Devereux] MOHAVE ETHNOPSYCHIATRY AND SUICIDE 357 



It is important to stress that in certain forms of social death the 

 "dead" person himself is felt to have contrived his "demise" ; i.e. he 

 is held to have committed "social suicide." Thus, the nobleman who 

 renounced his nobility in order to engage in commerce was thought to 

 have destroyed — at least temporarily — his real social identity and 

 self. He 'put himself beyond the pale, instead of heing sent to Cov- 

 entry, like an ordinary social reject. 



The practical implications and penalties of social death, be it self- 

 inflicted or imposed by society, are variable. The orthodox Jewish 

 father actually denies that his son is still alive, just as medieval so- 

 ciety denied that the gagged recreant knight was still alive. In other 

 instances the outlaw is held to have become an animal. If an in- 

 cestuous Sedang (Devereux, MS., 1933-34, 1937 e) is unable to pay a 

 suitable fine, he is forced to live alone in the forest and is said to have 

 become a wild boar. The same is also said of young men who, having 

 enlisted in the gendarmerie, are not in a position to participate in 

 regular collective rituals. Likewise, medieval German law called the 

 outlaw "vogelfrei," which meant that, like a bird, he could be shot 

 and killed by anyone who chose to do so. In other instances the out- 

 law is treated as a quasi- alien. Wlien an Australian war party ap- 

 proached a smaller camp in order to take revenge for some real or 

 fancied hostile act, the attacked camp often simply handed over to 

 the assailant certain quasi-outlawed (iturka) men to serve as scape- 

 goats for the community. In other instances — as when a Mohave 

 marries his cousin — the bridegroom's "social suicide" involves nothing 

 more than a purely pro forma dissolution of the kinship tie between 

 himself and his bride-to-be. 



The sole purpose of the preceding paragraphs was to emphasize 

 that the idea of social death — or of social suicide — was not invented 

 either by the Mohave or by the present writer, in order to account 

 for a specifically Mohave custom. As the preceding data indicate, 

 the concept of social death (or suicide) is quite widespread, and 

 occurs in a large variety of cultures and at various stages of cul- 

 tural development. A systematic study of social death — with special 

 reference to outlawry — is, however, beyond the scope of the present 

 work. 



SYMBOLIC SOCIAL SUICIDE 



The type of suicide to be discussed in this chapter appears to be a 

 purely symbolic rite, consisting originally of the alienation of a piece 

 of farmland, and, after the introduction of horses, of the killing of a 

 horse belonging to the bridegroom who has contracted an "incestuous" 

 marriage with a kinswoman — usually a second cousin. Unlike other 

 types of illness and death which the Mohave define as "suicides," 



