During an interview 20 patients who had attempted suicide & 20 matched nonsuicidal patients were asked to relate their favorite joke. Jokes were told by 12 attempters and 9 controls. Two raters, blind to the purpose and nature of the study, rated each joke for direction of punishment expressed in the themes. Based on the combined chi-square probabilities associated with ratings by the 2 judges, suicidal Ss told significantly more jokes with a self-punishing theme than did nonsuicidal controls.