512 BUREAU OF AMERICAN ETHNOLOGY [Bull. 175 



quite clear that the girls mentioned in Case 139 did not avenge the 

 fact that they had been serially abused, but merely retaliated for the 

 burning of their pubic hair, which, to the Mohave, was by far the 

 more grievous offense. Since psychoanalytic experience indicates 

 that the seducer or rapist may always count upon some cooperation 

 from the woman, whose masochistic unconscious craves rape, it is 

 plausible to assume that — as in our own culture — some women get 

 drunk "accidentally on purpose," in order to gratify unconscious rape 

 fantasies without being "responsible" for the coital act. It is, further- 

 more, important to realize in this context that some women who drink 

 to excess are "phallic" — i.e., disolute and hostile — kamalo :y (Devereux, 

 1948 f). Since such women are insatiable precisely because they are 

 orgastically frigid (Hitschmann and Bergler, 1936; Devereux, 1948 

 f), their recurrent intoxication should probably be interpreted as the 

 masochistic provocativeness of women who seek to alleviate their 

 penis envy by inviting many men to "give" them a penis and, at the 

 same time, also to force them to experience fully gratifying sexual 

 relations. The latter hope is hardly ever fulfilled, for three reasons : 



(a) Large amounts of alcohol diminish the woman's orgastic potential. 



( &) Alcoholic excesses decrease the erectile potency of the man. 



(c) Intoxicated men sometimes subject drunlcen women to crude, and almost 

 cruel, practical jokes. Since an incident of this type was published in full else- 

 where (Devereux, 1950 a), it will only be summarized in the present context 

 (Case 139, incident a). 



It seems probable that these serial rapes satisfy the masochistic 

 cravings of alcoholic women precisely by frustrating their phallic and 

 orgastic ambitions. Since the particularly obnoxious kamalo :y is 

 subjected to punitive mass rape, followed by clitoridectomy and some- 

 times even by a laceration of the vulva (Devereux, 1948 f), it is 

 plausible to infer that alcoholic women of this type are caught in a 

 vicious circle, in which the gratification of one wish automatically 

 involves the frustration of another wish. In the case of ordinary 

 women, this vicious circle is often broken by marriage, whereas in 

 the case of the kamalo :y this is accomplished only by mass rape and 

 genital mutilation. In both instances the vicious circle is apparently 

 broken by the acceptance of the feminine role, which, in some cases, 

 was temporarily repudiated, because of a divorce, or of the loss of a 

 lover, or because of liomosexuality (Case 140) . This inference is sup- 

 ported by the fact that many deserted or divorced women drink to 

 excess. Thus, a women was deliberately plied with liquor by the 

 man whom she had asked to reconcile her with her husband, after the 

 man falsely asserted that liis mission had failed (Devereux, 1950 a). 

 Another woman allegedly abetted her husband in killing a witch (be- 

 lieved to have been her adulterous lover) and, after her husband's 

 imprisonment, began to drink to excess (Devereux, 1948 f and Case 



