On the Predictability of Suicide

Abstract

The evaluation of suicide varies with the number of specified aspects employed. Yet none of them is able to offer a predictability of the suicide. Psychiatry acknowledges the fact that suicide is a non-specific symptom, accompanying certain mental disorders, and consequently uses precaution without selective prediction. Psychopathology looks upon the suicidal individual as one who identifies himself with his love object and directs reproaches and aggression against the introjected love object; in the suicidal act he kills the introjected person (Schilder). This only gives the structure analysis of the individual case, and the prediction “the greater the aggression the greater the danger of suicide” does not enable a generalized predictability. Sociological studies offered explanation for statistical coincidences (Durkheim) but failed in construction of a prediction.