Devereux] MOHAVE ETHNOPSYCHIATRY AND SUICIDE 461 



both the Mohave as a group, and Tanu :'s niece herself em- 

 phasized that Tanau: was neither racially nor culturally a 

 real Mohave. (As regards Case 111, it is ambiguous in this 

 respect.) 



(3) The means used to commit suicide are conventional and aggres- 

 sive ones in the case of clustered suicides, but often unconventional, 

 passive (suffocation), or obsolete ones in the unclustered cases. 

 All clustered suicides used ordinary and effective weapons, such as 

 guns or knives, whereas 3 out of 6 unclustered suicides used such obso- 

 lete or unusual means as stuffing one's mouth with earth (Case 123), 

 hanging oneself in a particularly gruesome way (Case 124), or else 

 by using two simultaneous means — drowning and poisoning — in order 

 to make doubly sure that one would actually die (Case 106). 



A careful examination of the case material will also reveal other dif- 

 ferences between the two groups. However, the preceding data suffice 

 to show that clustered suicides seem to be more typically Mohave than 

 unclustered ones. 



The causes of clustering seem to be both psychological and cultural. 



(1) Psychological factors responsible for the clustering of suicides 



can best be formulated in psychoanalytic terms. The more acceptable 



one of the two existing psychoanalytic theories of suicide postulates 



that self-destruction is due to an interplay of two mechanisms : 



{a) Aggression against an emotionally significant person is first 



inhibited and is then directed against oneself. 

 (6) The survivor identifies himself with an emotionally signifi- 

 cant deceased person to the point of incorporating him into 

 his psychic economy. This identification is then followed by 

 suicide, which represents a combined mourning and self- 

 punitive reaction. 

 One important point to be mentioned is that, in our own society, the 

 deceased person with whom the suicide identifies himself is usually a 

 parent. A proper evaluation of this finding is impossible unless one 

 stresses that the nuclear family plays a greater role in our society than 

 it does among the Mohave, and that in our society, where life expect- 

 ancy is higher than among the Mohave, fewer young adults tend to be 

 orphans. Nonetheless, an attempt was made to ascertain whether the 

 parents of the suicides were dead or alive, and whether, in any given 

 instance, the deceased person identified with was a parent. Unfortu- 

 nately the cases were not numerous enough to permit one to assert with 

 any degree of confidence that orphaned Mohave adults are more prone 

 to kill themselves than are nonorphaned ones. Moreover, even if such 

 a correlation had been found, it would not have been readily compar- 

 able to a similar correlation in our society, due to the different role of 

 the parent in Mohave society, his smaller life expectancy and the 

 emotionally healthier provisions made for orphans in Mohave 

 society (Devereux, 1956 b). We must hasten to add, however, 



