Character and Life Circumstance in Fatal Accident1

Fatal accident is for the psychoanalyst a neglected issue and a fascinating enigma. Apart from the provocative contributions of Sigmund Freud and Karl Menninger, in one direction, and Franz Alexander and Flanders Dunbar, in another, there is little analytic thinking or research in this area. Yet the important challenges and opportunities in this field become quickly apparent. Not only would the study of fatal accidents itself have valuable theoretical and practical import, but light also might be cast on a number of additional issues. These include (a) data relative to the “death instinct” controversy, (b) the relationship between accidental and suicidal death, and (c) the role of unintended action and activity in human life (and death).

For the past two years, a group of Southern California psychoanalysts have been studying fatal and near-fatal accidental death.2 It is the intent of this article to summarize some of this group's theoretical constructs, focusing on those common character traits and life circumstances which are frequently found in situations of accidental death.

Psychoanalytic thinking on accident probably begins with The Psychopathology of Everyday Life. (1) In this book Freud listed some of the causes of ordinary bungled actions. They included (a) self-punishment related to guilt (b) self-injury as a sacrifice to ward off a greater disaster (c) accident as a manifestation of an unconscious desire to dispose of a depreciated object (d) accident as a desire to make contact with an erotic object, and (e) accident as a means of avoiding unpleasant situations.

These methods had in common that the accidental occurrence was a vehicle for the expression of some unconscious impulse; unconscious because the impulse itself or the complex of which it was a part was foreign to the usual consciously accepted attitudes of the individual.

Something more was required to explain serious and fatal accidents. Here Freud's thought turned to the death-in