380 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 175 



psychological "overdetermination" of all human actions. The multiple 

 motives subsumed in psychoanalysis under the heading "overdetermi- 

 nation" are all psychological ones and none of these motives, taken 

 by itself, is necessarily expected to explain adequately the entire 

 action under scrutiny. In fact, in many instances the action must 

 subjectively be heavily overdetermined to occur at all.^^ By con- 

 trast, where both cultural and psychological explanations are available, 

 in most cases either of the two suffices to make the occurrence 

 understandable. 



Before we discuss the relationship between these two explanations, 

 formulated in terms of two different frames of references, it is neces- 

 sary to distinguish, first of all, between a satisfactory and sufficient 

 explanation and a complete (reductionistic) explanation. 



It is logically possible, and indeed necessary, to explain a phe- 

 nomenon whose reality one does not wish to deny by providing an 

 explanation which accounts satisfactorily, hut not coinpletely^ for its 

 occurrence. As Meyerson (1921) pointed out, in fully explaining 

 a given phenomenon X, one reduces it to a set of "more basic" phe- 

 nomena A, B, C, etc., thereby logically denying the existence of that 

 phenomenon as an entity sui generis. Hence, any explanation, causal 

 or otherwise, of a given phenomenon which does not seek to deny the 

 existence and reality of that phenomenon by wholly reducing it to 

 other phenomena must, of necessity, be a partial one and, at the same 

 time^ must be su^cient to make that phenomenon understandable and 

 necessary in terms of one frame of reference. This, in turn, inevitably 

 implies that a different, equally partial and yet also sufficient explana- 

 tion of the same phenomenon can be offered also in terms of another 

 frame of reference.^* This finding has certain extremely important 

 implications, which can best be discussed with direct reference to the 

 case of Sahaykwisa :. It was noted that, in explaining her death en- 

 tirely satisfactorily in psychodynamic terms, one left the door open 

 for an equally satisfactory explanation of this occurrence in cultural 

 terms. Yet, neither of these explanations makes the other one false, 

 inconclusive or supererogatory, because, while each of these expla- 

 nations is entirely sufficient to make Sahaykwisa :'s death seem in- 

 evitable, either psychologically or else culturally, neither of the two 

 explanations is com'plete in the sense of heing reductionistic. More- 

 over, neither the psychological nor the cultural explanation, no matter 



" I.e., an American may kill himself because he 1h old, 111, broke, .nnd widowed, though 

 possibly none of these motives, taken separately, cmild have cnused him to commit 

 suicide. Moreover, no matter how much we may synipatliize with his plisht, we recognize 

 that his entire motivation was subjective, since our culture does not expect a man to 

 hill himself for any one of these four reasons, nor even for all four of them in conjunction. 



*' Compare in this context PolncarS's (1901) thesis, that if a phenomenon admits of 

 one explanation, It ■will also admit of any number of other explanations accounting equally 

 well for the characteristics of that phenomenon. 



