ABSTRACT
In the original ACT textbook, Hayes et al. (1999) cited the example of suicide as evidence for the assumption of destructive normality. Human beings are the only species known to wilfully commit suicide and it is a phenomenon reported throughout all human societies down the ages. Why is it ubiquitous among human cultures and non-existent in other animal species? What is present within humanity that is absent elsewhere? The obvious conclusion is that there is some disadvantage that comes along with our evident cognitive advantages. There is some psychological process, basic to being human, that gives us the potential to suffer so greatly that we would engage in the ultimate form of destructive behaviour, so apparently at odds with our will to survive. It is only in relation to motivations such as escaping feelings of hopelessness, worthlessness or shame that the functions of suicidal behaviour can begin to be understood, and, in turn, it is only with reference to language and derived relational responding, that these motivations make any sense.
