Comments

The foregoing bit of material from work in progress should whet the appetite of the psychoanalyst interested in the relation of the individual to his cultural matrix. At first glance the phenomena described here make an impression of strangeness, of something quite different to that to which we are accustomed in our own culture. Therefore it is to be hoped that before this small vestigial culture quite passes from the picture Dr. Aginsky and his group of field workers will gather material against which the analyst may check his expectations. We understand that only a very few aged informants are still alive and that the younger epigones have quite lost sympathy and contact with the old ideology. The material here given lends itself so easily to interpretation along familiar analytic lines that the cautious will be pardoned for asking for further information relative to the genetic background.

Before we concern ourselves with the problems of Pomo ideology of death and mischance (by which I mean the system of rationalization and conscious attitudes towards death and the social customs and rites associated therewith) and the relation of this to suicide among these people, it is well to point out certain things as to statistical expectations. Granting that these people differ in no respect from ourselves as regards the suicidal impulse what would be the expectation of finding any actual instance of it? Probably very remote. Calling our own rate 19 per 100,000 it is apparent that in a tribe which was estimated at 8000 when the Whites came in, at 1700 around the year 1877, and now counts hardly more than 200, suicide would occur only once in many generations. A more exact estimate of the probabilities I would not know how to make, but this much is sufficient to show that no conclusive answer can be expected to factual questions. The fact that no actual cases of suicide were found even in recollection proves nothing at this stage of our investigations.

We are restricted then