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The author defines as suicidal any person who wishes to commit suicide, who has attempted it, who threatens to do it, whom we fear can do it, or who has
consummated the act. He is convinced that negative feelings in a near relative of the suicidal person have a triggering effect. The successful suicide mobilizes such guilt and mourning in the relatives that these obscure the aforementioned negative feelings. The author conceptualizes his clinical data on the basis of Melanie Klein's theories, citing as an example a family in which the mother was impelled toward suicidal behavior by the projective identification of the husband and children. Immediately after the gesture, the family was pained and saddened. A few days later, however, the husband was angry because she had not succeeded. His negative, aggressive, and cold behavior induced her to tell him that his lack of support, his coldness, and anger were his way of suggesting she kill herself. The husband then became depressed and wanted to kill himself. This is the same process, but inverted; that is, there is a reciprocal play of projective identifications. Mendizabal views suicide as the final act in a long and complicated process between two or more sick people. The person who commits suicide is the one least resistant to the projective identifications, but the whole group is affected by the influence of the suicidal person. The author reminds us that when we treat the suicidal person or his relatives, we will also be the object of projective identifications.