Psychoanalytic perspectives on adolescent suicide

From the beginning of the twentieth century, youthful suicide has posed both a clinical and a theoretical challenge for psychoanalysis. This paper examines several paradigmatic cases of completed suicide in order to illustrate important psychodynamic aspects of adolescent suicide. The contributions of the developmental psychoanalytic perspective to our understanding of adolescent self-destructiveness are discussed, with particular emphasis on Anna Freud's concept of developmental lines toward self-care and self-regulation. The applications of this developmental psychoanalytic perspective to clinical research on vulnerability to adolescent suicide are reviewed.