Devereux] MOHAVE ETHNOPSYCHIATRT AND SUICTDE 533 



limations related to the newly disinhibited acquisitive impulses is 

 exemplified by Hivsu : Tupo : ma's industriousness as a farmer using 

 modern plows, and by Hama : Utce : 's marked ability to put her good 

 education and striking energy to a creative use in connection with 

 important tribal affairs. A third type of acculturation can best be 

 described as "antagonistic acculturation" (Devereux and Loeb, 

 1943 a) and consists, for example, in adopting the dominant cul- 

 ture's means (tools, techniques, etc.), the better to resist its ends. 

 Though primarily a sublimatory process, antagonistic acculturation 

 nearly always brings in its train also certain types of symptomatic 

 "acting out." Thus, when the Plains Indians obtained rifles, they 

 used these weapons more often in intertribal warfare, than in resist- 

 ing the encroachments of whites upon Indian territories, and thereby 

 hastened the decline and fall of the Plains Indian way of life. 



The manner in which acculturation releases previously inliibited 

 impulses is strikingly highlighted by Tcatc's and Harav He : ya's 

 preconscious awareness of the nexus between incest and alcoholism. 

 If one recalls that the intoxicated Mohave is not aggressive — witness 

 the fact that the only other recorded name pertaining to alcoholism 

 is Yakapetk' Hapa:r (intoxicated hollers), which refers to a rela- 

 tively mild form of aggressivity — one is obliged to conclude that the 

 type of impulse which alcohol first and most strikingly releases in 

 a person and in a group not accustomed to alcohol and having no 

 traditional model for behaving in a particular way when drunk ^ 

 is the impulse which was most consistently inhibited by the aboriginal 

 culture. 



The preceding considerations indicate that alcohol and drinking 

 are sufficiently integrated with the social and psychic life of the JNIo- 

 have to warrant an investigation of the unconscious mechanisms in 

 terms of existing psychoanalytic theories of alcohol addiction. 



■'Such a model Is the well-known Hungarian adage: "The Hungarian rejoices — (when 

 drunk) — by crying" (Si'rva vigad a magyar). It is important to stress in this context 

 that, to the Hungarian, this type of tearful alcoholic "fun" seems an admirable, praise- 

 worthy, and characteristic national trait. Even the type of particular drink which he 

 ingests may provide the drinker with a specific model for drunken behavior. Thus, when- 

 ever a certain young American woman got drunk on champagne, she Insisted on speaking 

 French — though she knew little French — and behaved in an artificially gay (American 

 style), "Parisian" and flirtatious manner. By contrast, when she got drunk on whiskey, 

 she behaved like an average drunken college girl. Culture itself sanctions these variations 

 of drunken behavior in terms of the type of alcohol ingested. In Germany, to get drunk 

 on wine is elegant ; to get drunk on beer Is to be either a solid citizen, or else an admirable 

 college student. An Englishwoman who gets drunk on gin is felt to behave like a member 

 of the "lower class" since only charwomen are supposed to get drunk on gin. Getting 

 drunk on California red wine stamps one as a "vino" — as a drunken bum — while getting 

 drunk on Imported Burgundy vintage wine is the mark of a gentleman. A girl who 

 asks her escort to order sweet champagne might as well admit openly that she is a 

 simple shopgirl ; a lady drinks only "dry" or "extra dry" or "brut" champagne. Compara- 

 able nuances also exist with respect to the smoldng of cigars, cigarettes, and pipes. A 

 young woman analysand, who. In the transference, visualized me as a very tall, solidly 

 built, slow moving, and tweed-clad Invidual — though I am of medium height, slender and 

 move rather quickly — completed this stereotype by saying that I smoked a pipe, though 

 in reality I smoke only cigarettes. 



