Deverenx] MOHAVE ETHNOPSYCHIATRY AND SUICIDE 459 



human — attitude, its emotional charge was probably derived from more sub- 

 jective conflicts. Indeed, at this particular time Hama : Utce: herself had 

 fantasies of punishing her stingy and nagging aunt Tanu :, by committing suicide 

 (Case 115), the way her half brother had done when the selfsame aunt made 

 his life miserable with her stingy selfishness and nagging (Case 114) .^^ 



In brief, Anyanyema :m appears to be the only Mohave who had clearly stated 

 any understandable subjective reasons of some specificity for trying to commit 

 funeral suicide. Otherwise expressed, whereas the other three Mohave known 

 to have tried to throw themselves on a beloved person's funeral pyre appear 

 to have done so in response to a (conditional) cultural mandate, best under- 

 standable in cultural terms, Anyanyema :m's attempt appears to have been 

 motivated "primarily" by psychological factors. Needless to say, this im- 

 pression is probably an erroneous one, since there are cogent reasons for as- 

 suming that even the implementation of the most basic cultural mandates requires 

 a certain degree of supplementary subjective motivation and vice versa of course 

 (pt. 7, pp. 371-431). Hence, an analysis of the (recorded) subjective factors in 

 Anyanyema :m's suicidal attempt also enables one to obtain at least a glimpse 

 of the (unrecorded) subjective motives which impelled three other Mohave 

 Indians to throw themselves on a son's or on a spouse's funeral pyre. The 

 plausibility of this assumption is greatly enhanced by the fact that Anyany- 

 ema :m's known and inferred personal motivation seems adequate both in the 

 light of common sense and in terms of the psychoanalytic conception of the 

 dynamics of mourning. 



ACTIVE SUICIDE 



Active suicide, as defined here, is either an actual attempt to kill 

 oneself by one's own hand, or the wish to kill oneself. In terms of this 

 definition one should — at least in principle — also view funeral suicides 

 as active suicides. However, since the Mohave themselves differentiate 

 both intellectually and attitudinally between ordinary active suicidal 

 acts and attempts to throw oneself on the funeral pyre of a spouse or 

 relative (Devereux, 1942 a; and pt. 7, pp. 431-459), the two are dis- 

 cussed separately. Apart from the fact that cultural tenets oblige us 

 to differentiate between these two types of actual suicide, discussing 

 them separately also has definite expository advantages. By demon- 

 strating in this chapter the extent to which suicides tend to "cluster," 

 even where the survivor does not seek to throw himself on someone's 

 funeral pyre, we can underscore in an especially effective way the 

 extent to which the Mohave view death as contagious. This point is 

 discussed in some detail in the section on the clustering of suicides. 



Any discussion of beliefs, both from the cultural and from the psy- 

 chological point of view, inevitably entails a certain amount of repeti- 

 tiousness, especially if they are supported by copious case material. In 

 order to reduce repetitions to a minimum, it is not intended to discuss 

 in this introductory section the motivation of active suicides in general, 

 nor a number of other aspects of active suicide which are either already 



"1 The foregoing paragraph once more demonstrates to what extent an Informant's state 

 of mind, current problems, and character structure can Influence the •wording and 

 affective charge of his statements concerning genuine tribal attitudes and value systems. 



492655—61 30 



