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In this, the first of a series of papers dealing with mental disorders in preliterate tribes, Devereux refers mainly to certain subjective experiences which strike modern psychiatrists as neurotic or psychotic, even though they are considered socially acceptable in certain preliterate cultures and, either not pathological at all, or else remotely connected with other experiences which these cultures recognize as abnormal and socially unacceptable. The latter phenomena include shamanistic experiences, trance states and lycanthropy, which are all part of these cultures and play in them a significant rôle.
According to the author, primitive psychiatry is a functional part of native culture and must be connected with the social-cultural context. Why one type of subjective experience should be recognized as 'abnormal' and another should receive social sanction and approval, depends on the organized preferences of a given culture and the compatibility or noncompatibility of these subjective experiences with the culture pattern. Thus, it is 'psychotic' behavior to mention the name of the dead or talk to one's mother-in-law, if the specific culture prohibits these modes of behavior. The author's viewpoint, therefore, on mental disorders in primitive society, is that of the history of medicine, that is, the viewpoint of the social sciences.
In the second part the author discusses some of the social-cultural implications of certain subjective experiences and the modes of behavior corresponding to them among the Mohave Indians who live on both banks of the Colorado River between Needles, California, and Parker, Arizona. The type of subjective experiences described is recognized as abnormal by the Mohaves who apply to them the term, hiwa:itck, which may be freely translated as 'heartbreak'. The term is applied to certain psychotic or possibly neurotic episodes which occur most frequently when an elderly Mohave man is deserted by his young wife. It rarely follows the desert