Devereux] MOHAVE ETHNOPSYCHIATRY AND SUICIDE 101 



craft, etc., tend to obscure the basic unity of human emotions 

 revealed by this conversation. 



This finding has a direct bearing upon the validity of culture-and- 

 personality studies in general, since it causes one to wonder to what 

 extent an undue emphasis on culturally determined modes of expres- 

 sion may distort our picture of human realities because of our tend- 

 ency to stress — possibly superficial — differences, at the expense of 

 basic similarities. This question cannot be answered in a decisive 

 manner until many more conversations such as the one given above are 

 recorded. In the last resort, and despite the real value of projective 

 and other personality tests, the ultimate, most sensitive and most re- 

 vealing, test of human nature is concrete interaction in the real situa- 

 tions of daily life, which is only partially duplicated by the 

 transference-countertransf erence relationship obtaining in the psycho- 

 analytic situation. 



Be that as it may, I realize in retrospect that the above conversa- 

 tions — and all they imply in regard to the possibility of a nearly 

 culture-free man-to-man communication between human beings be- 

 longing to different cultures — had a decisive influence on my subse- 

 quent diagnostic and, especially, therapeutic work with neurotic 

 Plains Indians (Devereux, 1951 a, 1951 i, 1953 b). 



INTEaiPRETATION 



Regardless of the close and obvious affinity, which, from the view- 

 point of psychiatry, may exist between hi : wa itck and suicide, a 

 useful explanation must be made in terms of sociologically meaningful 

 variables, which are defined analytically. 



We must, first of all, distinguish between types of breaches in the 

 marital or love relationship. 



(a) Marital vs. nonmantal love relationships- — Hi: wa itck seems 

 limited to married couples, while suicide, with or without murder, 

 may occur also in premarital, extramarital, adulterous, and even 

 incestuous love relationships. 



(b) Age discrepancies. — In hi : wa itck, but not in suicide, one gen- 

 erally finds a great age difference between the spouses. This is 

 rather significant, because the flightiness of young Mohave women 

 often enables old Mohave women, and even inverts, to obtain desirable 

 husbands from among the ranks of young men, who crave a stable 

 home (Devereux, 1951 f). In such marriages the senior partner 

 craves love, and gives security and comfort to the junior partner, 

 often closing both eyes to the casual infidelities of the latter. It is, 

 hence, very significant that it is almost invariably the senior spouse 

 who becomes subject to attacks of hi : wa itck. The average Mohave 



