question is said to have been Takpa:ra Nyama: (Bat's 

 breast), also called Kuoto:va (meaning unknown; erroneously trans- 

 lated (Devereux, 1947 a) as "like a clown").* 



(3) Appeals. — As the Mohave see this treatment, the intrusion of 

 the shaman's healing power into the small patient is supplemented by 

 the shaman's attempt to mobilize in the child a higher type of motiva- 

 tion than the one which had caused it to become ill : the suckling is 

 urged to be generous and not to resent the birth of another Mohave, 

 since only in that manner can the perpetuation of the tribe be insured. 



From the ethnopsychiatric point of view, the single most important 

 aspect of tavaknyi :k is the belief that it is a form of suicide, caused 

 by resentment over the mother's new pregnancy and over the weaning 

 which it necessitates. As stated above, the suckling is certain to have 

 an adverse psychophysiological reaction to the inferior and increas- 

 ingly scanty milk of the mother. Moreover, a 2- or 3-year-old child 

 is far from incapable of understanding the allusions of adults to its 

 mother's new pregnancy, because — as both parents and child analysts 

 have discovered — little jugs often have surprisingly big ears. It is 

 therefore permissible to suppose that the frustration- aggression-self - 

 aggression etiological theory of this disease was first evolved by a 

 shaman who had experienced considerable oral conflicts in his child- 

 hood, and that tavaknyi :k specialists are shamans who have marked 

 oral problems. (Cf. Hivsu: Tupo:ma's voraciousness.) 



This process explains why the Mohave define tavaknyi :k as an 

 attempt to commit suicide, and react to it in terms of the generalized 

 Mohave attitude toward atypical behavior: "It is their nature; they 

 cannot help it." 



In conclusion, regardless of whether the psychic reactions which 

 the adult Mohave ascribe to traumatically weaned children correctly 

 reflect what really takes place in the weaned child's psyche, or are 

 simply a projection of adult feelings into the child, the Mohave theory 

 of this illness is clearly compatible with current psychoanalytic 

 theory and reflect the Mohave Indian's singular ability to understand 

 the language of the unconscious, including even the unconscious of the 

 psychiatrically or psychosomatically ill individual (pt. 8, pp. 485- 

 504). 

 CASE 84 (Informants: Hivsu: Tupo :nia and Hama : Utce:) : 



Kunyii:th, of the Kunyii :th gens, the (half?) sister of two men who had 

 committed suicide (Cases 116 and 117), was married to Hamce: of the 0:otc 

 gens. They had a little daughter, named O :otc, of the O :otc gens, who, though 

 already 3 or 4 years old, was still nursing. When her mother became pregnant 

 once more, 0:otc became quite sick and her mother called me in to treat the 



* Although the Mohave clown at some rituals (Devereux, 1937 b), they have no 

 ritual clowns. 



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