Devereuxl MOHAVE ETHNOPSYCHIATRY AND SUICIDE 383 



THE WILLING VICTIMS OF WTTCnES 



The simplest form of vicarious suicide is that of bewitched persons, 

 who refuse to cooperate with the shaman called in to treat them and 

 do not reveal to him the name of the witch, even though they know 

 that, unless they do so, they are doomed to die, which is, of course, 

 precisely what they wish to happen. Startling as this may seem to 

 naturalistically oriented men, the notion that the bewitched person 

 may be a willing victim is by no means limited to the Mohave, and 

 appears even in higher cultures. Thus, reliable French historians 

 pointed out that quite a few of the victims of the satanistic poisoning 

 epidemic, which swej)t through the French upper classes during the 

 reign of Louis XIV, were the willing victims of witches and poisoners 

 and refused to reveal the names of the satanists who had harmed 

 them. Moreover, according to these selfsame authorities, the refusal 

 of these victims to betray those who harmed them actually seems 

 "inexplicable," since not all of the victims were themselves so deeply 

 involved with satanism as to have had to dread religious and/or 

 secular punishment, nor were all simply too proud to act as informers. 

 Today, as one reads the eager self-accusations of brainwashed defend- 

 ants in Communist treason trials and as one obtains a deeper insight 

 into the experience of being brainwashed by fanatics, the determi- 

 nation of both Mohave and 17th century French bewitched persons 

 to conceal the identity of the witch and to become the victims of witch- 

 craft becomes more understandable. 



Before discussing this point in detail, it is necessary to stress that, 

 accordmg to the Mohave, the bewitched person usually loves the 

 witch whose victim he (or she) wishes to become, and is, both in 

 waking life and in dream, constantly thinking of the witch. More- 

 over, even though the victim may profess to be physically and/or 

 morally repelled by the witch, there is, allegedly, often a marked, 

 though not wholly conscious, sexual — and often incestuously sexual — 

 attraction present (Case 105). Now, even though it seems unreason- 

 able to love one's magical killer, solid scientific evidence shows that 

 the prisoners of the Communists, who are ceaselessly tormented and 

 interrogated by some official, eventually become extremely attached 

 to the interrogator and are genuinely eager to submit to him and to 

 satisfy him. It is extremely important to stress in this context that 

 the prisoner's eagerness to please the interrogator is not due primarily 

 to fear, since the only way the prisoner can please his interrogator 

 is by incriminating himself, feeling guilty, and demanding "deserved" 

 punishment. This masochistic eagerness for punishment is so strongly 

 developed in the properly brainwashed person, that he does not retract 

 his confession even in court, where neutral newspapermen are present 



