An Empirical Investigation of the Unconscious Processes in Suicide Notes (IN: Suicide and the Unconscious, edited by A A Leenaars & D Lester)

This chapter examines genuine & simulated suicide notes, utilizing Foulke’s scoring system for the interpretation of the latent content. Based on previous research (Leenaars 1986, 1987, 1988), it is predicted that unconscious forces would be present in the statements of the genuine notes more frequently than in the simulated notes. It is hypothesized that 2 types of distortions evident in Foulke’s system will occur more frequently in genuine than simulated suicide notes. No support was found for 1 type of distortion, namely, when associative statements result in transformations of interactive statements. Significant support was found for the other critical types of distortion. Genuine suicide notes more often called for decision rules to be applied about the latent meaning in the interactive statements. (26 refs.)