Is Jessie right to end her life?

Presupposing that our consideration of ethical issues can be enriched by examining literary works, this paper focuses on Marsha Norman's play ‘night, Mother. The play describes the last hour and a half in the life of Jessie, a young woman who decides to die by suicide. Before ending her life, Jessie explains to her mother her reasons for her suicide. In the context of the play, these are presented as quite weighty and as, perhaps, justifying her decision. Scholarly research on the play has also treated Jessie's suicide favorably. In this paper I argue that Jessie, and people in similar conditions, are wrong to die by suicide. Among other points, I criticize Jessie's arguments from the impossibility to improve life; the assured termination of suffering; the badness of the world; and the right for suicide. I also criticize arguments in the scholarly literature that view Jessie's suicide favorably, such as the arguments from independence, heroism, authenticity, and emotional closeness.     

Female suicide and wife abuse: a cross-cultural perspective

Data from a number of societies, including North America, indicate that wife abuse may be one of the most significant precipitants of female suicide. Anthropological analysis indicates that in some societies female suicide is a culturally recognized behavior that enables the weak to influence the strong and/or take revenge on those who oppress them. Case studies from West New Britain Province in Papua New Guinea and comparisons with data from other societies suggest that if a woman's support group does not defend her when she is the victim of violence that passes the bounds of normative behavior, her suicide may be revenge suicide, intended to force others to take vengeance on the abusive husband. Research focused on the relationship between domestic violence and female suicide should be a priority of anthropologists as well as suicidologists.     

Dialoguing with My Demon

In this article the author charts the beginning of a journey, a weaving together of personal insights and experiences related to schizophrenia, mostly unwanted, including observations from decades of study as a psychologist and Jungian-oriented therapist/student and dream work from her own analysis. The shock of her mother's death, in conjunction with her adult son's plummet into the world she most dreaded, forced her into a reckoning with a topic she was raised to avoid: a re-examination of her personal history and that of her extended family, and an inescapable invitation to question her precious images, notions, and plans for the ideal life. This invitation to inner dialogue is both distressing and hopeful. What hangs in the balance is a new relationship with her son, her family, and her future.     

The Suicide of Anne Sexton

Anne Sexton, a distinguished poet, killed herself in 1974. Sexton's poems, many of which deal with suicide, read together with a richly researched recent biography – enhanced by the biographer's access to tapes of Sexton's sessions with her psychiatrist and by a foreword by that psychiatrist – permit an unusual opportunity to understand the interrelationship of her illness, her treatment, and the meaning of suicide in her life.     

What is Wrong with “What is Wrong with Rational Suicide”

In “What is Wrong with Rational Suicide,” Pilpel and Amsel develop a counterexample that allegedly confounds attempts to condition the moral permissibility of suicide on its rationality. In this counterexample, a healthy middle aged woman with significant life accomplishments, but no dependents, disease, or mental disorder opts to end her life painlessly after reading philosophical texts that persuade her that life is meaningless and bereft of intrinsic value. Many people would judge her suicide “a bad mistake” despite its meeting “robust” conditions for rationality. Hence, Pilpel and Amsel conclude, even robust conditions for the rationality of suicide “fail to do their job: to exclude intuitively unacceptable suicides from being permissible.” I argue here that this counterexample fails to cast doubt on philosophical attempts to account for the moral permissibility of suicide in terms of its rationality.     

Reply to Nadler: Spinoza and the metaphysics of suicide

Steven Nadler has argued that Spinoza can, should, and does allow for the possibility of suicide committed as a free and rational action. Given that the conatus is a striving for perfection, Nadler argues, there are cases in which reason guides a person to end her life based on the principle of preferring the lesser evil. If so, Spinoza’s disparaging statements about suicide are intended to apply only to some cases, whereas in others (such as the case of Seneca) he would grant that suicide is dictated by reason. Here, I object to Nadler’s interpretation by showing that it conflicts with Spinoza’s metaphysical psychology. Even given Nadler’s interpretation of the conatus doctrine, the possibility that reason could guide a person to commit suicide is incompatible with the conatus of the mind. Spinoza holds that the mind cannot contain an adequate idea ‘that excludes the existence of our body’ (E3p10). Yet, as I argue, in order for reason to guide a person voluntarily to end her life, she would need to have an adequate idea representing her death – an idea that excludes the existence of her body. For this reason, Spinoza's system rules out the possibility of rational suicide.     

Perception of behavioral contagion of adolescent suicide

In order to assess perceptions of behavioral contagion of suicide (what people thought a disturbed adolescent would do if the teen knew about a suicide in the community), and to assess actor-observer differences in such perceptions, 142 college students were asked to view a videotaped vignette of a distressed high school student, and then to assess her potential for committing suicide, running away, entering therapy, or abusing alcohol. Subjects who were told that the teenager knew of two recent suicides in the community (contagion group) rated the young woman as more likely to commit suicide or run away than did the subjects who were not told of the suicides (noncontagion group). Subjects who were instructed to imagine that they were the teenager (actors) blamed situational factors, and in particular the teen's parents, more for her distress than did subjects who were instructed just to rate the teenager on the videotape (observers). Contagion/actors rated suicide as more likely than did any other group. Apparently, people believe that behavioral contagion occurs when a suicide is reported, and they especially perceive themselves to be influenced by such information.     

Mental disorders and suicidal intention

This paper continues a previous report (Litman, 1984) in exploring the use of psychological autopsies to clarify intention in suicide; clinical experience is compared with courtroom experience. The certification of suicide requires a judgment that the deceased intended to use his or her own death to resolve his or her problems of living, as demonstrated by a preponderance of the evidence. Now that suicide has been decriminalized, the issue of "sane or insane" in insurance contracts has probably become irrelevant. Mental disorders are important as part of the suicide constellation, as one element of many interacting factors. The capacity to have the intent to commit suicide--that is, to understand the physical nature of one's own death--is lost due to mental disorders only under special and unique circumstances.     

Absolutism in the diary of a suicide

The incidence of three words indicative of irrational thinking (perfect, always, and never) did not increase in the diary of a suicide over the course of the year preceding her suicide.     

My father,Herbert Rosenfeld

Abstract

This is the modified version of the powerpoint that Angela Rosenfeld, the elder daughter of Herbert Rosenfeld (1910–1986) – one of Melanie Klein's most important collaborators – presented in Nuremberg, his native town, on October 5, 2014, upon the invitation of the German Psychoanalytic Society (DPG). In it, Angela Rosenfeld reconstructs not only her father's main life events, but also her personal relationship to him and the family climate in which she grew up. The traumas brought about by Hitler's rise to power in 1933 are partly still reflected in the holes and/or open questions that the author herself became aware of while writing and presenting the paper – and which profoundly touched and moved her audience.     

Suicide prevention in the Pacific War (WW II).

During the war against Japan, there were two facets of an American program to prevent suicide among the Japanese. One was a research component in the Foreign Morale Analysis Division (FMAD), a subunit of the Office of War Information. The principal FMAD figure who did most of the research on Japanese suicide and ways to prevent suicide among the Japanese military was the anthropologist Ruth Benedict, assisted by her Japanese-American aide Robert Hashima. The second facet was the suicide prevention program itself, which was put into effect toward the end of the war in the battles of Saipan and Okinawa. This program of action was undertaken by American GIs. These unheralded activities in suicide prevention merit a place in the annals of suicide prevention programs.     

Suicide ideation: its relation to depression, suicide and suicide attempt

A random sample of 3,935 adults from a general population were interviewed and asked to report how often they had thoughts of suicide as well as their opinion on the frequency of suicide ideation in others. Depression was found to be related to the respondent's reports of his/her own suicidal thoughts and to reports of frequent suicide ideation in others. A total of 5.4 percent of the respondents reported some degree of suicide ideation in the previous month and 9.1 percent reported that others think about suicide once a month or more. When the demographic characteristics of those who report suicide ideation in themselves or others were compared to those of suicide attempters and committers, some consistencies were found, suggesting that such questions may be useful in identifying those "at risk." Nevertheless, sufficient discrepancies were found which suggest that there may be a number of factors which increase or decrease the likelihood that someone with thoughts of suicide will attempt or commit suicide. Follow-up studies are necessary to uncover such factors and the degrees to which they influence the occurrence of suicide.     

Suicide: Right and reason

Ethical issues surrounding the act of suicide are confounded by the difference between the complexity of suicide and the popular and professional clinical view of suicide. In elaborating these different views, it is shown that the dominant view of suicide as a manifestation of mental illness has a weak scientific base and limits our efforts at understanding the multi-faceted concept “suicide.” In particular, the rationality of those who kill themselves is examined. Finally, the right of a person in our society to take his or her own life is supported; the state is shown to have no base for a compelling interest in preventing suicide.     

Assessment and Management of Suicide Risk in Children and Adolescents

This article presents a pragmatic approach to assessing and managing suicide risk in children and adolescents. We first present general recommendations for conducting risk assessments with children and adolescents, followed by an algorithm for designating risk. Risk assessment and designation should be based on both distal (i.e., a prior history of self-harm behaviors) and proximal (i.e., suicide ideation, plans, intent, and preparations) predictors of suicide attempt. We then discuss safety planning as an easy-to-implement approach for intervening and managing suicide risk when working with children and adolescents. We end with a case example illustrating the implementation of risk assessment, risk designation, and safety planning with an adolescent client and her mother.     

Rational Suicide: An Impoverished Self-Transformation

ABSTRACT: The normal human condition is such that even with the best that life can offer suicide is understandable. Life is short, often painful, unpredictable, and lonely. In addition the lives of some individuals are in effect “suicidal careers” in that the harshness of normal life is combined for them with extra suicidal catalysts. Suicide makes sense. Minimally suicide resolves the life problem for the suicide. At the same time suicide is an impoverished self-transformation. Life, as trying and despairing as it can be, is still all we have. The suicide resolves the life problem by obliterating life itself, rather than by transforming self, history, and society. The suicide gives his or her life back inappropriately. In this sense no suicide is ever rational.     

My Identical Twin Sequenced our Genome

With rapidly declining costs, whole genome sequencing is becoming feasible for widespread use. Although cost-effectiveness is driving increased use of the technology, comprehensive recommendations on how to handle ethical dilemmas have yet to reach a consensus. In this article, Sam shares her experience of undergoing whole genome sequencing. Despite the deeply private nature of the test, the results do not solely belong to Sam; her identical twin sister, Arielle, shares virtually the same genome and received results without a formal consent process. This article explores their parallel experiences as a way of highlighting the controversial ethics of a private test with familial implications.     

A Study of Suicide and Socioeconomic Factors

The topic of suicide has long been an important socioeconomic issue studied in many countries. Suicides inject an atmosphere of unrest into society, and media attention furthers that social uneasiness. From the viewpoint of economics and management, suicide is a waste of human resource: it decreases the labor force in society and deteriorates human capital. This paper provides a series of analyses of suicide rate based on theoretical reasoning and empirical approaches. Aggregate data from G7 countries are obtained and stacked into panel data for analysis. Data are collected for different age groups. Even though suicide issues have been extensively discussed in the past, newly developed econometric tools are applied to her. Beyond previously recognized relationships between economic factors and suicide rates findings include that unemployment strikes men more than women in terms of psychological pressure: for middle age or older women, unemployment may even be positive for the entire family; and female labor force participation exerts pressure on male counterparts and increases its suicide rate. As a result, a low income family with an unemployed man and an employed woman is at high risk for adult male suicide.     

Assisted Suicide: Do We Own Our Bodies?

Abstract:  The ethics of physician‐assisted suicide is explored here in light of classic philosophical discussions of the ownership of one's body plus biblical discussions of the relationship of body and soul. Motives for individual and group suicide are brought to bear on bioethical principles such as that of autonomy. Ethical analysis is here challenged by the case of a 91 year‐old woman, Ragnhild, who lived after professional judgments that her life should be ended.     

A Psychobiographical Analysis of Faith, Hope, and Despair in Suicide

This paper presents a psychobiographical analysis of a young woman who committed suicide over 50 years ago. Among the documents analyzed are her letters, a high-school diary, creative writing, college newspaper book reviews, and academic papers. Using both an Eriksonian and object-relational theoretical framework, the roles of faith, hope, and despair in suicide—and the ways in which these were represented in the young woman's self-system—are analyzed. Although she possessed strong elements of both faith and hope, along with a will to implement them in a purposeful manner, she was prone to the defense mechanisms of splitting, devaluation, and dissociation, which led to an inability to create an abiding sense of self that may have prevented her descent to despair. Among other issues discussed in the article are the usefulness of psychobiography as a method of studying suicide and both the benefits and limitations of spiritual faith in countering depression and suicide.     

Renewal of object relations through dream-work

In this paper I describe my work with a suicidal patient. The patient was a woman who failed to realize her creative potential in a much wished for and unattainable profession of teacher and transferred all her energy and desire for leadership into her family life. The slogan of her life was the pathetic phrase: 'Everything or nothing!' Her views on life differed from those of her husband who, at the age of 48, started a love affair with a 25-year-old woman. In relation to this, the patient became depressed and attempted suicide twice (by poisoning) in two years. From the Toxicology Department she was referred to the Psychiatric Department where she was treated as an out-patient.