This article begins by discussing the problems with completely understanding suicide – since the victims’ motives can no longer be examined directly. Next, the author discusses the mixed goals of suicide victims, for example, to return to infancy, to join someone who has died, or for vengeance or self-punishment. The author concludes that students of suicide often wrongly assume that suicide is invariably the expressin of an impulse to end living, instead of seeing it as a multifaceted process.