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(1986). Progress in Self Psychology, 2:227-241

18 Self Psychology and the Problem of Suicide

David E. Reiser, M.D.

Two Cases

“R.C.”

Whenever Richard Cory went down town,

We people on the pavement looked at him:

He was a gentleman from sole to crown.

Clean favored, and imperially slim.

And he was always quietly arrayed.

And he was always human when he talked;

But still he fluttered pulses when he said,

“Good-morning,” and he glittered when he walked.

And he was rich—yes, richer than a king,

And admirably schooled in every grace:

In fine, we thought that he was everything

To make us wish that we were in his place.

So on we worked, and waited for the light.

And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;

And Richard Cory, one calm summer night.

Went home and put a bullet through his head.

—Edwin Arlington Robinson

“J.P.”

John Peters was a 3rd-year medical student at a prestigious West Coast medical school when, seemingly out of the blue, he took his own life. He was 25, at the top of his class academically, an

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