Devereux] MOHAVE ETHNOPSYCHIATRY AND STJICIDE 535 



culturally standardized, means (Devereux, 1956 b). In fact, it must 

 be suspected that certain individuals are impelled to substitute drmik- 

 enness for compliance with tribal taboos precisely because, in their 

 case, the taboos failed to reduce anxiety to a tolerable level. The 

 tribal taboos in question attempt to cope with anxiety by bringing 

 about a conscious and deliberate suppression of all thoughts about the 

 lost love objects. Alcohol, on the other hand, by providing compen- 

 satory infantile gratifications, tends to diminish the overall level of 

 anxiety, and thus renders tolerable the reemergence of these thoughts 

 into the field of consciousness.^ In fact, intoxication seems to have 

 certain advantages over the process of suppression. By permitting the 

 reemergence of the tabooed thought, it partially enables the individual 

 to "work through" {durchar'heiten) his grief. This interpretation 

 seems to be supported by the observation that many individuals are 

 relatively successful in their attempts to cope with the trauma of 

 losing a love object by resorting to intoxication — witness the fact that 

 indulgence in alcoholic sprees is usually abandoned spontaneously 

 when the deserted woman finds a new spouse (Case 129). 



On the other hand, when the conflict is complicated by incest, 

 witchcraft, or an appreciable amount of latent homosexuality — and 

 perhaps by certain other factors as well — the individual's attempt 

 to "work through" his problem while intoxicated fails, and a vicious 

 circle is established. In such cases the intoxicated person deliber- 

 ately courts disaster, for example, by making damaging confessions 

 (Cases 139, 140). Otherwise expressed, his attempt to cope with 

 his problem psychologically fails and his attempt to "work it 

 through" degenerates into mere "acting out." Nonetheless the above 

 observations clearly indicate that in some instances it is — within 

 limits — possible to think of alcohol addiction as a spontaneous, uncon- 

 scious, and seldom successful attempt at psychological self-healing. 



This view is entirely compatible with Gross' (1935) thesis that 

 toxic and toxoid substances simply accelerate or slow down psychic 

 processes. 



'Whatever the correct interpretation of these phenomena may be, 

 the available case histories clearly indicate that intoxication may be 

 used by the drinker as a means of fleeing obsessive thoughts about 

 the dead, or of thinking of the dead without undue anxiety, or both 

 (Case 137). The fact that the second aim is sometimes not achieved 

 is shown by the self-destructive intoxicated behavior of those whose 

 relationship with the love object was complicated by homosexual, 

 incestuous, and aggi'essive (witchcraft) elements (Cases 138, 139, 

 140). 



•Benzedrine Is reported to have somewhat similar effects (Agoston, 1944). 



