Edwin S. Shneidman

"The Suicidal Mind" brims with insights into the suicidal impulse and with helpful suggestions for counteraction methods. Throughout, Dr. Edwin Shneidman offers practical, explicit maneuvers to assist in treating a suicidal individual--steps that can be taken by concerned friends or family and professionals alike.

The Suicidal Mind

Shneidman (U. of California at Los Angeles) examines the case of an individual suicide, bringing together interviews with his family and friends, involved professionals, and "consultations" with other psychiatrists specializing in suicide in order to conduct a post-mortem "autopsy" of the psychological state that led to the young man's death.

Autopsy of a Suicidal Mind

A distinguished lifelong thanatologist—expert on death—reviews his life, a previous prize-winning book of thirty five years ago, and his own impending death in this extraordinary volume of life's most ubiquitous event.

Reflections at Ninety of a Lifelong Thanatologist

A Commonsense Book of Death

John B. Williamson

These classic and contemporary essays explore the broad range of structural and social contexts of death. They cover issues including the psychology, sociology and ethics of death and dying.

Current Perspectives

Death

Norman L. Farberow

Robert E. Litman

The Psychology of Suicide

On the Nature of Suicide

Personal documents written and recorded by people undergoing the crisis of approaching death. Each document is accompanied by a commentary explaining the circumstances and biogrpahy of the correspondent involved

Voices of Death

Edwin S. Shneidman is recognized as the central figure in the field of suicidology. His writings have taught countless psychologists and other health professionals about the complexity of suicide, death and bereavement. This collection of his writings spans the entirety of his career and offers a unique insight into the development of his thinking. The material is broken down into five parts: Psychological Assessment, Logic, Melville and Murray, Suicide, and Death and each section includes an introduction by the editor. Lives and Deaths is a vital resource for those in suicidology and related fields, allowing the reader to sample a variety of selections from Shneidman's work in one compact volume. The book is ideal for classroom use by upper level undergraduates and graduate students in the history of suicidology or as a supplemental text in a general suicidology course. It is also of interest to clinicians treating high-risk patients as well as a more general audience including psychologists, social workers, crisis counselors and suicide prevention specialists.

Selections from the Works of Edwin S. Shneidman

Lives and Deaths

Edwin Shneidman

Essays in Self-destruction

"This is an important book that no suicidologist should be without. In it, the author, Edwin S. Shneidman, brings together work he undertook and completed between 1971 and 1993. This work includes an empirical study, some single case studies, some theoretical think pieces, and some suggestions for psychotherapy. In this volume, Suicide as Psychache: A Clinical Approach to Self-Destructive Behavior, Shneidman introduces the concept of psychache, adding to the existing vocabulary on suicide to which he has contributed so generously. Shneidman defines psychache as the hurt, anguish, soreness, aching, psychological pain in the mind. Suicide occurs, he says, when the person experiencing the psychache deems the pain unbearable, suicide having to do with differences in individual thresholds for enduring psychological pain. Other concepts that bear Shneidman's imprint include suicidology, psychological autopsy, postvention, subintentional death, and postself. In the language of Suicide as Psychache, the growing numbers of people committing suicide in the United States give testimony to the growing prevalence of psychache in the U. S. population. Like all of Shneidman's work, this book goes well beyond its primary intent in that it is much more than a book about suicide. It is a theoretical book about the psychology of human behavior as reflected in suicide and about creative ways of investigating and responding to suicide phenomena. The book is divided into four parts: Foundations, Analyses, Response, and Follow-Up. This review, being a review, cannot possibly do justice to Shneidman's Suicide as Psychache: A Clinical Approach to Self-Destructive Behavior. It contains so many rich insights coupled with interesting literary references that help to enlarge readers' understanding and knowledge that persons are advised to read the book for themselves. By bringing together his earlier work and building on it, Shneidman allows readers to witness the evolution in his thinking about life and human behavior a

Edwin S. Shneidman

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