serotonin in the brain, impulsivity, and suicide and/or murder. In a researchstudy more specifically related to murder-suicide, Rosenbaum (1990) discoveredthe murder-suicide perpetrators to be vastly different from perpetrators ofhomicide alone. Whereas murderer-suicides were found to be highly depressed andoverwhelmingly men, other murderers were not generally depressed and more likelyto include women in their ranks.The Psychology of Murder-SuicideIn a retrospective study of homicide-suicides between Australian adultsexual intimates, Easteal (1994) concluded that there were two subtypes of murder-suicide -- elderly partners facing deteriorating health conditions and males whowere estranged from their female partners and pathologically possessive of them.It is the latter category of murder-suicide which is the concern of this article.In Iowa a spate of murder-suicides have occurred over the past few years(Clayworth & Erb, 1998). The significance of the wave of spousal murder-suicidesin Iowa (representing over one-quarter of the total homicide rate for the year) isthat in every case the man did the killing; the killing all seemed to have emergedin conjunction with marital break-up.The theory linking homicide with suicide is not new. Psychoanalytical literature,in fact, has long proposed a link between homicidal and suicidal tendencies.Freud’s extensive work on the unconscious, however flawed, helped students ofpsychology, such as Freud’s granddaughter, to see that “surfaces mirror only oneaspect of human motives, and that each visible aspect of human behavior carrieswithin it, its very opposite” (Freud, S., 1998: 459). A major contribution wasFreud’s notion of the death instinct. This notion is concisely summarized in abook on the social reality of death by Charmaz (1980): In Freud’s view, the deathinstincts exist in conflict with life instincts in a similar way as the asocial idis in conflict with the socially imbued superego. The death instincts then becomemediated by the ego into aggressive acts outside the self.This behavior is construed by Freud as normal behavior. When there is severerepression of natural instincts due to early childhood abuse, however, followingFreudian logic, one may theorize that the death instinct could emerge in a twistedform. Ernest Becker (1973), whose theories on the human notion of death isstrongly psychoanalytical, views the fear of death as a universal phenomenon, afear which is repressed in the unconscious and of which people are largelyunaware. The fear of death, nevertheless, can move individuals toward heroism,but also to scapegoating as well. Failed attempts to achieve heroism, accordingto this view, can lead to mental illness and/or antisocial behavior.The relationship between murder and suicide has been elaborated upon by Menninger(1938). Following Freud’s conceptualization of suicide or self-murder, Menningerargued that suicide involves the wish to kill, to be killed, and to die. Thoseprone to suicide, as Menninger further suggests, are immature individuals fixatedat early stages of development.Suicide by copA second major literature source for the “death wish” comes from lawenforcement journals. The phenomenon of “suicide by cop” has long been writtenabout in the police and forensic journals (Jenet & Segal, 1985). This expression,“suicide by cop,” which is well known to law enforcement officers, refers toindividuals who deliberately try to get the police to kill them. Hostage taking,domestic violence and workplace violence are recognized as the most commonly usedsituations to provoke or lure the police officers into using deadly force (Geller& Scott, 1992). Consequently, the police are being trained today to exercise
