This article outlines the reasons for suicidal impulses, based on Freud’s beliefs. The author discusses how, in a world full of danger, we make life tolerable through delusions, & through reliance on our few secure relationships, with our mothers & our sexual partners. A prevalent delusion is faith in gods, in science or any other belief system. With these convinctions, we believe that in some sense we can live forever. Suicide is therefore connected to our deepest fantasies of escape. (VM)