Devereux] MOHAVE ETHNOPSYCHIATRY AND SUICIDE 423 



to accomplish." From that moment ou, she was permanently committed to an, 

 admittedly infantile, pseudo-heterosexuality, whose analysis is our next task. 

 Before we can investigate in detail Sahaykwisa :'s subsequent relationship to 

 laeu, we must briefly discuss the fact that she became not only promiscuous, but 

 also alcoholic, which she could certainly not have been at a time when she was, 

 in her own way, a "model husband." In brief, alcoholism was one of the new 

 symptoms she substituted for her earlier, now inoperative and pointless, homo- 

 sexual symptom. The clue to her choice of this symptom is provided by the 

 Mohave practice of subjecting drunken women to serial assault, supposedly 

 without any feeling of guilt, since — as the Mohave put it — "A drunken woman 

 has it coming to her. She knows what happens to a woman who gets dead 

 drunk" (Devereux, 1948 i). By becoming repeatedly drunk, even though she 

 had been repeatedly attacked ou similar occasions, Sahaykwisa : achieved two 

 major neurotic objectives : 



(1) Actuated by the characteristic repetition compulsion of neurotics, she 

 contrived frequent repetitions of her experience with Haq'au, as well as of her 

 previous "impersonal" experiences as a prostitute, both of which unconsciously 

 gratified her infantile oedipal fantasies. 



(2) By allowing such things to happen to her while intoxicated, she could 

 consciously pretend to herself that she was not responsible for these occur- 

 rences," exactly in the way in which, while functioning as a prostitute, she could 

 use her "economic motivation" and subjective lack of involvement as intra- 

 psychic alibis." 



Unfortunately for Sahaykwisa :, even the dual substitute symptoms of intoxi- 

 cation and repeated subjection to assault did not suflBce to appease the anxieties 

 mobilized by her (psychologically infantile) pseudo-heterosexuality. Once 

 forcibly feminized," it was inevitable that she should fall in love with an oedipal 

 substitute, i.e., with a man of her own gens, much older than herself. Even 

 the fact that she loved this man with such intensity is culturally atypical, since 

 the Mohave seldom fall "romantically" in love (Devereux, 1950 a and pt. 

 3, pp. 91-106). The intensity of her love for Tcuhum is shown by the fact that 

 when he rejected her, she bewitched him so as to be able to possess him forever, 

 fi.rst in dream and then in the land of the dead. 



At this crucial point Sahaykwisa :'s ultimate vicarious suicide, which had 

 previously been vmavoidable only in the psychological sense, also because a cer- 

 tainty in the cultural sense. What one observes, from this moment onward, is 

 the subtle but unerring goal-directedness of the process whereby seemingly 

 strictly idiosyncratic maneuvers were made to implement also the cultural man- 

 date requiring witches to cause themselves to be killed. 



" Prostitutes, many of whom are privately homosexual, are also oedlpally fixated. They 

 are able to ply their trade only because they do not participate in the act psychologically 

 and therefore can view it as an economic (Davis, 1937) rather than as an amorous or 

 "familial" action. This, in turn, enables them not to feel conscious guilt over their in- 

 fidelity to their oedipal love object, or over their violation of society's moral code. Com- 

 pare in this context the insightful witticism : "A gentleman can do anything he pleases, 

 as long as he does not enjoy it." (For the equation white alien = oedipal love object, cf. 

 Devereux, 1950 a.) 



1' La Barre (1939) discussed, at least in passing, the "alibi" and self -exculpating function 

 of intoxication. It is quite liliely that the traditional maxim : "The superego is soluble In 

 alcohol" should actually read : "The superego can be placated by using Intoxication as an 

 alibi." 



^* The well-known psychic equation "oedipal love object = many anonymous men" also 

 operates in such situations. Its detailed discussion would, however, take us too far afield. 



" Assault was a common means for feminizing an aggressive female in Mohave society 

 (Devereux, 1948 f). 



