Suicide in the subway: psychodynamic aspects.

ABSTRACT: Fifty‐one cases of suicide attempts in the subway have been investigated to examine the question of whether the method used has psychodynamic significance or is merely adventitious. We found that no single characteristic distinguished subway suicide from all other suicide modalities, although as a group the subway cases had a higher proportion of psychotic and previously suicidal patients than other series quoted in the literature. However, there were important differences between subway suicide cases seeking a “traumatic” death (jumping in front of a train; lying across the track awaiting destruction) and those seeking a “nontraumatic” death (electrocution on the live “third rail”). The traumatic group had histories of exposure to violence, other traumatic suicide attempts, hostile or destructive delusions, and many “destroy” words on psychological test protocols. The smaller nontraumatic group had no such history of exposure to violence; their previous suicide attempts were nontraumatic; delusions, when present, were not menacing; and the psychological tests showed more “escape” words than “destroy” words.