Citation

Maris R. Suicide Life Threat. Behav. 1982; 12(1): 4-16.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1982, American Association of Suicidology, Publisher John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

7202270

Abstract

The normal human condition is such that even with the best that life can offer suicide is understandable. Life is short, often painful, unpredictable, and lonely. In addition the lives of some individuals are in effect "suicidal careers" in that the harshness of normal life is combined for them with extra suicidal catalysts. Suicide makes sense. Minimally suicide resolves the life problem for the suicide. At the same time suicide is an impoverished self-transformation. Life, as trying and despairing as it can be, is still all we have, The suicide resolves the life problem by obliterating life itself, rather than by transforming self, history, and society. The suicide gives his or her life back inappropriately. In this sense no suicide is ever rational.