Ernest Shulman is a Canadian who has lived in New York City for many years. He is a suicide researcher with a Ph.D. in social psychology from the City University of New York. His specialty is why famous people do or do not kill themselves. He is now at work on a book on the causes of suicide, titled “Thirty Famous Suicides.”

The article has two sections:

Suicide researchers have long believed that those who take their lives have a long history of being suicidal. One specialist referred to this history as a “suicidal career.” I refer to it as a suicidal pathway and do something not previously attempted: analyzing this history by delineating it into six stages, and illustrating the process by discussing it with reference to specific, well-known people.

But different individuals have different personalities and different lifestyles. And so the problem arises of finding common features applying to everyone. In this article I have chosen Hemingway and van Gogh, vastly different types of people, to exemplify the six stages that could be universal or near-universal for suicide completers.

The first stage is trauma, usually occurring in childhood, that starts things off. The second stage is the development of pathological narcissism, strengthening vulnerability or otherwise increasing a suicidal tendency (It must be my way or nothing). The third stage is when a suicidal tendency is touched off by a major life setback or unusual adversity. Fourth stage: resistance to suicide, caused by an inherent life-preserving drive. Fifth stage: loss of resistance when coping methods are unproductive or lose potency if flawed. Sixth stage: last-ditch efforts to survive, marked by self-deception, vacillation, and sometimes uncharacteristic maneuvers. Note: this delineation of stages has never been tested by other means, and currently is a theoretical speculation, though based on previous, piecemeal research of others, not previously orchestrated or integrated.

Part 1

Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961)

This famous writer, a Pulitzer Prize winner and Nobel laureate, shot himself to death in the basement of his Idaho home just after emerging for the second time from the psychiatric ward of the Mayo Clinic. He had agreed with his psychiatrist not to kill himself on Mayo Clinic grounds, but nothing was said about off-the-grounds. His age: almost 62.

He grew up in an intact family in a Chicago suburb, Oak Park, as an all-American boy showing precocious literary talent already in high school. His father, a depressive, was the first in the family to take his life when Ernest, already a best-selling novelist (The sun also rises) was 28. That suicide was later followed by the suicides of both of the father’s sons, and by one of his four daughters. Was the father a role model? Perhaps something serious was amiss in the family dynamics. Probably both factors were operating.

Stage one in Hemingway’s suicidal pathway: a narcissistic mother tried to feminize him against his will. He was dressed as a girl and given a tea set and dolls to play with while under age seven. Even as a toddler he rebelled by emphasizing his masculinity, and later adopted a macho lifestyle. Stage two: pathological narcissism, overt type. Hemingway considered himself specially entitled to deference from others by compteting in everything with everyone, and always finding ways to win. A friend said of him: “He wanted to be a star that shone alone.” He regarded himself as being on a literary level with Tolstoy and approaching Shakespeare’s significance. Stage three: a setback with a woman or, occasionally, inability to beat someone in masculine competition, such as boxing, could put him into a suicidal tailspin. He contemplated suicide sporadically throughout adult life. Stage four: resistance to taking his life took the form of alcohol dependency, daredevil exploits, womanizing, gambling, hunting and fishing, and advocacy of typical masculine virtues, such as physical courage and disregard of personal safety. Stage five: his coping methods ruined his body in accidents, kidney disease, high blood pressure, and especially premature senility. Stage six: willingness to accept psychiatric hospitalization for delusional depression, arranged by his fourth wife fed up with his clinging and paranoid beliefs, such as surveillance of his movements by the FBI. (He had always opposed psychiatry for himself.) The final blow was loss of memory following shock treatment at the Mayo, which prevented him from writing.

During World War I, Hemingway was rejected when he volunteered for the military, but he was accepted in the ambulance service. Assigned to work on the Italian front lines, he was wounded by shrapnel and wrote home from the hospital. “We all offer our bodies and only a few are chosen….Dying is a very simple thing…. If I should have died, it would have been … quite the easiest thing I ever did. And how much better to die in all the happy period of undisillusioned youth, to go out in a blaze of light, than to have your body worn out, and old and illlusions shattered (J.R. Mellow: Hemingway, p. 64).” Hemingway’s early casualness about death lasted throughout his life, as did contemplation of his own suicide.

This suicidal vulnerability is clarified by an excerpt from an overall review of his writing that Hemingway himself endorsed. “Again and again he was writing of the end — the end of love, the end of life, the end of hope, the end of all (J.R. Mellow: Hemingway, p. 479). Another reviewer: “Despite Hemingway’s preoccupation with physical contests, his heroes are almost always defeated physically, nervously, practically: their victories are moral ones (E. Wilson: The wound and the bow, p. 196).” Among the factors in his death were loss of his Cuban home, fishing boat, and friendships when Castro took power; and death messages from his mother. In mid-life he wrote her: “I remember how you used to write me you would rather see me in my grave than smoking cigarettes, etc. (M. Reynolds: Hemingway: the 1930s, p. 90).” The other forbidden habits included drinking, gambling, and fornication, all of which Hemingway indulged.

Machismo governed his living; when senility occurred, loss of machismo determined his death.

Part II

Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890)

This expressionist painter, whose canvases now sell for at least $30 million each, could not sell anything until his last year when one painting was purchased. Not gainfully employed during his last ten years of life, he lived on a stipend from his one lifelong friend, his younger brother, Theo. He shot himself to death in the fields where he was painting near Paris at age 37, realizing that Theo, now with a wife and child, and himself sick (Theo died six months after Vincent) could no longer provide the financial, emotional, and career support he alone had supplied for many years.

Stage one in van Gogh’s suicidal pathway: being treated by his depressed mother as a replacement for the stillborn baby born exactly one year earlier than Vincent, and with the same name. Moreover, the preschooler Vincent was sometimes taken to the gravesite of his namesake where he could view the headstone containing his name and birthday. Stage two: Vincent became oppositional, unsociable, and independent while regarding himself as Christ-like (his father was a Protestant cleric in a Catholic district of Holland). As a child he was already somewhat alienated from his family and regarded as crazy by the local villagers. His pathological narcissism was covert, expressed as extreme humility in such ways as giving away essential personal possessions while a missionary in Belgium, trying to rehabilitate a prostitute and marry her in The Hague, and acting as an unpaid, lay cleric in London. Stage three: outbreak of a suicidal tendency when extremely deprived, as happened when Gauguin rejected him in Arles, or Theo failed him in Auvers (a Paris suburb). Stage four: Vincent resisted suicide in the asylum at St. Remy by continuing to paint canvases in his own style. Stage five: resistance was lost when self-expression via art could not overcome the loss of Theo’s help. Stage six: Vincent’s final effort to survive came through acceptance of psychiatric help in Auvers.

His philosophy of life aids in accounting for his tragic end. An excerpt from a London sermon summarizes his beliefs. “Sorrow is better than joy — and even in mirth the heart is sad — and it is better to go to the house of mourning than to the house of feast, for by the sadness of the countenance the heart is made better…. We only pass through life, we are strangers and pilgrims on earth (M. Bailey: Young Vincent, p. 96).”

Throughout his life, Vincent acted bizarrely at times, especially in relation to women. The 1888 incident of giving a part of one ear to an Arles prostitute is notorious, but is far from unusual for him. In Amsterdam much earlier, he visited the home of a female cousin with whom he had fallen in love, but who was running from his attentions. His uncle greeted him, but said his daughter was not at home. Vincent responded by putting his hand in the flame of a gas lamp, saying he would not remove his hand until the cousin appeared. The uncle then blew out the flame and told Vincent to leave.

Vincent never learned to relate normally to women, and felt deprived of love. His quarrelsomeness, hypersensitivity, and defiance of standard conventions (he dressed like a bum and acted vulgarly, for example) eventually alienated almost everyone. Theo once said: “It is a pity that he should be his own enemy, for he makes life miserable not only for others, but also for himself (C. Nordenfalk: The life and work of Van Gogh, p. 112).” One of van Gogh’s temporary painting companions, van Rappard, said of him: He is “a sombre fanatic… (who) could very often lose his temper and become violent, yet was always worthy of friendship and admiration owing to the nobility of his character and his great gifts as an artist (F. Elgar: Van Gogh, p.31).” Unfortunately, Vincent totally rejected van Rappard over an imaginary insult.

In one of Vincent’s last letters to Theo, he wrote: “If I had not your affection I should be driven remorselessly to suicide. Coward as I am, I should end by committing it (F.Elgar: Van Gogh, p.184).” Fateful words! Tragic ending!

Conclusion

The cause of anyone’s suicide is complex, and includes several interacting factors. Yet the use of generic stages in the suicidal pathway can help, as Hemingway and van Gogh demonstrate, clarify the basis for self-destruction.