Cultural factors have a significant impact on the manifestation of psychiatric illness and the development of the ego ideal. The evolution of the widow's cultural role in a South India village provides insight on the ego ideal through several generations. As treatment of widows changed so that their appearance became indistinguishable from other women, they no longer became objects of revulsion. A case study approach documents the interrelationship of changes in the cultural ego ideal on psychiatric illness among widows in a South India village over a period of more than four decades.