Resource Tag: MASS SUICIDE

This article describes the circumstances, motives, & ways of committing suicide in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, based on psychiatric interviews with 69 former prisoners (aged 55-75yrs). The prevalence of suicide attempts, the proportion of suicide attempts to completed suicides, who attempted suicide & why, when, & where suicides were committed, & the reaction of fellow […]

Thomas B. Marquis, a physician assigned to the Cheyenne Indian reservation during the late teens & early 1920’s, advanced the theory that mass suicide occurred at the Little Bighorn. In the process of ministering to the Indians, several who survived the battle reported seeing groups of officers shooting themselves. Marquis’ book, “Keep the Last Bullet […]

Influenced by the suicides of 923 people in Guyana in 1978, the author examines other examples of group suicide, where “group” can mean as few as two people. Topics range from imitative suicides to historical suicides.(PM)

This is a response by W. F. Rowe to an article in the July 1983 issue of the Journal of Forensic Sciences, about the Battle of Little Bighorn. The author does not agree with the mass suicide theory alluded to by Jerry D. Spencer, illustrating his argument with information from Thomas B. Marquis’ book, Keep […]

The hidden & unconscious factors involved in the People’s Temple Movement, led by the Reverend Jim Jones, are discussed in terms of psychoanalytic psychology, focusing on the concepts of charisma & collective regression. These concepts are applied to the mass madness that engulfed the inhabitants of Jonestowm as they committed mass suicide. The author suggests […]

This is an extensive sociological study of the Peoples Temple Movement & the bizarre mass suicide of Jim Jones & his followers in Jonestown, Guyana, in 1978. (NBB)

In this discussion, authors Easley & Wigglesworth explore factors that may have motivated hundreds of people to join the Peoples Temple Movement. Using a variation of Maslow’s Needs Pyramid, they portray Jim Jones’ followers as an economically & socially frustrated group who did not have their needs met by traditional society & therefore rejected it–often […]

This brief article examines the social conditions that favor radical religious cults & individual & mass suicide, suggesting these phenomena are an attempt to escape social turbulence. (NBB)

The disintegration of the old religious institutions during the last third of the 20th century has not produced a society that is content to live an existence without gods. Cults, sects & religious communities have sprung up to fill the void. “What happened in Jonestown, Guyana, is a ghoulish cautionary tale for all these different […]

This 2-page article from Time magazine (March 26, 1979) contains actual dialogue between Peoples Temple Movement leader Jim Jones & several of his followers, prior to & during the mass suicide that claimed close to 900 lives. (NBB)

This brief article from the March 26, 1979 issue of Newsweek, contains excerpts from a transcript of dialogue between Jim Jones, leader of the Peoples Temple Movement, & his followers during their mass suicide in Guyana. Also included is an article about Michael Prokes, who killed himself after returning to the U.S. (NBB)

This article from the March 12, 1979 issue of Newsweek tells of the aftermath of the mass suicide by Jim Jones & his followers in Guyana. At the time of this article, only 347 of the 913 bodies had been claimed by relatives & friends. Pending law suits & allegations of homicide are examined. (NBB)

The author claims that the secluded, inescapable world of the Guyana compound was a final phase of a calculated plan designed by Jones to achieve “mass hypnosis at a social level”, a process of group regression that led to a full acceptance of the leader’s delusional system. His carefully selected followers were highly dissatisfied with […]

This dissertation analyzes the frequency, circumstances & motives of suicides that occurred within the Roman Empire. These historical suicides are presented in the categories of mass suicide, those chosen by soldiers who lost a war, those imposed by the state & those of women. The concept of suicide is also discussed as it was presented […]

Discusses the history of psychological views about suicide, suicide prevention programs in developed countries (especially Israel), effects of religious and philosophical ideals in discouraging suicide, and unconscious ideas about mass destruction and mass suicide in the Jewish and the Israeli population.

The addresses of Eleazar ben Yair to the besieged at Masada as reported by Josephus would rank preeminent among speeches to persuade. To try to gain insight into why there were so effective is the main purpose of this essay. the procedure will follow in sequence: historicity, analysis of the speeches, meaning & significance. Since […]

Surveyed psychoanalysts in the San Francisco Bay area to determine their patient’s reactions both to the murder of the mayor and a city official and to the Jonestown suicide-murders. Prominent reactions involved a fear of loss of control over their own destructive impulses, deficiencies or loss of superego controls, and guilt and remorse for actual […]

The author, in an anecdotal style, reviews a book on suicide. He comments on the main thesis & discusses Meerloo’s classifications of the various motivations for suicide. He concludes that the book reflects much of the suicidal agony of our age. (LH)

This article provides biographical information about James Warren Jones, the leader of a cult that died by suicide in Guyana. A psychoanalytic interpretation of this information is presented. The author then theorizes reasons for Jones’ suicide & analyses the group dynamics of the cult in Freudian terms. (16 refs) (SC)

On June 25, 1876, Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer perished along with 224 men under his immediate command in a battle historically referred to as the Battle of the Little Bighorn. There is some evidence that this was not a battle at all, but a mass suicide. The theory of mass suicide could be substantiated […]

The author argues that Josephus appears to have been somewhat critical of the act of suicide & probably admired neither the institutional suicide of the Romans nor the martyrdom of the Jewish extremists. Although Josephus never gave up Judaism while a Roman citizen, he was practical & put survival above ideology & principle when faced […]