Devereux] MOHAVE ETHNOPSYCHIATRY AND SUICIDE 245 



of abnormal behavior is socially sanctioned and exploited does not 

 mean in the least that it is not psychopathological in the strictest 

 sense of that term. 



PSYCHOPATHY 



Few nosological concepts are as controversial as psychopathy, soci- 

 opathy or constitutional psychopathic inferiority, perhaps because 

 social circumstances and consequences play so great a role in the 

 evaluation and diagnosis of persons who give the clinician the initial 

 impression that he is dealing with a "psychopath." 



In most cases, the psychopath has no obvious symptom beyond 

 that of being chronically "in trouble" with society. Speaking in a 

 general way, nothing in particular and everything in general is 

 wrong with him. Sometimes he gives the impression that he is un- 

 able to control his impulses, an observation which underlies the diag- 

 nostic label "impulse-ridden psychopath." The correctness of this 

 designation has been challenged elsewhere (Devereux, 1951 g) and an 

 attempt was made to show that the "impulse-ridden psychopath" is, 

 in reality, a "defense-ridden psychopath." The provocativeness of 

 the psychopath, while pronounced, is, likewise not miiquely char- 

 acteristic of him, since it can be shown (Devereux, 1940 a) that "social 

 negativism" is a fundamental characteristic of all symptoms. The 

 general instability of the psychopath is striking indeed, but can be 

 easily misdiagnosed if one disregards the social situation. Thus, a 

 certain Negro was first diagnosed as a psychopath, on the grounds 

 that he had held some 15 jobs between 1929 and 1939. This justification 

 of the diagnosis "psychopathy" became untenable, however, once it 

 was pointed out that 1929-39 were depression years, when Negroes 

 were the last to be hired and the first to be fired. Hence, the fact that 

 this Negro patient managed to find and hold 15 jobs during that 

 period suggested not psychopathy but extreme energy and 

 ingeniousness. 



Hence, I urged elsewhere the view (Devereux, 1953 b) that the 

 psychopath's one truly unique characteristic may be his ability to 

 manipulate for his oion selfish ends the cultural loyalties of others, 

 without his having any cultural loyalties of his own. 



On the whole, psychopathy appears to be a relatively rare dis- 

 order among primitives. A systematic search of the anthropological 

 and ethnopsychiatric literature, over a period of 28 years, for case 

 material on mental derangements among primitives, yielded only a 

 negligible number of possible cases of psychopathy. By contrast, the 

 psychopath is a relatively conspicuous predator in occidental society. 

 It is therefore tentatively suggested that psychopathy may be one 



