ABSTRACT
In this chapter it is my aim to show that the destructive force of overpowering affect acting on a friable self is of critical importance to understanding suicide. Elsewhere (Maltsberger 2004), I have provided a detailed discussion of the ways in which the self, through misfortunes of development, is ®ssured, and prone to break apart when stressed. The self, a substructure of the ego, may in some circumstances go to pieces. I propose that this is commonly the case in suicide. Edward Glover (1888-1972), a distinguished London psychoanalyst, gave a paper on suicidal mechanisms at the 1927 Innsbruck Congress. In his talk he tried to show that suicide, `although primarily the result of destructive forces directed through the super-ego, could not come about without a regression of the ego to primitive animistic levels and the adoption of primitive autoplastic methods of dealing with tension based on the processes of primary identi®cation' (Glover 1930: 121).
