490 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 175 



In brief, we postulate that at least fart of the congruence of Mohave 

 (or any other) psychiatric theory with clinical data is not always 

 frimarily due to the basic realism of the theory, or to the fact that 

 theory and individual psychosis alike are products of the same total 

 cultural pattern. The congruence is, in some cases, due simply to a 

 tendency of conflict-ridden persons to conform to cultural ideas of 

 "how the insane should behave," i. e., they act the way their culture 

 expects an insane person to act. 



A fourth factor, of an altogether different order, is the tendency of 

 historians of psychiatry to ascribe a meaning to an old theory which, in 

 fact, it does not have. Thus, the historian of psychiatry often pro- 

 fesses to find in a musty old tome indications that a medieval student 

 of psychopathology somehow anticipated modern psychiatric insights. 

 Such alleged findings must be subjected to very careful scrutiny. 

 Leaving aside, for the sake of brevity, the imputation of modern mean- 

 ings to medieval or renaissance psychiatric works, which would re- 

 quire an elaborate discussion, I propose to discuss instead briefly a re- 

 cent attempt to suggest that Shakespeare's well-known remark : "There 

 is method in his madness" somehow anticipates modern insights into 

 psychic determinism and into the "logic" of the unconscious. A closer 

 examination of the context of this utterance shows that the "method" 

 which Shakespeare "discovered" in his character's madness pertains 

 simply to pathological preoccupations on the one hand, and, on the 

 other hand, provides a basis for the im/pufation of a qurm-clairvoyant 

 significanee to that character's rambling utterances. Neither of these 

 two "methods in madness" has even the remotest connection with 

 modern theories of the logic of the unconscious. 



The preceding considerations are sufficiently weighty to induce one 

 to exercise the greatest caution in evaluating certain Mohave psychi- 

 atric insights as genuine anticipations of modern psychiatric thought. 



Having entered every possible caveat against overvaluing the realism 

 of Mohave psychiatry, we must now take cognizance of the fact that, 

 insofar as such matters can be judged imprcssionistically, the number 

 of factual and theoretical congruences between modern and Mohave 

 psychiatry is simply too great to be explainable in terms of any or all 

 of the preceding considerations. Our next task will therefore be the 

 presentation of factors responsible for these congruences. 



The student of Mohave psychiatric ideas cannot fail to be struck, e.g., 

 by the ability of this relatively primitive people to differentiate be- 

 tween neurosis and perversion, or between the psychiatric sequelae of 

 organic illness and the organic sequelae of psychiatric illness (orga- 

 nisches Entgegenkommen). 



Even more startling is the Mohave Indian's ability to differentiate 

 between physiological and psychic orgasm, both in normal and in 

 pathological sexuality. Thus, in discussing normal sexuality, all in- 



