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This is a scholarly paper, enjoyable as well as instructive. Freud's thoughts about suicide are fairly well known by now; thus the quest into his possible subjective sources and his own “suicidal” ideas are far more fascinating.
It is good to be reminded of the possible connection between the repression of the suicidal thought, and forgetting (such as Freud's forgetting the painter Signorelli's name) as a symptomatic action. Freud sensed its importance because he introduced a whole volume
on parapraxes with this anecdote. (It must, however, be noted that it was not one of Freud's patients, but a patient of a colleague—a Bosnian Turk—who said to his doctor that life is of no value when sexual enjoyment has come to an end.)
Freud diverted his own uncomfortable thoughts from the topic, suppressing the anecdote not only at that point but later by placing a great emphasis on the libido as life instinct when setting up his theory of the death instinct holding the balance. Earlier, he would not tolerate libido having to do with anything other than sex.
An interesting speculation by Sabine Spielrein went almost unnoticed by Freud. Following his first instinct theory granting that sexual (love) instincts are opposed to life instincts (self-preservation), she contended that instincts represent a kind of suicidal tendency (a pull towards the “little” or temporary “death” in orgasm). This must have displeased Freud who, by then, had turned more and more toward his second instinct theory which encompassed the idea of a separate death instinct. Certainly it also influenced his attitude against acknowledging any kind of libidinal strivings in what he regarded as a final and unadulterated life-destructive goal—the ultimate extinction of life.
However theoretical his deductions, there must also have been subjective factors involved. These, in my view, were not only his pride (accepting the terminal steps in life as self-willed), but also his refusal to accept the hidden libidinal, in