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Suicide is a major cause of death among young people in industrialised countries, often superceded only by death through accident or cancer (Haim, 1969). In addition there are large numbers of young people who attempt suicide: estimates vary from eight to fifty times as many as succeed (Stengel, 1964; Haim, 1969). Yet child suicide, while it does occur, is very rare.
We have still to clarify what it is about the adolescent process that makes suicide possible. Psychiatric literature is of little help, being divided as to the degree and type illness involved in adolescent suicide (e.g. Barraclough et. al., 1974; Balser and Masterson, 1959; White, 1974).
Psychoanalytic literature provides more clarification than is at first evident. Suicide has been a subject of analytic study from the publication of “The Psychopathology of Everyday Life” (Freud, 1901) onwards, but it is not generally recognised that many of the early case histories are about adolescents, and that much of the early theorising sprang from work with young people: the 1910 Symposium of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society (Ed. Friedman, 1967) was related to suicide among students aged between 15 and 20. And recently there have been a number of contributions specifically related to adolescence (Friedman et. al., 1972; Haim, 1969, Havens, 1969; Kernberg, 1974; Schneer and Kay, 1961; Schneer, 1974; Stone, 1973). But each new contribution tends to emphasise one aspect at the expense of others, with the notable exception of Haim (1969) who, unfortunately, does not include clinical material. And Pauline Kernberg, in “The analysis of a fifteen-and-a-half-year old with suicidal tendencies” (1974) comments upon how many of the dynamic factors described in the literature were to be found in her case, but does not attempt to classify