Devereux] MOHAVE ETHNOPSYCHIATRY AND SUICIDE 437 



reasons for seeking to kill himself and did not simply indulge in a 

 culturally expected "gesture." Otherwise expressed, precisely because 

 his act is understandable primarily in psychological, and only sec- 

 ondarily in cultural, terms, it cannot be viewed chiefly as a "ritual ges- 

 ture." This finding has a direct bearing upon the problem of char- 

 acterological factors in funeral suicide. 



Characterological factors. — According to the Mohave, funeral sui- 

 cide is a typically feminine reaction pattern, in the same sense in 

 which hi :wa itck (pt. 3, pp. 91-106) is supposed to be a typically mas- 

 culine reaction. This Mohave belief is supported by the fact that — 

 after eliminating the case of Anyanyema:m (Case 111) from the 

 series of cases, on the grounds that it was primarily a subjectively and 

 not a culturally determined act — women who tried to commit (ritual) 

 funeral suicide outnumbered men two to one. 



However, even if one does not eliminate Anyanyema :m's attempt 

 from the case-history series, this does not impair the validity of the 

 Mohave thesis that funeral suicide is a sex-linked reaction. Indeed, 

 the Mohave simply claun that funeral suicide is a typically feminine 

 reaction pattern, which is not the same as claiming that only women 

 do, in fact, commit funeral suicide. Indeed, the thesis that a given 

 reaction pattern or character structure is more feminine than mascu- 

 line does not imply that neurotic men cannot manifest a similar re- 

 action pattern, nor have a passive-feminine ("effeminate") character 

 structure.^^ 



The relevant characterological difference between Mohave men and 

 women appears to be related to their culturally conditioned reaction 

 to the loss of a beloved person, and especially of a spouse or close 

 relative. 



Although even Mohave women concede that women are less stable 

 in their affections than are men, it is the male who is expected to ac- 

 cept emotional losses in a steadfast and stoical manner. Even where 

 the loss is potentially still reversible — for example, before the runa- 

 way wife settles down with another man — the deserted husband is not 

 supposed to do anything to win back his unfaithful wife's affections, 

 nor is he even permitted to display his grief. A man who was not 

 strong enough to shrug off so "trifling" an incident as the loss of an 

 unfaithful wife, had only one permissible alternative, which did not 

 enhance, however, his reputation for true masculinity, since it repre- 

 sented at best a masculine type of patterned misconduct: he could 

 paint his face black and arm himself as though preparing to go on 

 the warpath, and then meet his rival in a more or less formal duel, 

 about which no further details could be obtained in 1932, since, by 



*^ A grotesquely naive inability to grasp this simple point caused one of Freud's early 

 critics to remark that men could not possibly have hysteria, since they had no uterus 

 (hystera = uterus). This critic apparently did not realize that, in uttering this remark, 

 he accepted uncritically the classical Greek belief that the locus of hysteria was the uterus. 



