Devereux] MOHAVE ETHNOPSYCHIATRY AND SUICIDE 293 



pretations would be valid, at least in that cultural frame of reference, 

 even if every seemingly fully intended Mohave suicide turned out to 

 be an accidentally botched exhibitionistic suicidal attempt, and even 

 if it were demonstrable that every rescued would-be suicide did retro- 

 actively falsify his real motivation, either in order to save face, 

 or because he now totally repudiates his presuicidal motivation and 

 can no longer understand it,** or because the actual physical and 

 psychic trauma of the conscious or else disguised suicidal attempt radi- 

 cally restructured the would-be suicide's psychic economy, for example 

 by gratifying his need for punisliment and by alleviating his guilt 

 feelings ( Case 64) . 



Theoretical frames of reference. — Existing theories of suicide fall, 

 by and large, into five categories : 



Legal theory views the suicide as an antisocial being (felo de se), 

 whose act deprives society of the services of one of its members. 

 In our own society, the law has a double standard : The person who 

 bungles his suicide is, in principle at least, defined as a malefactor, 

 though in practice he is usually simply hospitalized. By contrast, 

 the successful suicide is automatically held to have been "unsound 

 of mind," In neither case is there any attempt to bring before the 

 court those who drove a person to suicide. By contrast, the Sedang 

 Moi of Indochina fine the oppressor who drove a relatively helpless 

 individual, such as a young girl, to suicide (Devereux, MS., 1933-34). 

 Since the Mohave have no legal theory of suicide, and since modern 

 legal theor}'^ is based upon an obsolete conception of human psy- 

 chology, no attempt will be made to interpret Mohave suicide 

 legalistically. 



Sociological theory is best represented by Durkheim's (1897) con- 

 ception of anomie, which, with some additional refinements, is readily 

 applicable to our Mohave data. According to Durkheim, people 

 kill themselves only if their ties with society, and orientation in so- 

 ciety, are impaired. In aboriginal times the Mohave killed them- 

 selves when their ties with society as a whole were weakened. Next, 

 there came a stage where the defections of certain socially proximate 

 and emotionally significant persons were experienced as a rejection 

 by society as a whole. The nagging of a father (Cases 111, 116) or 

 the flightiness and irresponsibility — though not necessarily also 

 adultery — of a housewife (Case 118) could elicit in the ill-treated 

 individual a sense of social rejection, since his expectations regarding 

 these persons were rooted in the culture pattern. Otherwise ex- 

 pressed, the Mohave counted upon support from his father and on 

 a correct performance of duties on the part of his wife, not primarily 



" Loss of contact with some unusual act of one's own — the feeling "did I really do that?" 

 or "I can't understand what made me do it" — is a psychological phenomenon whose detailed 

 analysis has, so far as I know, never been undertaken and would be most rewarding. 



