Devereux] MOHAVE ETHNOPSYCHIATRY AND SUICIDE 397 



dying a natural death cries on his deathbed, because he regrets losing 

 his retinue of beloved ghosts." 



If one views the witch's motivation against a much broader back- 

 ground, it is striking to note that his attempt to delay the normal 

 metamorphoses of his victims is quite atypical in terms of the normal 

 objectives of Mohave shamanism. Indeed, as Fathauer (1951) rightly 

 stresses, the Mohave shaman does not seek to interfere with the basic 

 processes of nature, or with the basic order of things. In curing, he 

 simply restores that which "should be" (Devereux, 1957 b). Hence, 

 in delaying the metamorphoses of his victims, as well as in other 

 respects, the Mohave witch appears to actualize socially disapprov^ed 

 and culturally dystonic aggressive wishes and fantasies of omnip- 

 otence, which set liim apart from the average man and doom him 

 to a violent death if he externalizes these fantasies by becoming a 

 shaman and a witch, and cause him to become psychotic if he does not 

 (pt. 2, pp. 57-71) . Thus, we can visualize the Mohave witch's vicarious 

 suicide as the final act of his lifelong struggle agamst the stream of 

 time. The witch first seeks to prevent his separation from his mother 

 by refusing to be bom. Next, he attempts to postpone the inevitable 

 separation of the dead from the living and when he fails to do so he 

 hastens his own demise, in order to enjoy a perpetual reunion with his 

 deceased victims in one of the small imaginary eddies which cultural 

 fictions create for the benefit of those who refuse to become reconciled 

 to the passage of time, to change, and to death. (Devereux, 1954 a) 



In conclusion, we must ask why only some Mohave shamans become 

 suicidal witches and why no shaman — except one, who was wrongly 

 accused of witchcraft (Case 106) — seems to have committed actual 

 suicide. It is tentatively suggested that, since the witch is believed to 

 be suicidal and believes himself to be suicidal, the actual implementa- 

 tion of this suicidalness by means of overt acts may not be an absolute 

 psychological necessity. This, admittedly speculative, statement is 

 indirectly supported by the fact that, according to the ;Mohave, there 

 are people who admit that they have shamanistic powers but make no 

 effort to function either as healers or as witches. In such cases the 

 social acceptance of the individual's self-definition, as a person en- 

 dowed with shamanistic powers, apparently gratifies this person's 

 narcissism to a sufficient extent to protect him both from the psychosis 

 of those who refuse to actualize their shamanistic powers and from the 

 suicidalness of those who drift from healing into witchcraft. 



Preparation for the killing.— Even defiantly provocative witches 

 were apparently seldom killed on the spot. Thus, even though 

 Anay Ha:m repeatedly threatened a couple and boasted of having 

 killed their relatives, they did not kill him on the spot, but made 

 relatively careful plans for killing him (Case 104) . Sometimes groups 

 of people plotted to kill a witch whom they held responsible for some 



