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because of the personalized bond between himself and his father or 

 ■wife, or because of the distinctive personality makeup of these in- 

 dividuals, but chiefly because of certain basic specifications of Mohave 

 culture regarding behavior to be expected from participants in such 

 socially defined relationships. Only in relatively recent times do 

 we begin to meet with suicides motivated by the fact that the in- 

 dividual is rejected by a beloved person, such as the girl he is courting 

 (Case 121) , who does not — or does not, as yet — have culturally defined 

 duties toward the individual. Tliis change parallels a gradual shift 

 in the Mohave Indian's pattern of allegiance to his society. In aborig- 

 inal times his chief emotional anchor was the tribe as a whole ; i. e., 

 its collective presence and also the sense of its continuity in time, as 

 represented by the Mohave Indian's intense awareness of his national 

 identity (Kroeber, 1925 a). At present, however, Mohave society 

 is moving from the Gemeinschaft toward the Gesellschaft pattern 

 (Tonnies, 1887), so that the individual's chief emotional anchor is 

 increasingly his subjective relationship with a limited number of 

 people of his own choice, who are emotionally meaningful to him and 

 who — like a girl one loves (Case 121) — may, on a purely cultural 

 basis, have no explicit obligations toward him. Hence, functionally 

 at least, the total effect of a total social rejection in aboriginal times 

 can be elicited today by rejection on the part of an emotionally sig- 

 nificant person who, socially speaking, has no formal obligations 

 toward the individual. This analysis is, on the whole, applicable to 

 all types of genuine suicide, and can even help one to interpret Mo- 

 have beliefs concerning imaginary suicides. The only further speci- 

 fication to be made is that "social rejection" may, either in reality 

 or else in Mohave belief, be replaced by a prior rejection of society by 

 the neurotic person — such as the witch (pt. 7, pp. 387-426) — or else by 

 the failure of the child to mature to the point where it can successfully 

 transfer its basic allegiances from its mother to all members of society 

 and to society as a whole, defined here as a Durkheimian (Durldieim, 

 1912) "collective representation." 



The Mohave themselves seem rather keenly aware of this shift in 

 the affective structure of their society, and of its relationship to new 

 types of suicidal motivation. This is clearly shown by Tcatc's state- 

 ment — quoted elsewhere in this section — that "white people commit 

 suicide all the time." Now, it is quite certain that Tcatc's remark 

 is not an inductive statement based on a careful study of the few cases 

 of white suicide known to the Mohave (Case 82). It simply reflects 

 the Iklohave feeling that suicide must be frequent indeed in a society 

 that, in their opinion, is characterized by a "shocking" lack of mutual 

 support and by a corresponding "ridiculous" proneness to fall violently 

 in love. Once this is clearly understood, Tcatc's bel ief that the modem 

 Mohave are more prone to commit suicide because of marital and 



