Devereux] MOHAVE ETHNOPSYCHIATRY AND SUICIDE 425 



of "acting out." Indeed, just as she had previously exposed herself to the 

 unconscious gratifications to be derived from assaults, vpithout being able to 

 enjoy them actually and therefore without having to feel guilty for them, so 

 now she intoxicated herself in order not to be able to flee her murderers. 



The pattern of Sahaykwisa :'s life is, thus, a highly coherent one and fits 

 perfectly also basic psychoanalytic theories of transvestitism and suicide.^ 



In brief, Sahaykwisa :'s detailed case history reveals with great clarity the 

 subjective factors which make the actual implementation of cultural mandates 

 possible, while the briefer witch-killing reports highlight primarily the effects 

 of the cultural mandate which forces the witch to have himself killed. In this 

 case, however, the ultimate killing appears to be inevitable even in purely 

 psychological terms. Sahaykwisa :'s life history enables one to witness the 

 gradual unfolding of certain inner forces, which made her vicarious suicide 

 absolutely inevitable. One notes the perfect identity of her neurotic goal and 

 of the cultural mandate to commit vicarious suicide. One can trace, step by step, 

 the convergence of the psychic process and of the cultural process toward this 

 unified, though Janus-faced, goal. The actual convergence was, no doubt, made 

 possible by the fact that Sahaykwisa : was a Mohave, in the same sense in which 

 the cultural mandate she had to obey was a Mohave mandate. Both she and this 

 mandate were products of the same cultural pattern. 



The one element which still eludes one is the exact way in which seemingly 

 idiosyncratic psychic processes and random external occurrences are subtly, and 

 almost imperceptibly, patterned by cultural expectations, so that the evolution of 

 a neurosis and a series of culturally prescribed responses are forced to converge 

 irresistibly toward the same climax. It is one thing to note this fact and to 

 consider it the basis of all culture and personality studies. It is another thing 

 to grasp the essence of this convergence. The nearest one can come to an under- 

 standing of the real causes of this convergence is the essentially metacultural 

 and metapsychological conclusion that human culture and the human psyche 

 are complementary coemergents. Technically, they admittedly belong to dif- 

 ferent disciplines and are understandable in terms of different frames of ref- 

 erence. However, and in the last resort, both are but different phrasings of 

 man's basic and essential humauness. Were it otherwise, it would be inconceiv- 

 able to speak of a cultural patterning of the personality, when it is evident that, 

 on the one hand, Sahaykwisa : was the kind of neurotic who would have caused 

 herself to be killed even if she had not lived in a culture in which it is mandatory 

 for witches to commit vicarious suicide, and that, on the other hand, being a 

 Mohave witch, Sahaykwisa : would have managed to manipulate someone into 

 killing her even if her life — like that of some other suicidal witches — had been 

 infinitely less traumatic than it actually was.^ 



In the last resort, Sahaykwisa :'s story illustrates both the basic unity of man's 

 bio-psycho-social humanness and the methodological complexities of analyzing 

 the interaction between these constantly converging aspects of man. 



CASE 106 (Informants: Hivsu : Tupo :ma and Hama : Utce:) : 



Tama: rahue, a 40-year-old, fuUblood Mohave of the Mu:th gens, without any 

 formal education, was both a farmer and a shaman, who "like Kwathany 

 Hi :wa" (a notorious witch!), specialized in the treatment of colds, "pneu- 



22 This last argument Is far weightier than Is usually realized. In an earlier puhllcation 

 (Devereux, 1955 a) I estimated the number of persons in whose therapy psychoanalytic 

 theory had been tested at approximately 10,000. A more systematic second estimate is 

 that, to date, some 50,000 to 60,000 persons have had psychoanalyses. There can be few 

 psychological theories which have been so extensively tested and validated. 



23 A technical discussion of the nexus between psychopathological processes and cultural 

 mandates will be found in part 7, pp. 378-382. 



