198 2002 study by psychiatrist David Brent: D. A. Brent et al., “Familial Pathways to Early-Onset Suicide Attempts: A High-Risk Study,” Archives of General Psychiatry 59 (2002): 801–7.
198 1985 study of the Old Order Amish: J. A. Egeland and J. N. Sussex, “Suicide and Family Loading for Affective Disorders,” Journal of the American Medical Association 254 (7) (1985): 915–18.
198 “racing one’s horse” and “excessive use of the public telephone”: Jamison, Night Falls Fast, 170.
198 psychiatrist Alex Roy found: Roy et al., “Suicide in Twins.”
199 Looking at attempted suicide: Roy et al., “Attempted Suicide.”
199 adoptions in Copenhagen: R. Schulsinger et al., “A Family Study of Suicide,” in M. Schou and E. Stromgren, eds., Origins, Prevention and Treatment of Affective Disorder (New York: Academic Press, 1979), 277–87.
199 “Reducing suicide”: New York Times, October 8, 1985, C8.
200 “what is being measured:” Shneidman, Comprehending Suicide, 72, 73.
200 “French runs in families”: “High-Suicide Families Eyed by Genetic Scientists,” Boston Globe, www.healthyplace.com/communities/depression/related/suicide.
201 “Taking all evidence”: V. Arango and M. Underwood, “Serotonin Chemistry in the Brain of Suicide Victims,” in Maris et al., Review of Suicidology, 1997, 238.
201 1895 address: Quotations in this paragraph are from “Is Life Worth Living?” in James, Essays on Faith and Morals, 1–31.
202 “Have we a right”: Zilboorg, “Considerations on Suicide,” 15.
202 “The contemporary physician”: Szasz, Theology of Medicine, 68.
202 “Perhaps the greatest contribution”: Hastings, Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, 12: 24.
203 product of psychological disturbance: A few pundits, however, felt that increasing attention to psychological factors created too much sympathy toward suicide. “It is high time for the pulpit and religious press to emphasize strongly the wickedness of suicide,” wrote Bishop Oldham in 1932. “. . . The warranted revolt from the barbarous practice of former centuries, whereby those who took their own lives were buried at a crossroads at midnight, and a stake driven through their bodies, has resulted in a weak sentimentality, and we have ceased to express and, perhaps, to feel the horror we ought.” Literary Digest, July 16, 1932, 20.
203 In England: For a discussion of twentieth-century English suicide law, see Williams, Sanctity of Life, 278–83.
203 “unless there is some outstanding feature”: Ibid., 279.
203 “Intentionally causing”: Larue, Euthanasia and Religion, 37.
204 “There is but one”: A. Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays, trans. J. O’Brien (New York: Vintage Books, 1955), 3.
204 examined fluctuations: Henry and Short, Suicide and Homicide.
204 Jack Gibbs and Walter Martin refined: Gibbs and Martin, Status Integration and Suicide.
204 Departing from Durkheim: Douglas, Social Meanings of Suicide.
204 “A wealthy man”: Menninger, Man Against Himself, 19.
205 “To say that the death instinct”: Zilboorg, “Considerations on Suicide,” 17.
205 a mathematical formula: M. L. Farber, Theory of Suicide (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1968), 75.
PART 3 The Range of Self-Destructive Behavior
Chapter I Winner and Loser
209 “one calm summer night”: E. A. Robinson, “Richard Cory,” in F. O. Matthiessen, ed., The Oxford Book of American Verse (New York: Oxford University Press, 1950), 469–70.
Chapter II Under the Shadow
221 “No one ever lacks”: Pavese, Burning Brand, 99.
222 reported rarity of suicides: Several death-camp survivors have pointed out that there were ways of killing oneself other than active suicide; one had only to approach the barbed-wire fences to be shot by guards, or to relax one’s struggle for survival to succumb. “We all had to fight constantly against the wish to go passively into death,” a survivor told psychiatrist Joost Meerloo. “There is always a moment when a man surrenders, with his soul, with his will, and with his dreams. If that happened in the camps he was lost. Suicide was not even needed.” Meerloo, Suicide and Mass Suicide, 130.
222 “The day was dense”: P. Levi, The Drowned and the Saved (New York: Summit, 1988), 76.
222 “It is impossible”: D. J. Enright, ed., The Oxford Book of Death (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983), 106.
222 “There is no refuge”: J. Bartlett, Familiar Quotations (Boston: Little, Brown, 1980), 450.
223 Manes pulled a knife: Suicide was not an unfamiliar option for Manes; his father, despondent after his wife’s death, killed himself, reportedly by stabbing, when Manes was a young man. Three years after Donald Manes’s death, his twin brother, who had been in treatment for depression, attempted suicide, also by stabbing himself in the chest.
223 he shot himself: Kammerer’s story is told in A. Koestler, The Case of the Midwife Toad (New York: Random House, 1972).
223 David Kelly, a fifty-nine-year-old: The circumstances leading to Kelly’s suicide are detailed in J. Cassidy, “The David Kelly Affair,” New Yorker, December 8, 2003, www.newyorker.com/fact/content.
223 “I have only myself”: Time, November 17, 1980, 94.
224 “Dearest, I feel certain”: L. Woolf, The Journey Not the Arrival Matters: An Autobiography of the Years 1939 to 1969 (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1969), 93–94.
224 “Paradoxical and tragic”: L. S. Kubie, “Multiple Determinants of Suicide,” in Shneidman, Essays in Self-Destruction, 458.
225 “To whom concerned”: P. Friedman, “Suicide Among Police: A Study of Ninety-three Suicides Among New York City Policemen, 1934–1940,” in Shneidman, Essays in Self-Destruction, 438.
225 a few general types: Many of the details in my discussion of murder followed by suicide have been taken from the excellent overview of the subject provided in M. K. Nock and P. M. Marzuk, “Murder-Suicide: Phenomenology and Clinical Implications,” in Jacobs, Harvard Medical School Guide, 188–209.
225 eighty-eight women who had murdered a child: Hendin, Suicide in America, 100–101.
225 “Although such events”: Nock and Marzuk, “Murder-Suicide,” 199.
225 “One central theme”: Ibid.
226 “Good creatures”: A. E. Housman, Complete Poems (New York: Henry Holt, 1959), 185.
226 “If I commit suicide”: Alvarez, Savage God, 125.
226 “Suicide always seeks”: Lifton’s discussion of suicide is found in Lifton, Broken Connection, 239–61.
227 “The impulse to death” and “for some, organic death”: Hillman, Suicide and the Soul, 63, 83.
227 “The suicidal attempt”: Kubie, “Multiple Determinants of Suicide,” 455.
228 “Is it conceivable”: Quotations in this paragraph are found in Pavese, Burning Brand, 89, 48, 365, 366.
229 “being imprisoned”: Styron, Darkness Visible, 50.
229 “as if I were being stuffed”: Plath quotations are from Plath, Bell Jar, 105, 152, 193.
229 “an experience of harassment”: E. Ringel, “The Presuicidal Syndrome,” Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior 6 (3) (1976): 131.
229 “Everything was like”: Shneidman, Voices of Death, 15–16.
230 “The logic of suicide”: Alvarez, Savage God, 116.
230 “some standard domestic squabble”: The description of Alvarez’s attempt and the quotes in this paragraph are from Savage God, 257–72.
Chapter III The Manner of Dying
233 “Take a look at them”: J. M. Cain, Double Idemnity (New York: Vintage Books, 1978), 67.
233 was considered “unseemly”: Jamison, Night Falls Fast, 136.
234 “What a low-minded wretch”: Moore, Full Inquiry, 1: 357.
234 “Hanging is a type of death”: Fedden, Suicide, 231.
234 “Not only have they”: Alvarez, Savage God, 131–32.
234 “Since many Norwegians”:
Hendin, Suicide in America, 144.
235 “Sexual experience”: Ibid., 145.
235 a rash of ninety-three suicides: P. Friedman, “Suicide Among Police,” in Shneidman, Essays in Self-Destruction, 414–49.
235 people have completed suicide by: About half of this list is taken from a similar list compiled by George Kennan in an article for McClure’s and quoted in Menninger, Man Against Himself, 55. The other, more recent, examples are drawn from a variety of books and news clippings.
236 Yet on closer inspection: The nineteenth-century Parisienne who applied one hundred leeches to her body may well have been attempting to cure rather than kill herself, in an era when leeches were a common remedy for suicidal depression.
236 “That the various methods”: S. Freud, “The Psychogenesis of a Case of Homosexuality in a Woman” (1920), in Strachey, Works, 18: 162.
236 “The choice of the manner”: Ellis and Allen, Traitor Within, 125–26.
237 “jumping out”: Meerloo, Suicide and Mass Suicide, 74.
237 stab or shoot themselves: Hendin, Suicide in America, 147–48.
237 “Some suicides use their control”: Ibid., 149.
237 “the multiplicity of methods”: Ibid.
238 “Suicides have a special language”: A. Sexton, The Complete Poems (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981), 142–43.
238 go to great lengths: And they will go to great lengths to insist on suicide. Wrote Pavese: “There is nothing ridiculous or absurd about a man who is thinking of killing himself being afraid of falling under a car or catching a fatal disease. Quite apart from the question of the degree of suffering involved, the fact remains that to want to kill oneself is to want one’s death to be significant, a supreme choice, a deed that cannot be misunderstood. So it is natural that no would-be suicide can endure the thought of anything so meaningless as being run over or dying of pneumonia. So beware of draughts and street corners.” (Pavese, Burning Brand, 87.) Pity, then, poor Heliogabalus, a Roman emperor renowned for his eccentricity. Told by Syrian priests that he’d take his own life, he obtained a golden sword, a rope of imperial purple and gold, and a priceless ring filled with poison. And in case he decided on jumping, he ordered a pavement of jewels to be laid beneath one of his towers to receive his body. Unfortunately, before he had a chance to take advantage of his elaborate preparations, he was murdered by his guards.
238 “A man who has attempted”: Winslow, Anatomy of Suicide, 210.
238 six people who survived leaps: D. H. Rosen, “Suicide Survivors: Psychotherapeutic Implications of Egocide,” Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior 6 (4) (1976): 209–15.
239 Thomas Lynch describes: T. Lynch, The Undertaking: Life Studies from the Dismal Trade (New York: Penguin, 1998), 153. I first read of the story in Jamison, Night Falls Fast, 134–35.
239 In one early project: For a brief summary of research on suicide notes, see C. J. Frederick, “Suicide Notes: A Survey and Evaluation,” Bulletin of Suicidology, March 1969, 17–26.
239 psychiatrist Calvin Frederick: C. J. Frederick, “An Investigation of Handwriting of Suicide Persons Through Suicide Notes,” Journal of Abnormal Psychology 73 (3) (1968): 263–67.
240 “Suicide notes often seem like parodies”: Shneidman, Voices of Death, 58. Collections of suicide notes can be found in Shneidman, Voices of Death, 41–76; Shneidman and Farberow, Clues to Suicide, 197–215; Ellis and Allen, Traitor Within, 170–85; H. Wolf, “Suicide Notes,” American Mercury, November 1931, 264–72; and M. Etkind, . . . Or Not to Be: A Collection of Suicide Notes (New York: Riverhead Books, 1997).
240 “Whether the writers”: Stengel, Suicide and Attempted Suicide, 44.
240 “‘You are not to blame’”: Hendin, Suicide in America, 155.
Chapter IV The Numbers Game
245 A six-year study: Paper presented at a joint meeting of the American Association of Suicidology and the International Association for Suicide Prevention, San Francisco, May 25–30, 1987.
245 studying suicide in Scandinavia: Material in this and the following two paragraphs is from Hendin, Suicide and Scandinavia.
247 at least twenty: D. Baum, “The Price of Valor,” New Yorker, July 12 and 19, 2004, 49.
247 sociologist M. Harvey Brenner: New York Times, April 6, 1982, C1.
248 “The suicide rate seems to mirror”: Kushner, Self-Destruction in the Promised Land, 150–51.
248 “the struggle for existence”: “Suicide in Cities,” American Journal of Sociology 10 (4) (1905): 562.
249 Minneapolis suicides: C. F. Schmid, “Suicide in Minneapolis, Minnesota: 1928–32,” American Journal of Sociology 39 (1) (1933): 30–48.
249 district-by-district survey: P. Sainsbury, Suicide in London: An Ecological Study (London: Chapman and Hall, 1955).
249 studies by psychiatrist Alex Pokorny: A. D. Pokorny, “Suicide and Weather,” Archives of Environmental Health 13 (1966): 255–56; and Pokorny et al., “Suicide, Suicide Attempts.”
250 “A suicidal depression”: Alvarez, Savage God, 79.
250 “It was a spring day”: Kaysen, Girl, Interrupted, 52.
250 “If a person works”: Ellis and Allen, Traitor Within, 21.
250 Steven Stack points out: Stack, “Occupation and Suicide.”
251 “Dentists suffer”: The Straight Dope, www.straightdope.com.
251 one in three psychiatrists: C. L. Rich and F. N. Pitts Jr., “Suicide by Psychiatrists: A Study of Medical Specialists Among 18,730 Consecutive Physician Deaths During a Five-Year Period, 1967–72,” Journal of Clinical Psychiatry 41 (8) (1980): 261–63.
251 “a vocational hazard”: Beam, Gracefully Insane, 217.
251 “It draws workaholics”: Time, February 16, 1981.
252 “You can’t kill yourself by jumping”: R. H. Seiden, “We’re Driving Young Blacks to Suicide,” Psychology Today, August 1970, 24.
253 “Many of these subjects” and “It does not seem surprising”: Hendin, Black Suicide, 139, 145.
253 “To be a Negro”: Seiden, “We’re Driving Young Blacks,” 28.
253 “They believe they have”: Time, September 16, 1985, 33.
254 “You ache with the need”: Ibid.
254 analyzed 437 shootings: Hutson et al., “Suicide by Cop.”
254 “The problem with such speculations”: A. F. Poussaint, “Black Suicide” (paper presented at “The Enigma of Suicide,” a conference sponsored by the Samaritans in Boston, March 24, 1984), 11–12.
255 posttraumatic slavery syndrome: Poussaint and Alexander, Lay My Burden Down, 15. This book offers a comprehensive overview of African-American suicide, and my discussion owes much to it.
255 “There is a type of suicide”: Durkheim, Suicide, 276.
255 “Their expectations of life”: Poussaint, “Black Suicide,” 12.
255 “Black Poets should live”: Poussaint and Alexander, Lay My Burden Down, 110.
256 a study of marital status and suicide: S. Stack, “The Effect of Marital Integration in African American Suicide,” Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior 26 (4) (1996): 405–14.
256 Charles Prudhomme predicted: C. Prudhomme, “The Problem of Suicide in the American Negro,” Psychoanalytic Review 25 (1938): 187–204, 372–91.
256 Harlem’s suicide rate: K. B. Clark, Dark Ghetto: Dilemmas of Social Power (New York: Harper and Row, 1965).
256 A 1998 study traced the rise: J. Neeleman et al., “Suicide Acceptability in African and White Americans: The Role of Religion,” Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 186 (1) (1998): 16.
257 “Perhaps these unifying”: Seiden, “Why Are Suicides,” 5. Also see R. H. Seiden, “Mellowing with Age: Factors Influencing the Nonwhite Suicide Rate,” International Journal of Aging and Human Development 13 (4) (1981): 265–84. And Seiden, “Current Development in Minority Group Suicidology.”
257 a study by Alton Kirk: A. R. Kirk, “Socio-Psychological Factors in Attempted Suicide Among Urban Black Males” (Ph.D. diss., Michigan State University, 1
976).
257 “try to become more assimilated”: A. R. Kirk, “Psycho-Social Modes of Adaptation and Suicide Among Blacks” (unpublished paper, Michigan State University), 10.
257 Part is historical: The medical community’s patronizing attitudes toward African-Americans date back at least as far as 1851, when one prominent Southern physician identified a type of insanity peculiar to slaves: “drapetomania”—the desire to run away. The cure? Light beatings and hard labor. (These attitudes have persisted. In a 1988 experiment, 290 psychiatrists reviewed case studies in which the patients were alternately described as white male, white female, black male, and black female; their diagnoses diverged in two directions: more severe for black males, less severe for white males.) (See Whitaker, Mad in America, 173.) Minorities in general may avoid seeking help from the mental health care system, which is hardly surprising given that, in a system predominately run by and geared toward whites, they have less access. And, according to recent government-sponsored reports, “When they utilize care, minorities are more likely than whites to be misdiagnosed or to receive inferior quality of care.” (Goldsmith, Reducing Suicide, 355.)
257 considered depression: National Mental Health Association, “Depression and African-Americans Fact Sheet” (Alexandria, Va.: National Mental Health Association, 2000).
257 “The internal strength”: Poussaint and Alexander, Lay My Burden Down, 26.
258 Things have changed: After her twenty-year-old son killed himself in 1990, Donna Holland Barnes sought out support groups to help her cope with her grief. She was surprised not to see any other African-Americans. In 1998, Holland, a professor of sociology, cofounded the National Organization for People of Color Against Suicide (NOPCAS), a nonprofit organization devoted to suicide prevention and awareness in the African-American community.
258 “Blacks view suicide”: Kirk, “Psycho-Social Modes,” 11.
258 One of the few large-scale studies: J. C. Smith et al., “Comparison of Suicides Among Anglos and Hispanics in Five Southwestern States,” Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior 15 (1) (1985): 14–26.
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