Devereux] MOHAVE ETHNOPSYCHIATRY AND SUICIDE 301 



to dread the more shadowy corners of his inner world ; he seems to 

 sense that he can plunge into the unconscious without having to fear 

 that he may not be able to reemerge from it unscathed.*^ Moreover, 

 the Mohave Indian's thirst for experience — which may be due to his 

 sense of aimlessness (Kroeber, 1951) — would naturally push him to 

 explore the deeper layers of the unconscious, be it his own or that of 

 someone else, precisely in the way in which he feels impelled to travel 

 alone to distant tribes, simply for the sake of the experience (pt. 7, 

 pp. 426-341). 



In terms of this conception of the Mohave personality, the Mohave 

 suicide does not seem to be a person who negates the world and seeks 

 to destroy it by destroying himself, who perceives the world. Hence, 

 one is inclined to assmne that the psychic mechanism underlying his 

 suicidal act is a depression and not a quasi-catatonic world destruction 

 fantasy, implemented by suicide. On the other hand the Mohave 

 themselves seem to feel that suicide is committed primarily by very 

 young children and by persons who show certain markedly regressive 

 and infantile trends. It is therefore not altogether impossible that at 

 least some suicides, or self -destructive acts, in Mohave society may be 

 unconscious attempts to escape a true psychotic break (Case 64). If 

 this — admittedly highly tentative — assumption is correct, many cases 

 of Mohave suicide may be viewed as psychosis equivalents. The 

 chief argument in favor of this tentative explanation is the "social" 

 or "human" quasi-death of Mastamho, who, after completing his work 

 as a culture hero or god, turns mto a mindless fish eagle, whose 

 condition closely resembles catatonia (pt. 2, pp. 50-54). 



The limitations of our data and the inherent difficulties of really 

 understanding suicide unfortunately make it inadvisable to elaborate 

 further any of these explanatory hypotheses, whose tentativeness can- 

 not be emphasized too strongly or often enough. Thus, the only facts 

 we can be reasonably certain of are the following: 



(1) Mohave autism complements Mohave reality-directedness. 



(2) The Mohave preoccupation with autistic processes and their 

 cultural equivalents is part and parcel of the Mohave Indian's thirst 

 for intense experiences. 



(3) Most types of suicides, so defined by the Mohave themselves, 

 involve persons who supposedly retain memories of their intrauterine 

 existence, i.e., they involve relatively autistic persons. This finding 



i* possibly suggests that suicide in Mohave society may be both a product 

 of a depression and an escape from, or substitute for, a severe psy- 

 chotic break. 



** This fear is a very real one in most people. I was personally present when an appren- 

 tice psychotherapist flatly refused to "go down" with the psychotic he was interviewing 

 into the more hidden layers of the patient's psyche, "because I am afraid I might not be 

 able to come up again." The Mohave Indian's ability and readiness to empathize with the 

 unconscious of others is discussed in part 8, pages 485-504. 



