Deverenxl MOHAVE ETHNOPSYCHIATRY AND SUICIDE 463 



(4) The voluntary death of one twin is usually followed by the 

 voluntary death of the surviving twin (Devereux, 1941; and pt. 7, 

 pp. 348-356). 



(5) Some women are said to be unlucky, because they are widowed 

 several times. Hence, prospective suitors are warned not to marry 

 them (Devereux, MS., 1935). »3 



(6) It is believed that the victims of witchcraft often do not co- 

 operate with the shamans who seek to heal them, so that, in a sense, 

 they commit vicarious or passive suicide. Then, by cohabiting with 

 their beloved killer — the witch — in dream, they elicit in him such 

 a strong wish to die, that he too seeks to commit vicarious suicide 

 (Devereux, 1937 c; and pt. 7, pp. 387-426). 



(7) Braves who kill people in battle do not expect to live long 

 (Kroeber, 1925 a; and pt. 7, pp. 426-431). 



(8) Scalpers run the risk of becoming insane and/or of dying (pt. 

 2, pp. 43^5). 



(9) Witch killers run the risk of becoming insane and/or of dying 

 (pt. 2, pp. 45^6). 



(10) Funeral ritualists and mourners who violate certain funeral 

 taboos may become insane and/or die (pt. 4, pp. 186-145). 



(11) Some mourners commit funeral suicide. In one instance a 

 father threw himself on the pyre of his son whom his nagging drove 

 to suicide (Devereux, 1942 a, and pt. 7, Case 111, pp. 431-459). 



These explicit data suggest that the Mohave think of death as some- 

 thing "contagious." If implicit data are also taken into account, one 

 notes that, of the six nonclustering suicides, one was committed by a 

 man, all of whose relatives had died (Case 124), and a second by an 

 old woman whose only surviving relative, a son, deserted her in a 

 shameful manner (Case 123). In a third instance, the suicide of the 

 husband (Case 127) was soon followed by the death of his — supposedly 

 guilt-ridden — adulterous wife, from a seemingly psychosomatic ill- 

 ness possibly representing a psychic suicide. In a fourth instance 

 (Case 126) two members of the suicide's gens behaved as though they 

 were not of his gens; they committed adultery with his wife.^ In 

 a fifth case, that of the unjustly accused shaman (Case 106), society 

 as a whole withdrew from him, so that he might as well have had no 

 relatives or friends at all, nor even a membership in the tribe. In 

 the sixth and last "unclustered" case (Case 125) the suicide had already 

 lost his mother and was then actually deserted by his wife. It is not 

 an exaggeration to say that even in these six, seemingly "single," 

 suicides the social situation of the suicide was not unlike that of a 



•'Compare also the belief that marrying an alien may be fatal (pt. 4, pp. 128-150). 



»• The idea that the formal dissolution of kinship ties Is a form of symbolic suicide Is 

 explicit In the Mohave explanation of the symbolic social "suicide" which precedes 

 incestuous marriages (Devereux, 1939 a, and pt. 7, pp. 33&-371). 



