The larger part of this paper consists of a historical introduction to the subject in which the contributions of Sadger and Stekel amongst others are freely quoted. Freud's work on 'Trauer und Melancholie' is briefly abstracted, but here the writer's study seems to have been rather inadequate, as witness a question among his conclusions—'Who can accurately describe the mental healing process in a fairly normal individual who has lost a much loved relative?' Four 'case histories' are given (two of dementia praecox and two of manic-depressive insanity) and are subjected to a kind of rough analysis.

Clark concludes that, in a psychiatric setting, one almost invariably finds an onanistic, an incest or an inversion motive at the bottom of the suicidal impulse. On the factors determining the act of suicide itself he is even less precise,