Mass Suicide: Historical and Psychodynamic Considerations

In this article, the authors offer a definition of the phrase “mass suicide,” & several different situations in which the term can be used. After briefly examining its historical aspects, the authors go on to review some more recent examples of mass suicide. They then offer a possible interpretive model of these mass suicides based on the classification of each as either a) self-induced: motivated by a distorted view of reality, or b) heteroinduced: motivated by the the desire of a defeated or colonized people to escape from a dignity-denying reality. (19 refs)