Dead End: A Book About Suicide

by John Langone

Discusses attitudes toward suicide throughout history and describes the psychological profile of suicides and ways that someone considering suicide can be helped.

Genres: Death

176 pages, Hardcover

First published September 1, 1986

Reviews

[Qu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dr. Schneidman wonders: If this sense of personal emptiness is at all true of the suicidal person, is it any wonder that suicide notes, written at the very moment when an individual has lost touch with his own past are concerned with the moment's emotions and minutiae and are relatively arid and psychologically barren? ... Suicide notes cannot be the insightful documents which suicidologists would hope that they would be, mainly because they are written during a special psychological state, a state of focused purpose, narrow perception, and psychodynamic denial. It is a state which by its nature, precludes the individual's having access to the full ambivalent details of his own , self-destructive drama and thus diminishes the possibility of his sharing with others in a suicide note, what is truly going on in his mind. In order to commit suicide, one cannot write a meaningful suicide note; conversely, if one could write a meaningful note, he would not have to commit suicide. (Page 130, John Lagnone)

[Elena · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very informative