540 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [BulL 175 



2. THE NEXUS BETWEEN THOUGHTS ABOUT THE DEAD AND ORALITY 



The case histories just cited reveal the strong tendency of drinkers 

 to identify with the dead. The same tendency is evident also in cer- 

 tain other atypical modes of behavior in Mohave society: Two men 

 may kill themselves over the same woman ; several persons connected 

 with each other may commit suicide in succession; a brother or a 

 father may imitate the suicide of a member of the family (pt. 7, 

 passim) ; shamanism and witchcraft are said to "run in certain 

 families" (Devereux, 1937 c). Finally, if a person marries in succes- 

 sion two members of the same family, it is said that, in the course 

 of subsequent marital ventures, that person will "run through the 

 whole family." 



Since identification is the prototype of object relationships obtaining 

 during the oral stage (Fenichel, 1945), a few words may now be 

 said about the oral factors which play a role in the suicide clusters 

 referred to in the preceding paragraph. In the case histories reported 

 above, the oral element is represented chiefly by alcohol, though other 

 oral factors also appear to be present. The oral element in Mohave 

 jealousy was described elsewhere (Devereux, 1947 a and pt. 7, pp. 

 340-356). Saliva, or sucking, or both play an important role in 

 shamanistic therapy, as well as in the technique of witchcraft 

 (Roheim, 1932, Devereux, 1937 c). On the other hand, the oral com- 

 ponent is less evident in the clustered suicides of relatives and in the 

 tendency of certain persons to marry repeatedly into the same family. 



These findings will now be examined in the light of Federn's (1929) 

 and Friedlander's (1940) statement that the suicide longs for some- 

 thing lost, while the addict desires something he cannot obtain. 



The fact that the Mohave alcoholic sometimes imitates the self- 

 desti-uctive behavior of, e.g., a brother who predeceased him, does not 

 make this sound distinction inapplicable to Mohave data. It simply 

 calls for a careful scrutiny of the manner in which the Mohave alco- 

 holic manages to combine a longing for a concrete lost love object 

 with the wish for something unattainable. And this inquiry must, in 

 turn, be preceded by the demonstration that Mohave beliefs do, in 

 fact, reflect a tendency to introject, or even to incorporate, lost love 

 objects. 



The Mohave believe that dreams about dead adults induce in the 

 living a desire to join them in the land of the ghosts and cause the 

 dreamer to contract either the hiwey lak nyevedhi:(anus pain 

 ghostly), or the nyevedhi: tahama (ghost real) ailment (pt. 4, pp. 

 175-184). Dreams about dead infants, on the other hand, cause 

 pseudocyesis, which is likewise called hiwey lak nyevedlii :. The 

 terminological identification of pseudocyesis with gastrointestinal 

 ailments, both of which the Mohave believe to be "venereal diseases," 

 need not surprise us, partly because the most dreaded dreams about 



