Devereux] MOHAVE ETHNOPSYCHIATRY AND SUICIDE 297 



the Mohave believe to be suicides (cf. above). In addition we may 

 also take cognizance of the fact that Mohave suicidalness is part 

 and parcel of the general rebelliousness that pervades Mohave life 

 and culture. Above all, as anthropologists, we must operate as 

 though we accepted unquestioningly the manifestly erroneous Mo- 

 have supposition that certain deaths at childbirth, weaning, etc., are 

 actually suicides, if we are to grasp the function and '■''mass'''' of the 

 idea of suicide in Mohave culture. Otherwise stated, for an anthro- 

 pological understanding of Mohave suicide certain deaths at child- 

 birth, or the symbolic suicide of the young man marrying his cousin, 

 are quite as important as an understanding of bona fide instances 

 of actual suicide. 



In fact, we must even urge the need for distinguishing between 

 two aspects of socially marginal behavior. For example, the state- 

 ment that most petty thieves are drawn from the poorer classes is, 

 strictly speaking, a psychoecological, rather than a sociocultural one. 

 A truly anthropological and sociological study of the role of pov- 

 erty and deprivation in theft must analyze almost exclusively such 

 basic institutional aspects of culture and society as the significance 

 of property, the cultural meaning of wealth and of poverty, social 

 L attitudes toward acquisitiveness, sociolegal distinctions between the 

 Ijj legitimate and the illegitimate transfer and acquisition of property, 

 j. etc. In brief, the socioanthropological purist is entitled to treat the 

 role of poverty in theft chiefly as a social factor, derived from the 

 I basic sociocultural pattern, and to differentiate it from its psycho- 

 ,' motivational force. The distinction just made corresponds to the 

 basic distinction betAveen the pure science of "social pathology" and 



ithe applied or remedial science of "social work." Moreover, it is 

 precisely our failure to differentiate between these two meanings of 

 "poverty as a cause of theft" which seems to handicap us in under- 

 1 standing such phenomena as juvenile delinquency also in psychiatric 

 it terms. Indeed, the psychoecological and sociological motivation of 

 1^ the impoverished juvenile thief is so understandable that it tends to 

 ,[ obscure his subjective, thovigh usually unconscious, motivation. 

 !p Hence, such a limited understanding of the poor boy's thieving can 

 shed no light at all upon the thieving of the rich juvenile delinquent, 

 who is obviously not driven to theft by poverty. If, however, we 

 view poverty as one aspect of a broad institution, which includes 

 • k attitudes toward property and deprivation and also toward the various 

 ways in which property can be acquired, we automatically deepen also 

 our psychiatric understanding of the rich juvenile delinquent, for 

 example, by realizing that, due to an inner quirk, he derives neurotic 

 gratification from the acquisition of property in a reprehensible man- 

 ner (Devereux, 1940 a) and enjoys the thrill of taking senseless and 

 gratuitous, but "romantic," risks. 



