Comparison of elderly with young-adult suicides Part I: Is there a suicidal personality?
by Ernest Shulman, Ph.D.
Dozens of research reports have contrasted the key factors in elderly versus young suicides. Differences have been emphasized, similarities usually skipped over. An important reason for this disparity is that recognition of the wide diversity of suicidal motivations has shifted attention from what all who kill themselves have in common. In general, researchers seem to have concluded long ago there is no suicidal personality. But such a conclusion may have been premature.
One way to evaluate the commonalities among suicides is a comparison of the issues that distinguish suicides across the age spectrum. A representative example of the studies emphasizing differences between old and young is Conwell, et al (1996). These researchers reported that suicide risk among the clinically depressed increased with age, whereas psychosis and substance abuse were associated more with young patients.
This article uses Bruno Bettelheim, the psychologist, and George Sanders, the actor, to investigate how their personalities interacted with the stresses of old age, resulting in self-inflicted death. The second article (posted separately) article examines young-adult suicides as a contrast.
Bruno Bettelheim (1903-1990)
Bettelheim, a Viennese Jew, spent ten months in concentration camps after the Germans occupied Austria in 1938. He was released through his business connections, and promptly emigrated to the U.S., rapidly ending up as an American citizen in Chicago. He used his powerful, creative intellect, drive, and ambition to quickly climb the career ladder: psychology professor at the University of Chicago and director of its residential treatment program for autistic children, and author of a succession of best-sellers on his innovative treatment methods (milieu therapy), among other books. Falsely claiming three Ph.D.s and expertise in psychoanalysis and autism (Pollak, 1996), Bettelheim developed an international reputation that imploded only after his death. In reality, he did not cure autism as he insisted, and was despotic and sadistic to the mainly emotionally-disturbed children in his program. His lies included an alleged friendship with Freud.
Bettelheim liked to blame victims for their misfortunes. According to him, Jews under Nazism were largely responsible for their own fates; and, mothers caused autism via hostility to their children. Strangely, he stated that most suicide deaths were accidents when suicide attempts, intended to gain love, went awry (Bettelheim, 1979).
At 81, he began to unravel after his long-suffering wife died. When his abusiveness alienated the daughter whom he tried living with, the now-isolated Bettelheim settled in an assisted-living facility with his many chronic illnesses and stroke-induced mental decline. Then at 87 he took his life with pills and a bag over his head (Fisher, 1992). Key factors in Bettelheim’s suicide (in no particular order): physical ailments, loneliness, and mental decline.
George Sanders (1906-1972)
Sanders always cultivated an attitude of snobbish superiority, leading to a screen persona of sneering villainy and real-life exploitiveness and indifference (Ahearne, 1981). But an all-around, super-competent person (skilled in singing, piano- and guitar-playing, and home decorating and maintenance), he acted magnificently on stage, screen, and TV for forty years, and was known for kindness by the few whom he admitted to friendship.
Born to St. Petersburg aristocrats, the Russian revolution forced him to leave with his family at age eleven, emigrating to England. Without any national allegiances, he lived in various countries at different times, always trying to escape taxes. With his background of nobility, he despised the acting profession, but never found another means of earning money for his preferred luxurious lifestyle. (He attempted two entrepreneurial ventures, losing his shirt both times.)
Notorious for seducing women (often named in divorce cases as co-respondent), or depending on women financially, Sanders married four times. The third, nine-year marriage to Benita, Ronald Colman’s widow, was happy and fulfilling for both parties. After Benita died of cancer, Sanders gradually declined physically and mentally: he lived only five more years, becoming alcoholic, attempting suicide, and finally taking his life with pills in Barcelona at 66. Key factors in Sanders’s suicide: alcoholism and similar problems to Bettelheim’s. Both men fell apart after the deaths of wives who had been their major source of emotional support, contributing to their reaching old age.
Conclusion
The personalities of the two men seemingly predisposed them to suicide. The abusive Bettelheim and the arrogant Sanders both refused to accept social necessities and compromises– lying (Bettelheim) and financial irresponsibility (Sanders). Also, they took advantage of others’ vulnerabilities whenever possible, apparently considering themselves above others. Such tendencies meet the requirements for the “lethal flaw” discussed as the psychological foundation for suicide (Kastenbaum and Aisenberg, 1972), and briefly mentioned by many others (e.g., Litman, 1989, for whom the suicide is saying: “If my life can’t be my way, then it will be no way”). Clark (1993) concluded from his study of elderly Chicago suicides that the deceased differed from living peers only in having a “lifelong character fault” that prevented them from coping with the stresses of normal aging. The two men presented here suggest the possibility a lethal flaw does exist in the personalities of suicides, but the elderly kill themselves only if, in addition, they experience the loss of a vital emotional connection, perhaps in the context of major physical and mental declines (or a different lifestyle threat).
A suicidal personality? Probably, but suicide occurs only if combined with other factors.
References
Ahearne, B. (1981). A dreadful man. New York: Berkley.
Bettelheim, B. (1979). Surviving and other essays. New York: Vintage.
Clark, D.C. (1993). Narcissistic crises of aging and suicidal despair. Suicide and Life Threatening Behavior, 23, 21-26.
Conwell, Y. et al. (1996). Relationships of age and Axis I diagnoses in victims of completed suicide. American Journal of Psychiatry, 153, 1001-1008.
Fisher, D.J. (1992). The suicide of a survivor: Some intimate perceptions of Bettelheim’s suicide. Psychoanalytic Review, 79, 591-602.
Kastenbaum, R. & Aisenberg, R. (1972). The Psychology of Death. New York: Springer.
Litman, R.E. (1989). Suicides: What do they have in mind? In D. Jacobs & H.N. Brown (Eds.), Suicide: Understanding and responding (pp. 143-154). Madison, CT: International Universities Press.
Pollak, R.(1996). The creation of Dr. B.: A biography of Bruno Bettelheim. New York: Simon and Schuster.
About the Author
Ernest Shulman, Ph.D., has a doctorate in social psychology from City University of New York. The author of several published articles in peer-reviewed journals, he is currently completing a book titled, Why They Took Their Lives. Comments on this article would be appreciated; contact him at ERNVICSH@aol.com.
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