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“Sigmund Freud on Suicide”
Robert E. Litman, M.D.
November 15, 1965 Meeting
The author aims to abstract from Freud's writings his observations on suicide, and to evaluate their contribution to today's understanding of suicide and suicide prevention.
Freud had considerable clinical experience with suicide patients; there are references to suicidal symptoms in all of his published case histories except that of Little Hans. By 1910 he had described: (1) guilt over death wishes, (2) identification with a suicidal parent, (3) refusal to accept loss of libidinal gratification, (4) an act of revenge, (5) an escape from humiliation, (6) a cry for help, (7) the intimate links between death and sexuality. Sadism and masochism were the deepest roots but had no satisfactory place in the instinctual theory of the time. In “Mourning and Melancholia,” Freud states that the ego can kill itself only if it treats itself as an object identified with an originally external hated object.
Dr. Litman believes the associated phenomena of regression, disorganization and ego-splitting deserve even more emphasis than the hostility. Freud made no claim to the final answer to the enigma of suicide. In “The Psychogenesis of a Case of Homosexuality in a Woman,” Freud wrote that suicide was multiply determined, including erotic and masochistic factors. Freud came to his death instinct theory to explain masochism (and suicide). Dr. Litman states that Freud believed suicide represented a product of man and his civilization, a consequence of mental trends found in every human being.
Dr. Litman thinks the general features of the human condition described by Freud (death instinct, ego-splitting, civilization) just begin to account for individual suicides. Specific mechanisms involve breaking down of ego defenses and the release of increased destructive instinctual energy. Predisposing factors toward suicide include, (1) disharmonious ego structure, (2) pre-oedipal libidinal fixations, (3) disease of the supe