Suicide survivors who themselves took their lives: Charles Boyer, John Berryman, and Ernest Hemingway
by Ernest Shulman, Ph.D.
Imagine parents in a support group for those who suffered an adult child’s death. They are discussing the impulse they have been feeling to kill themselves. They are not exceptional. According to a survey, many bereaved parents of a suicide consider ending their lives: “The urge to be with the child is … as great as … the need to end the pain” (Blank, 1998, p. 83), “exacerbated by the sense the child is not really dead, but awaits rescue. The search for the dead child is shared by most bereaved parents, whether their lost child was very young or an adult” (Blank, 1998, p. 113.) “This grief leaves a permanent void requiring reorganization of parents’ lives. But at first they struggle to cling to their dead children: They become zombies, members of the walking dead” (Blank, 1998, p. 82). Eventually priorities are reordered, sometimes for the better, sometimes not.
Charles Boyer (1899-1978), Hollywood actor and once the epitome of the handsome French lover, and his devoted, inseparable English wife, Pat, lost their only child. In 1965, Michael, 21, shot himself. The Boyers never recovered.
They sold their possessions, including homes, and moved to Geneva, Switzerland. Although Charles would make five more movies before retiring, the Boyers generally secluded themselves. In private life, Charles was aloof, introverted, humorless (Swindell, 1983); then he became sick.
In 1977, the Boyers traveled to New York for medical tests. Then– tragedy. Pat had terminal cancer. They moved to Arizona where Pat died in 1978, attended constantly during her final months by Charles. The actor, almost 79, intentionally took a fatal dose of barbiturates right after Pat’s funeral.
With no psychiatric history, Boyer could have killed himself just because of Pat’s death. The first year of widowhood produces many male suicides (Stroebe & Stroebe, 1987). But that would ignore the trauma he apparently never overcame after Michael’s death. A Danish study showed that parents of an adult child who suicided take their own lives far more often than if the first death had been non-suicidal (Qin & Mortensen, 2003).
Lifetime grieving episodes may accumulate, especially when incompletely resolved. Suicide attempts occur more often among those still preoccupied after many years with a loved one’s death (Zisook & Lyons, 1989-1990). “The fresh grief for a new loss may often be entangled in grief for other losses, and, quite possibly, each recurrence of grief for one loss may set off grieving for other losses” (Rosenblatt, 1996, p. 54).
Another possibility: the son turned into a role model for his father. Suicide becomes an option for dealing with grief after someone significant has done it– contagion. Suiciding cultural icons– Marilyn Monroe, or fictional heroes such as Goethe’s Werther– had many followers.
John Berryman (1914-1972) was eleven when his father killed himself. During his lifetime, this acclaimed American poet actively contemplated imitating his father, despite years of psychoanalysis. At 57, he jumped to his death from a Minneapolis bridge. Amazingly, Berryman remembered nothing about his father or the circumstances surrounding his death. His mother, Martha, frequently denigrated her late husband’s character and gave contradictory accounts of his suicide in response to her son’s frequent questions (Simpson, 1982). Occasionally, Berryman accused Martha of murdering his father. Failure of verbal memory in a traumatized person occurs often (van der Kolk, 1996b).
Berryman’s selective memory deficit probably derived from a need to retain his mother’s love– he couldn’t honor his father’s memory while maintaining good relations with Martha (Haffenden, 1982). As it was, he often clashed with possessive, domineering Martha. But when necessary, he could induce her tender care with either a fainting fit or a suicide gesture (going out on a narrow window ledge).
Certain questions arise: why did his father’s death preoccupy him permanently; how did guilt feelings interact with that preoccupation; and, did his lifetime suicide contemplation result from his father’s example or from the inner torment he tried to escape via alcohol and sexual addictions? Answers to all such questions can be found by assuming he never stopped grieving– the “delayed stress syndrome” (Widdison & Salisbury, 1989-1990). Symptoms included addictions to alcohol and sexual affairs (van der Kolk, 1996a).
Berryman’s first wife wrote extensively about him. She divorced him neither for his alcoholism nor his infidelity, but for his frequent suicide threats that, though genuine, were also manipulative. Early in their relationship he went over his father’s death. “Throughout the narration he had behaved … as if he were confessing a crime he had committed, as if he had been responsible for his father’s death” (Simpson, 1982, p. 61). This father-preoccupation runs deeply through Berryman’s journals, letters, and poetry, often expressed as anger, and suggesting the suicide had been a deliberate attack on him.
The almost incestuous nature of the mother-son intimacy appears in their collected correspondence (Berryman, 1988). His lifelong extreme devotion may have come somewhat from the strong support she provided for his literary aspirations, and from fear of abandonment (he already felt abandoned by his father) suggested by her conditional love. For example, from prep school he wrote home almost every day as Martha demanded; once he told of a nightmare in which she died: “I must have cried for hours after I woke up and found it was only a dream. <If you ever die> I think I’d kill myself. But De Bebe Dirl isn’t going to, is she?” (Haffenden, 1982, p. 49).
Cain’s (1972) volume contains two studies indicating Berryman’s preoccupation with paternal death, overwhelming guilt feelings, and severe suicidality typified adults bereaved as children by parental suicide.
Little suggests, however, bereavement in adulthood by a parent’s suicide leads to psycyhopathology. Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961), 28 when his father killed himself, had already by then often contemplated taking his life (Donaldson, 1977). Shooting himself at 62 could have had a genetic (among his five siblings, two others also killed themselves) or a contagious cause (father as role model). Nevertheless, his major physical and literary declines might alone have been lethal for someone with such immense egotism.
This brief review only skims the surface of a complex subject. Spousal and sibling bereavement haven’t been specifically mentioned. Yet extrapolating from the above, we may consider age at time of bereavement, and closeness of the relationship (i.e., mutual dependency) in any relationship. The nurturer and the nurtured are both at suicide risk: Boyer as nurturer and Berryman as nurtured both succumbed, whereas Hemingway with a new, independent family and life was apparently less affected. The hereditary factor exists, but this review suggests also the importance of other aspects. It is well known that suicide tends to run in families (Runeson & Asberg, 2003).
Notice, however, that the overwhelming majority of suicide survivors do not take their lives.
References
Berryman, J. (1988). We dream of honour: John Berryman’s letters to his mother. R. J. Kelly (Ed.). New York: Norton.
Blank, J. W. (1998). The death of an adult child. Amityville, NY: Baywood.
Cain, A. (Ed.) (1972). Survivors of suicide. Springfield, Il: Thomas.
Donaldson, S. (1977). By force of will: The life and art of Ernest Hemingway.NY:Viking
Haffenden, J. (1982) The life of John Berryman. Boston: Ark.
Qin, P., & Mortensen, P. B. (2003). The impact of parental status on the risk of completed suicide. Archives of General Psychiatry,60, 797-802.
Rosenblatt. P. C. (1996). Grief that does not end. In D Klass, P. R. Silverman, & S.L. Nickman (Eds.), Continuing bonds (pp.45-58). Washington, D.C.: Taylor & Francis.
Runeson, B., & Asberg, M. (2003). Family history of suicide among suicide victims. American Journal of Psychiatry, 160, 1525-1526.
Simpson, E. (1982). Poets in their youth. New York: Random House.
Stroebe, W., & Stroebe, M.S. (1987). Bereavement and health. New York: Cambridge.
Swindell, L. (1983). Charles Boyer the reluctant lover. Garden City, NY: Doubleday.
van der Kolk, B.A. (1996a). The complexity of adaptation to trauma: Self-regulation, stimulus discrimination, and characterological development. In B.A. van der Kolk, et al. (Eds.), Traumatic stress (pp. 182-213). New York: Guilford.
van de Kolk, B.A. (1996b). Trauma and memory. In Traumatic Stress (pp. 279-302).
Widdison, H. A., & Salisbury, H. G. (1989-1990). The delayed stress syndrome: A pathological delayed grief reaction? Omega, 20, 293-306.
Zisook, S., & Lyons, L. (1989-1990). Bereavement and unresolved grief in psychiatric outpatients. Omega, 20, 307-322.
About the Author
Ernest Shulman, Ph.D., has been a member of AAS since 1982, has a doctorate in social psychology from City University of New York. He has presented over 30 research papers at AAS and other professional conferences, primarily in his specialties of suicidality in famous people and anthropology. The author of several published articles in peer-reviewed journals, he is currently completing a book titled, Identity Crisis. Comments on this article would be appreciated; contact him at ERNVICSH@aol.com.