Death Wishes Research Articles

Family Therapy with Elderly Suicidal Patients: Communication and Crisis Aspects

This article discusses the role of the family in the origins of a suicidal state, and its role in resolving the suicidal crisis, especially when family therapy is available. Death wishes, homicidal ideation, and suicide pact-and-suicide-murder ideation, are present far more frequently than is commonly realized. They all contain a constructive potential in the presence of a competent and experienced therapist. Success in therapy includes a knowledge of how to deal with the communication of suicidal impulses by the suicidal person, the family's communication of feeling burdened and fed up, and the venting of rage. Treatment is based upon the understanding that suicide is a process that is frequently handed down from one generation to the next, and includes several generations at one time. These considerations are illustrated by case examples, mostly from the experiences of the writer, demonstrating how destructive interactions can be transformed into life affirming ones.

Exploring Social Disintegration

Social disintegration is occurring daily in today's modern, democratic society through dehumanization and anti-professionalism, along with enforcement of arbitrary decisions on crucial issues made by ill-informed leaders without adequate research or collaborative consultation with those carrying out the work. All this is justified by global economic rationalism which dictates every part of living today and takes precedence even over human safety and human survival Individuals in society today feel isolated and insignificant as their previously held value systems fail to contain them. For such individuals destructiveness can be seen to be an escape from the unbearable feeling of powerlessness. Mass destructiveness, however; to the extent of disintegrating society, needs to be associated with feelings of primitive omnipotence. In such a state, the problem is not simply that of death wishes, but a wish for total annihilation of the existing society which is perceived to be the enemy. The author explores the psychopathology of social disintegration through the writings and paintings of Edvard Munch, the renowned Norwegian artist, and also attempts to describe how society and its leaders have responded to such annihilatory experiences.

Medieval Crime and Social Control ed. by Barbara A. Hanawalt and David Wallace

REVIEWS social order, but might not necessarily want to reinvent the anus as their symbolic grave. Yet Dinshaw’s success in inflecting postmodernism’s rethinking of history and temporality with the queer and the medieval (she is equally committed to both) is indisputable. Some sense of this is conveyed by the arresting artwork on the cover: a painting by Roger Brown that fuses a Boschian medieval imaginary (lurid flames, silhouetted devils and angels) with a Daliesque (post)modern one (moustaches, strangely windowed beards, swagged curtains). This image perfectly captures the queerly disjunctive temporalities of the premodern and the postmodern that Dinshaw’s book strives to articulate. In this volume Dinshaw has probably done more than any medievalist to compel medievalists and nonmedievalists alike to rethink how we touch the past and how it touches us, as scholars and as bodies. She has raised the stakes for all of us. Ruth Evans Cardiff University Barbara A. Hanawalt and David Wallace, eds. Medieval Crime and Social Control. Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 1999. Pp. xvi, 259. $49.95 cloth. $19.95 paper. This timely collection of essays goes a long way toward defining a field of inquiry frequently mislabeled as ‘‘literature and law.’’ As the editors state in their introduction, questions of law and representation provide ideal venues for the investigation of relations among such diverse sources as ‘‘legal treatises, statutes, court cases, court poems, romances, canonical texts, and comic tales (p. xvi). The study of the law creates a ‘‘common currency of discourse’’ that allows both historians and literary scholars to investigate and challenge ‘‘hard-and-fast distinctions between theory and practice, the ‘fictional’ and the ‘real’, the literary and the historical’’ (p. xvi.). Salutary as such an ambition may be, one might fear that the collection itself would be dominated by textual analyses of legal rhetorics and literary discourse, excluding consideration of the material and social practices of the law and of literature. But as the previous volumes of the Minnesota ‘‘Medieval Cultures’’ series would 551 ................. 8972$$ CH21 11-01-10 12:23:15 PS STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER suggest, this collection achieves its goal of interdisciplinarity without sacrificing investigative rigor. In this sense, it is a model for those wishing to carry on research and scholarship that articulates the past but does not erase its differences from the present. The field set out by this collection might broadly be called ‘‘law and representation’’; all of the essays address—directly or indirectly—the problem of interpreting legal evidence in light of its status as privileged representation, or as the representation of privilege. Because the focus of the volume is on ‘‘crime and social control’’ (rather than, say, property and politics)—on the specific area of the law devoted to relations of power among persons and between persons and institutions—this problem becomes especially pointed. As several contributors remark, crime is a category whose definition can be enforced only by the enfranchised, though it may be invoked rhetorically by any group. Four essays in particular explore the problem: both the first and last chapters (Claude Gauvard’s ‘‘Fear of Crime in Late Medieval France’’ and William Perry Marvin’s ‘‘Slaughter and Romance: Hunting Reserves in Late Medieval England’’) as well as James H. Landman’s ‘‘ ‘The Doom of Resoun’: Accommodating Lay Interpretation in Late Medieval England’’ and William Ian Miller’s ‘‘In Defense of Revenge.’’ Gauvard and Marvin map, in France and England respectively, a general trend toward greater state control over and interest in crime during the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Both illustrate this trend by examining narratives about crime: the Chronique scandaleuse (and predecessors) for Gauvard and the romance Sir Degrevant for Marvin. Marvin in particular does a brilliant job of linking this literary representation to both an act of legislation (the game law of 1390) and a historical series of events (the Northern Rebellion of the Beckwiths in the 1380s). A very different historical focus obtains in Miller’s account of revenge in Icelandic sagas and contemporary ‘‘vengeance films’’ (Death Wish, Dirty Harry, and the like); by illustrating the ways in which revenge in Icelandic culture was bounded and constrained by the law...

Freud and Jung: The Internationalization of Psychoanalysis

Freud and Jung's relationship was characterized by initial, reciprocal idealization. Freud regarded Jung as an ideal non-Jewish representative of psychoanalysis to the wider world. For Jung, Freud was mentor, model, and quasi-therapist. After psychoanalysis was ‘internationally recognized,’ following their trip to America, Freud proposed to make Jung permanent president of the newly founded International Psychoanalytical Association. Jung was to be the virtual sovereign of psychoanalysis. Their relationship gradually deteriorated and ended in reciprocal denigration. Freud's conflicts with Jung and with Jung's divergent theories were reflected in his symptomatic fainting and his scientific writings, e.g., ‘On Narcissism’ and the ‘Formulations on the Two Principles of Mental Functioning’. This was associated with continuing self-analysis, and the analysis of ambivalence and reciprocal unconscious death wishes.

Stage Fright or Death Wish: Sociology in the Mass Media

Let me start from where we are at this point: Almost all of America and a good part of world are discussing sexual politics, peccadilloes, and privileges of president of United States. Stranger than fiction, of course. If I had written a novel that included a nation having a dialogue about whether oral was sex and whether it constituted adultery, it would have l een considered outrageous impertinence and fantasy although perhaps, properly timed, it could have heen a bestseller. On other hand, that unlikely timing has already been accomplished with movie Wag Dogfiction and nonfiction are now forever married. Life and al^t have few koundaries. The nation has indulged in an orgy of gossip. Did he or didn't he? If he did, is lie worse than act? Were his acts i.e., only province of himself and Hillary or do they concern nation? Is adultery so a character flaw that it imperils presidencyor is it merely a statistically likely behavior of powerful men? And, at a more coffee klatch level, is there a difference tetween hidden sins and public probity i.e., would all of it have been acceptal le if it had been discreet? Is problem a woman, women, or taste in women? Are psychologists or sociobiologists correct in their hypotheses about nubile young women and irresistible attractions they present for men? Or is attraction a mixture of culture and psychology allure of bad girls and thrill of l eing a bad boy, especially in White House? And let's not forget a more Freudian analysis. Should we have expected all this as a death wish for overachieving or, more close to subject, oedipal outcome for a child of a flaml oyant mother and an absent father? There is not much sociology here, is there? The debate about president has keen at o ut character, individual behavior, and a morality play. Only a few questions have had any sociological content. The most interesting was reaction to lack of public condemnation of president. When president's approval ratings stayed up, a surprised press (and, more interestingly, surprised kehavioral scientists) were at a l it o f a loss to explain or even interpret data. Current research on nonmonogamy would have suggested a eluite different pul lic reaction condemnation Something sociological was going con although exactly what it was remained uncertain Hundreds o f journalists looked frantically for an authoritative explanation of how president's approval ratings ctuld stay so when his personal actions seemed to violate traditional values of monogamy and honesty At this point and many others many sociologists who study sexuality, marriage, and intimacy were called to comment in print on radio, television, and Internet So we were communicating with pulDlic and perhaps using a sociological frame to explain p ublic's apparent toleration of possil le presidential infidelity incleed, reportedly, repeated infidelities But, as much fun as that kind of discussion can l e, these conversations with worlcl and with press are prol al ly not what we should aim for, not t ecause they aren't high minded enough, but l ecause these scattered observations don't amount to much especially lecause all our commellts are cast in prevailing moral framework and not truly in a sociological one What most sociologists and other social scientists involved in fray of media appearances have been doing is merely hitching o n to a juggernaut that uses them up in drive-by quotatic)ns on random topics If we wish to make a real contribution, we have to frame debate, by creating and interpreting data more polemically, earlier in game o r later, with possil ility of more complete information and contemplation It is hard to gain an audience or create meaning in eye of a storm; we need composure and some distance to assess wreckage There is little any one sociologist can do during media feeding frenzy of a big story They have their story it is rare under any circumstances that journalist is actually doing detective work to find a thesis to proceed from And while the expert may have impression that he or she has reached perfect understanding with a given journalist, this is o ften al out as real as any other relationship begun suddenly and intensely, with limited mutual knowledge of each other and goals that are not necessarily coordinated Courtship by media is a cold sort of affair They act like they love you, and then they're

Sick heroes: French society and literature in the Romantic age, 1750-1850

Illustrations, viii Acknowledgments, ix Conventions, xi Introduction, xii 1 Moving, 1 2 The Unrocked Cradle, 31 3 Doddering Paternities, 54 4 The Unheroic Mode, 84 5 Incest in the Mirror, 109 6 Death Wish, 134 7 An Ending: Julien among the Cannibals, 157 Notes, 179 Bibliography of Primary Sources, 217 Bibliography of Secondary Sources, 225 Index, 243.

Cybersuicide: the role of interactive suicide notes on the Internet.

As we approach the new millennium a new dimension in interactive communications has arrived. The internet is one such medium, and while it remains a relatively new form of information sharing, it has not escaped the attention of vulnerable young people. This paper discusses the internet resources on suicide and the issue of interactive suicide notes. Case examples of interactive notes followed by suicide fatalities are used to illustrate the potential influence of the internet on those who wish to share their suicidal ideation with others. Issues to do with modeling, ambivalence, group death wishes, research, and ethics are discussed. Finally, some recommendations are made for further studies.

Suicidal feelings in a population sample of nondemented 85-year-olds.

The authors studied the 1-month frequency of suicidal feelings among very old people. A population sample (N = 345) of nondemented 85-year-olds in Gothenburg, Sweden, were examined by a psychiatrist. Suicidal feelings were rated by the system of Paykel et al. Mental disorders were diagnosed according to DSM-III-R. Of the mentally healthy subjects (N = 225), 4.0% had thought during the last month that life was not worth living, 4.0% had had death wishes, and 0.9% had thought of taking their own lives. None had seriously considered suicide. The figures were higher among subjects with mental disorders (N = 120); 29.2% had thought that life was not worth living, 27.5% had had death wishes, 9.2% had thought about taking their lives, and 1.7% had seriously considered suicide. Among the subjects with mental disorders, including depression, suicidal feelings were associated with greater use of anxiolytics but not of antidepressants. Women who felt that life was not worth living had a higher 3-year mortality rate than did women without these feelings (43.2% versus 14.2%). This finding was independent of concomitant physical and mental disorders. Mild suicidal feelings are common in elderly subjects with metal disorders but infrequent in the mentally healthy. The substantially higher mortality rate in women who felt that life was not worth living, compared to women who did not, suggests these feelings must be taken seriously. Because of the high suicide rate in the elderly, there is a need for better diagnosis and treatment of mental disorders in this age group.

Checkpoints of dueling dimers foil death wishes

Zoltan N. Oitvai* and Stanley 3. Korsmeyefl *Department of Pathology Northwestern University School of Medicine Chicago, Illinois 60610 tHoward Hughes Medical institute Division of Molecular Oncology Departments of Medicine and Pathology Washington University School of Medicine St. Louis, Missouri 63110 Recent evidence has emphasized the indispensibie role of programmed cell death in the development and mainte- nance of homeostasis within ail multicellular organisms. Genetic and molecular analysis from nematodes to hu- mans has indicated that cellular suicide is highly con- sewed (Hengartner and Horvitz, 1994, and references therein). Thus, it appears that the evolutionary switch from a unicellular to a multicellular existence hinged in part upon the creation of a regulated cell suicide response. A Cell-Autonomous Susceptibility to Dying From an individual cell’ s point of view, signals received from its environment can prompt the ultimate sacrifice: its own demise. The capacity to carry out apoptosis appears to be inherent to most (if not ail) ceils that depend upon an extracellular milieu of survival factors or cell-ceil contact molecules for their viability (Raff, 1992). Yet it is increasingly evident that the decision to die is not solely determined by extraceiluiar signals. in a number of biological systems, the degree of sensitivity to a given death stimulus is cell-type specific. For example, CD4+CD6+ cortical thymocytes are exquisitely sensitive to a wide vari- ety of apoptotic stimuli, while the more mature meduliary thymocytes are resistant. Similarly, in the Drosophila eye, a given signal can effectively rescue cells from apoptosis at one developmental stage, but not at another (Bonini et al., 1993). These observations imply the existence of an autonomous regulation of the apoptotic program. intracellular Checkpoints: The f3cM/Bax Rheostat The resistance of mature meduliary thymocytes to apop- totic signals correlates with a high expression level of the Bcl-2 protein. Bcl-2, originally identified at the t(l4;16) breakpoint in foilicular B cell lymphoma, can counter some but not ail stimuli known to induce cell death (Vaux et al., 1968). Bcl-2 is the founding member of an expanding family of proteins, whose principle homology is clustered within two conserved motifs called the Bcl-2 homology 1 (BHl) and homology 2 (BH2) domains (reviewed by Wii- liams and Smith, 1993). This family includes Bax, a homo- log that dimerizes with itself or with Bcl-2 and that, when overproduced, promotes apoptosis (Korsmeyer et al., 1993). Of note, Bax itself cannot trigger cell death, but requires a cell death signal (Figure 1). Selected mutations

Genesis of apoptosis

EDITOR, - John Goldman's review of the BBC2 Horizon programme “Death Wish” salutes Andrew Wyllie and Alastair Currie for the discovery of apoptosis or programmed cell death but makes no mention of John Kerr of Brisbane.1 The original article on apoptosis, published in …

BBC2 Horizon: "Death Wish" 7 February Genes that fail in their duty?

In an era when science consists too often of armies of researchers using similar techniques to pursue almost identical objectives, it was refreshing to be reminded in this Horizon programme that real advances in biology and medicine start often enough as embryonic ideas in the mind of just one person - ideas which attract little attention or even ridicule from the cognoscenti of the day. Such of course was the fate of Semmelweiss when he proposed in the last century that bacteria transmitted from person to person might be a potent cause of disease, and such might have been the fate of Andrew Wyllie and Alastair Currie had not the current revolution in molecular biology gone some considerable way to proving the merit of their …

Cattle, Capitalism, and Class. Ilparakuyo Maasai Transformations

Photographs Figures and Sketch Maps Preface Acknowledgments 1. Introduction 2. The "Last of the Maasai": Self-Fulfilling Prophecy or Frustrated Death Wish? 3. Class Formation in Historical Perspective 4. Ideology, Religion, and Capitalist Penetration 5. Pastoralism, Egalitarianism, and the State 6. Some Ilparakuyo Views of Peripheral Capitalism 7. The Dynamics of Contemporary Class Formation 8. Ilparakuyo Maasai Transformations: African Episteme and Marxian Problematic Appendix Notes Bibliography Index

Cattle, capitalism, and class: Ilparakuyo Maasai transformations

Photographs Figures and Sketch Maps Preface Acknowledgments 1. Introduction 2. The Last of the Maasai: Self-Fulfilling Prophecy or Frustrated Death Wish? 3. Class Formation in Historical Perspective 4. Ideology, Religion, and Capitalist Penetration 5. Pastoralism, Egalitarianism, and the State 6. Some Ilparakuyo Views of Peripheral Capitalism 7. The Dynamics of Contemporary Class Formation 8. Ilparakuyo Maasai Transformations: African Episteme and Marxian Problematic Appendix Notes Bibliography Index

Fifteenth-Century Studies: Recent Essays ed. by Robert F. Yeager

STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER Calkas's fateful birth (333-34) and his responsibility for T's death, but omits Troiolo's wishes for Calcas's death ([4.]39-40)." This magnificent edition will be of use to every reader of Chaucer. It contains new material for the most experienced scholar, and, price apart, its clear information and literary sensitivity make it ideal for those encoun­ tering the poem for the first time. Because of his learning, accuracy, and hard work, but most of all because of his original sense of how to use scholarship as a direct aid to literary criticism, Barry Windeatt has pro­ duced one of the great editions of Chaucer. C. DAVID BENSON University of Connecticut ROBERT F. YEAGER, ed. Fifteenth-Century Studies: Recent Essays. Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books; Shoe String Press, 1984. Pp. ix, 364. $39.50. Fifteen new essays appear in this collection, classified under three broad subdivisions: Reviews of Scholarship; Language and Paleography; Literary Criticism. Before discussing briefly a few of the very strong essays here (mostly occurring in the Literary Criticism section), it is necessary to say a few words about the structure and organization of the volume as a whole. Fifteenth Century Studies has a certain continuity rare in such collec­ tions, a continuity conveyed by the authors' collective sense that fifteenth­ century literature has long been misunderstood as the gray middle ground between the sparkling Ricardian poets and the first glimmers of the Renaissance makers. Together these essayists are convinced that fifteenth­ century literature is vastly underrated, and, in their turn, are quite con­ vincing. The spirit of this book is therefore revisionist and joyously so. There is much new here and very little thatis derivative or drab; most ofthe essays are spirited and provocative. Professor Yeager has allowed the authors a good deal of flexibility and the chance to reexamine key issues in fifteenth-century studies in ways that should interest not only scholars of Dunbar, Henryson, and Lydgate, but the general student, as well. From Thomas Ross's delightful lexicon of vulgar terms in fifteenth-century English to Larry Benson's somewhat iconoclastic approach to the idea of 270 REVIEWS courtly love in the later Middle Ages, Fifteenth Century Studies is a readable and thought-provoking gathering of viewpoints. Professor Yeager's opening remarks establish the context for the essays and the logic of the collection's arrangement. Fifteenth-century English literature remains an underdeveloped area of study,lagging far behind the literature of other medieval centuries in such fundamentals as bibliogra­ phies and reliable texts (for example,Yeager notes that scholars must still rely on the MacCaulay edition of Gower for most lesser-known Gower texts).With the intention of stimulating further inquiry,the first group of essays reviews the scholarship on: Gower (R.F.Yeager); Lydgate (A.S.G. Edwards); Hoccleve Uerome Mitchell); Henryson (Louise 0.Fradenburg); and Douglas and Dunbar (Florence H.Ridley).As a group these essays are unexpectedly refreshing.Bibliographical reviews are likely to become dry recitals of what has gone before,but here the authors' voices are distinct and individual.Edwards's essay,to name but one example,opens with the following: "The time seems to be slowly passing when Lydgate can be seen as a particularly arid stretch of desert interposed between the hanging gardens of Chaucer and the manicured lawns of Wyatt and Surrey." The same fresh spirit is evident in Mitchell's review of Hoccleve studies,which concludes with a positive and enthusiastic view of the present state of scholarship. The second section,on Language and Paleography,opens with Derek Pearsall's "Text, Textual Criticism, and Fifteenth Century Manuscript Production," an essay which reviews (very broadly) typical problems faced by editors of medieval texts (questions of scribal authority, mainly). Pearsall's main point is that scholars must examine every feature of a medieval manuscript in a concerted effort to avoid confining "our view of modern poetry within the scholarly intensive-care unit provided by the modern critical edition." Just as this essay represents what might be called a traditional English approach to texts,John H.Fisher's "Caxton and Chan­ cery English " represents a particular strength of American...

Well-Child Visits

Sir .—I was greatly disturbed to read the article Well-Child Visits Revisited by Dr Hoekelman (Journal1983;137:17-20), which should have been entitled A Death Wish for Pediatrics as a Specialty. Whether we need more or fewer well-child visits is not what will be pounced on by reviewers of medical journals; the issue is whether it would seem that there is or no value to what most pediatricians are doing most of the time. The philosophy of less is better reminds me of the old vaudeville act that reduced the ten-word telegram to no telegram at all by showing that most of the words were unnecessary—and look what has happend to Western Union! I am then reminded of a conference that took place during my residency at which academicians discussed what we practicing pediatricians should carry in our little black bags. In the course of the conference, items were flung

A Sociopsychiatric Interpretation of Terrorism

Definitions of terrorism are imprecise and difficult. Even the units of analysis are not uniform, and existing typologies are merely descriptive. Forecasting, however, particularly middle-and long-range, would improve if we could provide a valid theoretical formulation. This would have to be interdisciplinary and should encompass both the idioverse of the terrorist and the universe of the terrorist events. Psychiatric contributions are few and they lack general validity. Violence and death wishes, which translate into fantasy war, are generally accepted characteristics. Four theories are briefly discussed: (1) frustration-aggression, (2) unbalance of the social system, (3) Olson's rational choice, and (4) Marxist theory. A subcultural approach would allow consideration of group and individual factors and would permit some valid policy choices.

The wish to die and the wish to live in attempted suicides.

The internal struggle hypothesis of suicidal behavior suggests that suicidal individuals wish both to die and to live. To test this hypothesis, spearate self-ratings of the Wish to Die and the Wish to Live were obtained from 64 women and 42 men hospitalized for suicide attempts. The dependent variable was the severity of suicidal intent assessed by a quantitative instrument. The results indicate that 50% of the sample experienced internal debates over death and life, 40% wanted to die, and 9% wanted to live. Internal struggle over the issues of death and life was related to lower suicidal intent scores than a unidirectional motivation toward death. It also appeared that the actual magnitudes of death and life wishes were not as crucial to suicidal intent as the degree of congruence between them. However, two-way analysis of variance yielded only a significant Wish to Die main effect. The discussion centers on the heterogeneity of the sample's motivational stance and the therapeutic and empirical usefulness of the scales to identify ambivalent and monambivalent patients.

Can the Foundations of Education Survive? Grappling with our Death Wish

Can the Foundations of Education Survive? Grappling with our Death Wish

Psychosocial Analysis of Cancer Deaths

In addition to biological activity and cancer treatment, psychosocial considerations may influence both the quality of survival and its length. The investigators used information from psychological autopsies of cancer deaths, and correlated observed survival (measured in months beyond expected survival) with psychosocial findings. Patients who lived significantly longer tended to maintain cooperative and mutually responsive relationships, especially towards the end of their lives. Patients with death wishes, depression, apathy, and long-standing mutually destructive relationships survived for shorter periods than expectable. Why longevity occurs in some patients, but not in others, may be related to different traits which create alienation in personal life and in caretaking staff as life draws to a close. More assertive patients ask for and get better attention and services, and as a result, may live longer and die better deaths.

Death Wish in Academe: Memoir of a Faculty Senate Chairman

Death Wish in Academe: Memoir of a Faculty Senate Chairman