Devereiix] MOHAVE ETHNOPSYCHIATRY AND SUICIDE 331 



example of such a misdiagnosis is the belief that the stillbirth of cer- 

 tain children is due to psychic causes.'^* 

 Summing up : 



( 1 ) Some deaths may be due to psychic causes. 



(2) Small children deprived of psychologically significant grati- 

 fications actually become — or "make themselves" — ill and sometimes 

 die of such illnesses. 



(3) The IMohave theory that death from psychic causes, especially 

 in children, is a form of psychic suicide is, generally speaking, correct. 

 IMoreover, it actually possesses some of the formal characteristics of 

 a scientific theory. In other words, it is not only objectively correct, 

 but also scientific in the conventional sense of that term. 



(4) The correctness and scientificality of this Mohave theory does 

 not prove that all Mohave diagnoses of psychic suicide are actually 

 correct. In some instances — and especially in the case of still- 

 births diagnosed as psychic suicide — we are clearly dealing with 

 a misdiagnosis. 



(5) The occurrence of such misdiagnoses demonstrates the great- 

 ness of the "cultural mass" of the ISIohave Indians' preoccupations 

 with the idea of suicide in general and with the idea of psychic suicide 

 in particular, because they demonstrably force certain deaths not due 

 to psychic causes into the procrustean bed of their belief that all 

 deaths occurring under certain circumstances are necessarily psychic 

 suicides (Devereux, 1957 a) . 



PRENATAL SUICIDE, OR SUICIDE DURING PARTURITION 



According to well-established and quite elaborate Mohave beliefs, 

 some children refuse to be born and therefore kill both themselves and 

 their mothers by assuming a transversal position (breech presenta- 

 tion) in the womb. 



The principal significance of this belief for an understanding of 

 the role of suicide in Mohave culture is that these "suicides" are 

 thought to be planned by such infants while still in the womb. Hence, 

 the belief that such deaths are suicides gives added meaning and depth 

 to the observation that a great many types of "suicides"— as defined 

 by the Mohave— are committed by persons who have relatiA^ely explicit 

 connections with, or memories of, their intrauterine life (pt. 7, pp. 

 302-303, and passim) . 



Like all major aspects and events of IVIohave life, "intentional" 

 death during childbirth, too, has a quite explicit mythical model. 



The mythical precedent.— The account of INIatavilye's birth de- 

 scribes what we may tentatively call either the first real birth, or else 



"On the basis of my account of this Mohave belief, K. A. Menninger (1040) sngsested 

 that such deaths may actually be due to "prenatal instinctual conflicts." The least that 

 can be said of this thesis is that it is unconvincing. 



492G55— 61 22 



