Devereux] MOHAVE ETHNOPSYCHIATRY AND SUICIDE 379 



idiosyncratic self-destructive impulses. Where these idiosyncratic 

 self-destructive, or self -punitive, impulses are less intense, the person 

 who believes himself to be a witch may not always deliberately 

 maneuver others into killing him, as a "proper" Mohave witch should, 

 but may simply contrive "accidentally on purpose," i.e., quite uncon- 

 sciously, to kill himself by taking foolish risks. This latter type of 

 self-destructiveness was clearly present in the case of Hivsu : Tupo :ma, 

 who, some time after confessing to me that he, too, was a witch, man- 

 aged to sleep off his drunkenness outdoors, m a cold winter night, 

 thus contracting a fatal pnemnonia (Appendix, pp. 505-548) . 



The manner in which individual psychopathology may dovetail 

 with cultural motivation in bringing about a culturally standardized 

 catastrophe is strikingly demonstrated by the case of the witch 

 Sahaykwisa : (Case 105) . From the moment when Haq'au raped her, 

 thereby causing this lesbian to become an alcoholic nymphomaniac, 

 everything she did to gratify her neurotic needs and to escape her old 

 and new difficulties only served to hasten her doom, by involving her 

 more and more in a downward spiraling vicious circle, or quicksand, 

 which is characteristic of almost every kind of functional psychiatric 

 illness (Devereux, 1955 b).*^ Otherwise expressed, it is certain 

 that even if Mohave culture did not expect witches to cause them- 

 selves to be killed, Sahaykwisa: would, nonetheless, have managed 

 to maneuver someone into killing her. In brief, in Sahaykwisa :'s 

 case, purely idiosyncratic psychological factors provide a satisfactory 

 (i.e., psycliologically complete) explanation of her need to be mur- 

 dered, without making it necessary to refer also to culturally deter- 

 mined motivation in order to make her actions understandable. This, 

 however, is but half of the picture. Purely cultural factors aho 

 provide a satisfactory (i.e., culturally complete) explanation of her 

 need to be murdered. Indeed, she bewitched a man whom she loved 

 but also hated for rejecting her advances with insulting references 

 to her former status as a homosexual, and was culturally expected 

 and prepared to long so much for the constant company of her victim 

 that it was socioculturally mandatory for her to contrive her own 

 murder. 



Thus, we are confronted with the seeming anomaly of possessing 

 two equally satisfactory and suijicient explanations of Sahaykwisa :'s 

 vicarious suicide, in terms of two radically different sets of concepts: 

 the psychological frame of reference and the cultural frame of 

 reference. 



It is of utmost importance to stress that the existence of two sets 

 of explanations has logically nothing in common with the well-known 



« A step-by-step discussion of the dynamics of Sahaykwisa :'s drift toward becoming 

 the victim of a killer will be found at the end of her case history (Case 105). 



492655—61 ^25 



