Il6 THE FEEBLY INHIBITED. 



IX. THE SPECIFICITY OF THE SUICIDAL IMPULSE. 



We have seen that "suicide" is not inherited, but only a tendency 

 to an impulsion that leads to suicide; and we find that suicides arise 

 out of two quite different soils. It might be concluded that there is 

 nothing specific in the impulsions to suicide. It is, on the other hand, 

 conceivable that, though only a general vague tendency to suicide is 

 inherited, yet, when suicide occurs, it may not always be due to a 

 diffuse impulsion to destruction, using the first means at hand, but it 

 may be, in some cases, an impulse to do a specific act to throw one- 

 self into the water, or out of a window, or to cut one's throat, or to hang 

 oneself. Indeed, there is no a priori reason for thinking that an 

 impulsion to throw oneself out of the window is more closely related to 

 the desire and purpose to hang oneself than it is to no impulsion at all. 



The impulse is, indeed, quite distinct from the act. Only a small 

 proportion of those who have the impulse to throw themselves from a 

 height actually do so. Most persons inhibit the impulse; it is the 

 feebly inhibited who give way to it. A fine insight into the nature of a 

 suicidal impulse is given by a woman (45 : 1 15) whose brother suddenly 

 hanged himself without any assignable cause, but in consequence of a 

 long-standing idea of suicide. His sister, who has long been subject to 

 impulsions toward suicide and homicide, after her husband's death 

 "struggled constantly with suicidal thoughts. It seemed to her that 

 she could hear the river calling to her to come, and she could imagine 

 herself running gladly out into the water and lying down in its arms. 

 The joy of the thought was so intense that it was almost like an ecstasy, 

 and it was all that she could do to keep from answering the river's call." 

 This lady is naturally of a happy, cheerful disposition and not subject to 

 depressions. There is, doubtless, here a sexual longing mixed up with 

 a self-destructive impulse like that shown by other members of her 

 family. Hammond (1883, p. 447) has evidently cases of this sort in 

 mind when he says: 



"In some cases of emotional morbid impulse to suicide, the contemplation 

 of the act is attended with feelings of pleasure. A man kills himself because 

 he wishes to do so, and because of the satisfaction to be derived from gratifying 

 his impulse. His intellect is not necessarily deranged; he acts with a full 

 knowledge of what he is doing; and, if the circumstances require it, he employs 

 the most systematic and recondite stratagems in order to accomplish his 

 purpose. He is neither governed by delusions nor by logical reasons. He is 

 simply actuated by a passion which it is pleasant for him to gratify." 



Many writers have been struck by the fact that several suicides of a 

 family often use the same means and often at about the same age. 

 One of the most remarkable instances is given by Hammond (1883, 

 p. 79) as having occurred in his own experience. 



"A gentleman well to do in the world, but with a slight hereditary tendency 

 to insanity, killed himself, in the thirty-fifth year of his age, by cutting his 



