THE CHINA MAIL, JUNE 2, 1937.
Henry Harris Asks:
Have You
The "Daily Mirror" Psychologist says if he were rich he would open a free Advisory Clinic for those who are Weary of Living.
As he is not rich, he offers in- stead this information and advice, believing that though the subject is gloomy, it may touch any one of us at any time.
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A little understanding at the right moment may save the life of a dear friend or a loved one.
Those who understand the real dangers of loneliness can always do something about it, if they really want to.
HA
Ever-Wanted To Die?
Italy the lowest. Jews are interme- diate-but the rate is rising steeply.
All melancholics are potential self- a fury devour the Self. Demand the has the highest rate, Ireland and killers. Practically all will recover ultimate penalty. Self-destruction. their joy in life completely if diag- nosed in good time and from catastrophe.
shielded And something else is blamed Fin-
ance, overwork, what-not.
needlessly Something that contributes to the form of demoralisation, but is not its prime recognised cause.
Too many people die because this temporary breakdown has not been in its earliest but most dangerous stage. Or because it had been taken trivially.
Here is a case:-
Sometimes the hate finds a partial . external outlet.
For instance, the husband who kills a nagging wife-a faithless A father takes his brilliant stud- wife and her lover then turns the fury of his hate on himself. The ent son to a specialist.
suicide who leaves letters full of spite against the living.
AVE you ever wanted to die? you ever in a spasm of
He is advised that the lad-suf- self-pity flirted with the thought: "Wouldn't they be sorry! Wouldn't fering from "nerves" attributed to overwork should be treated în a they known how I suffered!”
hospital and may kill himself if have. Every course you
left unobserved. person has.
Of normal
But between the momentary spasm of self-pity and the savage irre vocable paroxysm of self-destruc- tion lies a gap.
What is it spans that gap?
The father scoffs.
His boy is. "far too intelligent, far too self-controlled to do a foo- lish thing like that."
In USA, where all races are to in be found, they commit suicide exactly the same proportions. Glamorous Budapest is the most suicidal city in the world.
War-time has a lower rate than peace time.
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Publicans, doctors and lawyers are most suicide-prone: clergymen, farmers, miners and engineers are least.
The man of forty, who has chosen to remain unmarried, increases his risk fourfold.
Odd it is that May has the high- est suicide-rate of the year. May, Howers the 'merry month-when
All potential suicides are essenti- blossom, birds twitter and lovers for ally lonely people. gather.
As if the contrast between the hope without and the hopelessness within were too unendurably poig-
nant.
A week later, the boy is found
Suicide is a man's way out. More beside a poison bottle. Dead!
women try, but more men succeed. To his parents, the whole matter About four to one.
To the is an inexplicable tragedy. doctor it is a case of preventable suicide. Amounting practically a manslaughter.
If we only knew, we could save sixteen lives a day. In this coun- try alone. One for every waking hour in your life.
Experts say that suicide. is preventable disease.
A disease that takes twenty lives for every life lost by railroad, ac- cident or murder. A disease that takes practically as many lives as are lost in all road accidents.
Out of every 1,000 babies born, ten males and three females will ultimately die by their own hand.
to
Almost any psychiatrist knows of “accidents” that he has good rea- son to suspect occurred "accidentally on purpose.”
Tired, lonely old men who jay- walk into motor-buses and demòra- lise their drivers. Motorists with shredded nerves who drive into tele- graph poles.
.
Outwardly you might have notic- We fight tuberculosis. We fight ed nothing. A certain apathy, an cancer. We appoint committees and occasional uncustomary irritability, experts to study how we can reduce perhaps. } the mortality on the roads. But what are we doing to save lives?
Only the expert could have sensed
these the danger-signals of a melancholia
Lives that are, most of them, . above the average. in intelligence
creeping imperceptibly on.
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and capacity. Many of them, from Perhaps the most interesting and among the community's most valu- promising theory-difficult maybe able citizens.
for the layman to understand-is that many suicides are due to sub- conscious feelings of Hate and Guilt.
Already in U.SIA. a committee of doctors, psychologists, economists, experts and socially-minded people have banded to fight this mortality- swelling disease.
There is no single key to the-pro- blem. Causes are many-physical, psychological, social, economic.
Psychological research offers pro bably the most hopeful attack. What are the psychological clues up-to- date?
Simplest theory is that suicide is escape. "He couldn't take it. He refused to play because he couldn't make the rules. And so he walked out on Life.'
Simple but not enough.
is
The external obvious reason only the last straw, The prime cause lies in the Subconscious.
Stekel
world-famous Viennese psychiatrist goes so far as to say: "No man kills himself who
who did not wish to kill another, or at least, did not wish the death of another.”
Civilisation makes man repress the primitive hate that lies deep ∙in every one of us. Conscience may make him repress even the thought
of it.
But deep down in the subcon- scious mind, this unrequited hate- if there is insufficient love to anti- Drink is escape. So is dope. So dote it may grow until it swamps is distraction. What is it makes a the personality. With it, grows a man choose self-destruction? Many feeling of overwhelming guilt that people think that all suicides are shatters the very pillars of the insane.
soul.
That is true of one out of three, Some day this load of unrequited but no more. And these are suffer- hate this burden of unrelieved ing from a form of melancholia that unexpressed
is usually temporary.
guilt
Men
cutting, shooting. Women prefer the passive route- drowning, poisoning.
-strangulation ont active methods
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They lack that sense of “belong- ing." Of meaning something to somebody or even to some group of people.
They are lone wolves and they Pay dearly for it.
With that sense of "belonging,”. one can endure even failure-and disappointment
and poverty. Without it, all the success and all the wealth in the world may be în- supportable.
For there is no Love to banish
the Guilt that are the sworn foes
Psychologists believe there is a deep symbolic meaning in this. For the inner resentment, the Hate and instance, mother-fixated men-tied to the strings of the dominant type of the Joy of Living. of mother tend to prefer the pas- give route.
and
unconfessed
turn inward and in
To feel that you “belong”—to a person, to a group, even to human- ity is the best and only insurance Protestant races are most suicide- against that fateful question: To prone, Catholic races least Germany be or not to be.
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