Year: 1983 Source: Omega, v.14, no.2, (1983-84), p.113-126 SIEC No: 19832403

Among the Telefolmin, women’s suicide is culturally recognized while men’s suicides are held to be exceptional; contrary to cultural expectations. Analysis of motives reveals that men tend to commit suicide in the face of rupture in marital relations. Marriage affords a priviledged relation in which a man’s self is permitted to emerge, while marital disruption jeopardizes this emergent self. In such circumstance suicide is the final act in an already advanced process of destruction of self.(DD)