Devereux] MOHAVE ETHNOPSYCHIATRY AND SUICIDE 321 



Confronted with such a loss of scope in tribal life, and with a gen- 

 eral increase in leisure accompanied by a simultaneous loss of normal 

 outlets in daily living, the Mohave, like many other underprivileged 

 people, increasingly looked for escape in a somewhat chaotic sexual- 

 ity and, to a lesser extent, in drinking alcohol (Devereux, 1948 i), 

 not only at formal feasts, which seem to have become less frequent, 

 but also in ordinary life. This meant that, in the course of the last 

 few decades, people spent more time than formerly within the rela- 

 tively narrow circle of family and friends, while the rest of the time 

 they had many, increasingly superficial and fugitive, contacts with 

 "outsiders," which included even some non-Mohave, as well as the 

 white people of Parker and Needles. This, in turn, meant that 

 whereas in aboriginal times the Mohave had meaningful relations of 

 medium intensity with a large number of persons,*^^ after being sub- 

 jected to acculturation he began to evolve a few intense emotional 

 commitments, while reducing the affective content of his numerous 

 fugitive relationships to an absolute minimum. In the sexual sphere 

 this led, on the one hand, to an increasing tendency to "fall in love" 

 with a particular woman, while on the other hand it led to many 

 passing and hasty sexual contacts, almost wholly devoid of subjective 

 elements and affective commitments. Though the average Mohave 

 is still a warmhearted and sincerely outgoing person, the trend just 

 described is definitely present, especially among the young. This 

 point need not be labored further, since it was discussed systematically 

 in the section on the relationship between ethnic character and sui- 

 cide. The one point to be retained is that the Mohave themselves are 

 keenly aware of the nexus between this trend and the supposed in- 

 crease in the suicide rate. As an expert informant put it : "Nowadays 

 people commit suicide when disappointed in love. In aboriginal 

 times people did not, as a rule, fall so intensely in- love ; they had 

 plenty of other interests in life." 



Be that as it may, the Mohave believe that there have always been 

 suicides, though they are convinced that suicides are more frequent to- 

 day than they were formerly. The Mohave themselves attribute this 

 trend to the breakdown of their culture ; a view indirectly substanti- 

 ated by the fact that an unexpectedly large proportion of suicidal 

 persons had had some education. At the same time it is necessary 

 to point out that, in view of the taboo on the name of the dead, old 

 cases of suicide are more likely to be forgotten than relatively recent 

 ones, which may create a mistaken impression regarding the abo- 

 riginal vs. modern frequency of suicides. It might also be mentioned, 

 at least in passing, that no informant seems to have realized that far 



** Thus, the Mohave applies the English term "relatives" both to the Immediate and to 

 the extended family. 



