The author stresses the complexity of the problem of suicide and objects to frequent explanation of suicide as a maladjustment to the immediate present environment. 'Many individuals are potential suicides from childhood on, due to defects in early personality development.'

The author delineates the development of the self and reviews Jelliffe's paleopsychological theory of psychosexual development.

Twenty-five unselected case histories of attempted suicide are concisely reported. Though the patients were not analyzed, the author succeeds in giving 'a longitudinal viewpoint of the life history'. The majority of the patients were separated from one parent before the age of fourteen and the author attributes significance to that condition. He discusses the possible ways in which such an event may damage the development of the personality.