Devereux] MOHAVE ETHNOPSTCHIATRY AND SUICIDE 381 



how satisfactory it may be and no matter how inevitable it may make 

 Sahaykwisa :'s murder seem in terms of its own frame of reference, 

 can possibly be either complete or reductionistic*^ 



The finding that the psychological explanation of a cultural fact 

 can be sufficient^ ivithout necessarily reducing that fact to psychology 

 pure and simple— and vice versa, of course— once and for all disposes 

 of Kroeber's (1952) recurrent fear that a supposedly reductionistic 

 psychology may seek to supersede the science of culture, anthropology. 

 Psychology simply cannot do so, because even its most satisfactory 

 and sufficient explanations are incomplete. Conversely, anthropology 

 cannot swallow psychology, because its most satisfactory and sufficient 

 explanations are also incomplete. A failure to grasp this point is 

 responsible for Kroeber's lifelong (1952) and freely admitted per- 

 plexity over how psychology could be fitted into his theor> of culture. 



Having now clarified the difference between satisfactory psycho- 

 logical and satisfactory cultural explanations of a phenomenon, both 

 of which, though partial, are capable of making that phenomenon 

 seem inevitable and necessary within the respective frames of reference 

 to which they pertain, we may now briefly discuss the logical relation- 

 ship between the psychological and the sociocultural explanation of a 

 given phenomenon. As stated elsewhere (Devereux, 1945 a), there 

 exists a typical complementarity relationship between the psycho- 

 logical and the cultural understanding of a given phenomenon, 

 such as Sahaykwisa :'s maneuvers to cause herself to be killed. The 

 more fully one understands it at a given moment in terms of her indi- 

 vidual psychology (neuroticism), the less one understands simulta- 

 neously (at that same instant) that her maneuvers were also inevitable 

 in cultural terms (vicarious suicide of witches) — and vice versa, of 

 course. When one realizes how absolutely inevitable it was psycho- 

 logically for Sahaykwisa : to contrive her own death by murder, at that 

 moment any cultural explanation seems extraneous and unnecessary — 

 and vice versa, of course.^" 



This being said, the significance of Sahaykwisa :'s case for an under- 

 standing of other actual cases of vicarious suicide among witches and 



" An analogy may help one to understand this point. One can unmistakably Identify 

 a given car either In terms of its mechanical properties — no two cars being mechanically 

 absolutely Identical — or else in terms of its license plate, which denotes the car's legal 

 "properties." Both identifications are absolutely satisfactory, even though neither of 

 the two is complete. 



"The thesis proposed elsewhere (Devereux, 1955 a) that the same inferences re- 

 garding the meaning of a human act can be made either by studying one individ- 

 ual in depth, by psychoanalysis, or one culture in depth, by something lilce the 

 functional method, or by studying the forms in which that trait occurs in a large number 

 of cultures is a direct consequence of the complementarity relationship between the 

 psychological and the cultural understanding of a given trait, in addition to being 

 related to the ergodic hypothesis. Unfortunately, a discussion of this point would take us 

 beyond the legitimate boundaries of the present study. 



