Devereux] MOHAVE ETHNOPSYCHIATKY AND SUICIDE 487 



(8) Predictably frustrated suicidal attempts during funerals (pt. 7, pp. 

 431^59). 



(9) Real suicides (pt. 7, pp. 459-4S4). 



In one of the above instances (4) there is not even illness, let alone death. In 

 four other instances (1, 2, 3, 5) we are confronted with organic, or, at most, 

 psychosomatic illness, sometimes followed by death. In two instances (6, 7) 

 the suicide is vicarious. In one instance (8) the suicidal attempt is a hollow 

 gesture, since it is known in advance that it will be frustrated. Yet, precisely 

 because most types of events defined by the Mohave as "suicides" are not suicides 

 in any real sense, the preceding list reveals the great "social and cultural mass" 

 possessed by the idea of suicide in Mohave culture.^ 



To a certain extent this great "mass" — and consequent great elabora- 

 tion — of "psychiatry" itself accounts for some congruences between 

 Mohave and modern psychodynamic theories, simply on the principle 

 that even the blind hen finds an occasional grain of corn, if it pecks 

 the ground long enough.^ This, however, does not account either for 

 the elaborateness of Mohave psychiatry when contrasted, e.g., with the 

 meagerness of Sedang psychiatry — which is precisely the point we 

 propose to discuss here — or for the great number of congruences be- 

 tween Mohave and scientific psychopathology, which will be analyzed 

 further below. 



It is suggested that the elaborateness of Mohave psychiatry is due 

 to at least four major factors : 



The first — though not necessarily the most important — of these is the 

 Mohave Indian's preoccupation Avith dreams (Kroeber, 1925 a; Wal- 

 lace, 194:7; Devereux, 1956 c), which presumably sensitizes him to 

 intrapsychic happenings and to the unfolding of the "primary proc- 

 ess" '^^ which manifests itself so strikingly in dream as well as in 

 psychosis. 



The second factor is a direct consequence of the first : the Mohave 

 Indian's preoccupation with his own dreams enables him to empathize 

 with the psychotic. 



The third factor to be considered is the Mohave Indian's tendency 

 to speculate about abstruse matters. This accounts for the elaborate- 

 ness of his mythology and intellectual supernaturalism, which so 

 strikingly contrasts with the meagerness of his ritual and the back- 

 ward state of his technology (Kroeber, 1925 a) . It is this tendency to 

 speculate about unusual matters — and the behavior of the psychotic 



' The "mass" of a conceptual point of reference can apparently be measured by the extent 

 to which unrelated ideas and events are forcibly brought within Its scope, In a relationship 

 of artificial compendence (Devereux, 1957 a). 



•Many historians of psychiatry (e.g., Zilboorg and Henry, 1941) have shown an In- 

 clination to assume that the rare psychiatric verities found in early authors were the 

 products of carefully constructed inferences based upon sound data. Instead of truths 

 accidentally stumbled upon by their authors and completely unrelated to the untenable 

 frame of reference In which they were placed. Historians of science would save them- 

 selves from similar pitfalls if they took care to remember that a correct noeraa may be the 

 product of an utterly erroneous noesis. 



1" We may note in passing that the "primary process" follows the same rules of "logic" 

 as L6vy-Bruhrs much maligned "preloglcal" mentality. 



