Devereux] MOHAVE ETHNOPSYCHIATRY AND SUICIDE 237 



inheriting of one's widowed stepmother (s), which is quite common in many 

 African tribes. The legitimacy of the view that such socially exogamous mar- 

 riages are psychologically endogamous ones is strongly supported by the fact 

 that at least one African tribe fouud it necessary to help the son of the deceased 

 and the dead man's widow (s) whom he inherits, to discard their existing in- 

 hibitions and to shift from the asexual "stepson-stepmother" relationship to the 

 "husband-wife" relationship. Customs providing this type of encouragement 

 would not have been invented, had they been unnecessary. 



John's pattern of mate selection, which achieved forbidden endogamous ends 

 by means of an overcompliance with the rules of exogamy, represents a well- 

 known neurotic maneuver, which, by means of a "mock overcompliance" with 

 a given rule, reduces that rule ad absurdum, by violating the spirit of the law 

 through too literal a compliance with the letter of the law. Such a neurotic 

 maneuver gratifies forbidden unconscious striving in the very act of "bribing 

 the superego" through an outward compliance with its dictates. 



(5) Psychological evaluation of John's mate choices: 



As stated above, John's mate choices gratified his endogamous oedipal cravings, 

 by means of an overcompliance with rules whose purpose it is to frustrate such 

 cra\iiigs, by enforcing exogamy. He did so by imitating his mother's mate 

 choices in several respects. 



(a) He chose mates belonging to the precise groups into which his mother 

 had also married, though normally young men tend to imitate the mate choices 

 of father figures."^ This imitation of the mother's example was presumably 

 due to the fact that in John's own home the mother was the "masculine" parent. 



(6) In each instance John had to go rather far out of his way to imitate the 

 example of his mother by contracting extremely exogamous unions which dupli- 

 cated in every respect the mother's own exogamous unions.'^ 



<4) John's mate choices and his relationship to mother: 



Normally, when a man marries, the bonds between himself and his mother 

 become attenuated. John's marriages were, however, so contrived that, even 

 though they seemed to deintensify his maternal ties, they actually reinforced 

 the bond between himself and his mother. In his last and seemingly permanent 

 union his basic relationship with his mother was actually reinforced by super- 

 imposing upon it a further kinship bond.® 



(5) John's mate choices and his relationship to father iiyures: 

 While both of John's unions reinforced his relationship with bis mother, they 

 also brought him a great deal closer to two father figures. It is possible, and 

 even probable, that this intensification of the bonds between John and certain 

 father figures was not an accidental byproduct of his mate-selection pattern, but 

 one of the many unconscious determinants of John's distinctive mate-selection 



"' Compare tbe well-known song : "I Want a Girl, Just Like the Girl who Married Dear 

 Old Dad." 



'^ X fictitious example will help clarify this statement: A son whose mother married 

 first a judge and then a pianist would have to go far afield to marry first a lady lawyer and 

 then a female violinist. 



»* An Illustrative parallel is an occurrence from the Sedang Mol village of Tea Ha. 

 When Mbra :o's wife, the mother of his sons, died, he married one of his dead wife's younger 

 sisters, while one of his adult sons married another of his dead mother's younger sisters. 

 This made the son also his father's brother-in-law, while his aunt also became his wife. 

 Thus, the son's marriage doubled preexisting kinship ties both between himself and his 

 father and between himself and his aunt. At the same time they also deintensifled the 

 son's ties with his father who now became, in one context at least, his brother-in-law, 

 rather than his father. 



