Abusive Boyfriend
An abusive boyfriend or abusive husband in the early days becomes an abusive boyfriend or abusive husband in the later days. The most important risk factors for the abusive perpetrator's murder of their partner are estrangement and previous assultive and controlling behavior. My suicide cleanup experience shows an abusive boyfriend may first kill or seriously hurt someone, then commits suicide. Noted below, this behavior has a depressive trigger turned to rage.
A basic emotion for fear of disassociation and isolation generalizes to other emotions. This same character type becomes involved in killing a blood relative, spouse, or others and may have relatives has a long history. We'll note these homicides always occurred (Cain and Able, Oedipus), but their numbers remained small compared with current history.
An evolutionary psychological view of a disordered mind can be used to predict the sorts of cases in which killers commit suicide. I believe evolutionary psychology fails in its predictive power overall, but considering it during suicide cleanup activities has lead to possible descriptive value. In terms of homicide and suicide, whichever category of homicides is most clearly contrary to a killer's fitness, it should not occur. That it does occur means it's a madder act; it should occur at all; and when it does occur, it may follow a head injury or undiagnosed disease.
Murder - Suicide
Evolutionary Theory and Murder-Suicide Temperament - Genetics - Evolution's Murder-Suicide Craziness Hierarchy. Three keys considered during various suicide cleanup jobs involving a homicide show some evidence for this ideas' validity.
An evolutionary theory does not support murder-suicide's evolution.
An evolutionary theory does describe a murder-suicide hierarchy's craziness. Craziness must explain self-murder and murder of one's mate. As an evolutionary behavior, this sort of craziness self-extinguises.
An evolutionary theory will show fitness benefits for social and biological kinship support. If we were to look at humanity's genetics and environmental pressures, we might hope to find an evolutionary theory kinshp support and self-regard.
Such a theory would explain a cohessive, biological kinship model a fitness to survive in today's social and biological conditions. In terms of evolution's 4 major postulate for the evolution of a species, suicide fails to fit in . Murder suicide fails to fit in. Homicide does fit in, as psychoanalysis have explained in pragmatic terms. These terms tell us that paternal and male sibling rivals become homicide victims.
Considering how such a theory of suicide, murder-suicide, and homicide might work out gives a glimpse of what's going on internally and externally for our murder-suicide perpetrator-victims.
Temperament
Externally we expect a temperament's evolving for murder-suicide seems unlikely. If temperament includes attitudes, beliefs, and opinions honed from years of socialization, family and peer pressures, we should not expect an evolutionary benefit from murder-suicide. An evolved temperament for murder-suicide will not reproduce itself in great enough numbers to pass on such temperaments. Genetics Also, finding a genetic predisposition for murder-suicide does not appeal to this writer. It's as likely to find a murder-suicide gene in humanity as it is to find a race gene. It's not going to happen. We might find a pattern of genetic structures allowing for loss of emotional control and other forms of emotional disorder. None of this stops our subject from passing on these gene generation to generation. Emotional disorder need not translate into murder-suicide. When it does, our perpetrator's suicide stops the engine of reproduction.
Kinship Murder
For murder-suicide to continue in evolutionary terms, kinship murders must occur some time in the perpetrator's early reproduction years and continue to do so.
Biology tells us that other species do kill biological relations soon after mating, but they do not self-murder. Overall, killing kinfolk contributes little or nothing to the perpetrator's genetic reproduction. We find a disordered mind arising from a murder-suicide pathology. So we must say, "It's simply crazy to kill those most likely to help a perpetrator survive." This means social and biological limits to murder-suicide find a reversed logic in the disordered mind, according to evolutionary theory. Evolution's Craziness Hierarchy A hierarchy of perpetrator craziness shows us degrees of insanity in kinship murder-suicide's disordered minds. Killing a biological child is crazier than killing one's step-child Killing one's older child is crazier than killing one's infant. Killing one's mother is crazier than killing one's father. (See Ariel in the Tempest) Killing one's sister is crazier than killing one's brother.
Murder-suicide should benefit the perpetrator. To repeat, In evolutionary logic, suicide should somehow benefit the suicidal temperament following the murder of one or more kinfolk. Overall, temperament once controlled by internal and external limits now exceeds social limits. An obnoxious person loses popularity quickly. A homicidal person might lose popularity as quickly, as our evolutionary pans out. Murder-Suicide versus Homicide Similarities Let's consider a murder-suicide temperament Will a murder-suicide temperament show more similarities to suicide victims or homicide perpetrators only? Answering this questions directs us to a default logic.
By default, the murder-suicide temperament should show more similarities to a suicidal temperament.
We find evidence in white male suicides. White males account for 73% of suicides. We would expect murder-suicide temperament Logically, not evolutionarily, we expect this demographic group's temperament to show more similarities to murder-suicide temperaments than homicidal temperaments. Most likely in the wild, civilization in this case, murder-suicide must occur in a perpetrator-victim's older years, if it occurs as an evolutionary trait. Although the numbers go along with this line of reasoning, correlations fail to match reality more often than not. Suicide victims, as often found in suicide cleanup activities, suffered profound depression. We should expect this order of depression among murder-suicide perpetrator-victims.
If we follow Durkheim, the biological or evolutionary model fails. The strong differences between demographic and national suicide groups puts the evolutionary model to rest. Suicide has social roots.
Failed Relationships
As with suicide victims, murder-suicide will follow failed relationships. Time need not follow as a significant variable either.
A perpetrator's fear turned to rage triggers during intoxication and/or uncomfortable, stressful moments. Denial a Major Idea Denial either becomes or remains a major source of perpetrator's temperament Depression masks itself in self-medicating and a perpetrator's denial of a lost relationship. "She'll take me back." Self-medicating, alcohol and drug abuse, may occur more often in murder-suicide than homicide. The loss of kinship relations carries emotional ties not always available in homicide only acts.
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Self-medicating does not serve the homicide perpetrator's need for suicide planning and loss of self, self-grieving. Kinship Murder a Greater Loss In evolutionary terms, we look to the murder of biological children, older biological children, siblings, and parents as catastrophic, traumatic acts greater than spousal and step-child homicides. No reproductive advantage follows some kinship homicides in many cases. Murder-suicide becomes even madder. In all cases, expect an enraged, aggressive impulse similar to that in the homicidal temperament as a "trigger" in murder-suicide. Soon after the depressive and now grieving emotions return, suicide follows. In evolutionary terms, what could be madder?
Murder-suicide need not occur as a planned event, "lying in wait" mentality. Homicidal temperaments do plan out "lying in wait" homicides as well as acting out of rage, but the suicidal act comes about spontaneously for younger murder-suicide perpetrator-victims. Evolution Favors Homicidal Acts In evolutionary terms, homicidal temperaments, given the social, historical, and environmental conditions, reproduce more successfully than not-homicidal. Freud would agree with this default logic, as he spells out in Totem and Taboo.
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"The religion of the son replaces the religion of the father," not by primogenitor, but murder. We expect men to commit murder-suicide more often than female perpetrator-victims. As noted above, men commit homicide more often than women, too. Also, women are less likely to have been drinking or under the influence of other drugs at the time of committing a homicide. Women will show more depression and less often suffer personality disorders. Some writers say alcohol correlates to homicide about 44% of the time. Drugs come in much lower with about 10% for perpetrators and 7% for victims. These drug number do not sound high enough for my experience. Drugs seem to appear on many more suicide cleanups the 10% and 7%. Ariel in "The Tempest" : Full fathom five thy father lies: Of his bones are coral made; Those are pearls that were his eyes; Nothing of him that doth fade But doth suifer a sea-change Into something rich and strange.
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Choices fill our lives as if we're dealt a new card hand every day. When the cards have all been dealt and played, the total sum of the choices defines a life that was lived.
How might we choose for a happy life or an unhappy life While we're at it, we might try to say what we mean by a "happy" life. As we define happiness in our own terms, we may come to understand how we behavior and feel while events in our life influence our happiness or unhappiness.
There are a myriad of reactions one can exercise to react to an event that presents itself in life, and every life is therefore unique. Though the possible reactions are infinite, one act is always possible—suicide.
Many types of behavior following events, situations, and our own emotions. We know for certain one reaction remains possible in an infinite number of reactions - - suicide. As a choice, suicide remains with us day and night, every day of the year.
At one time we believed suicide separated humanity from all others species. Suicide made us somehow special in our ability to contemplate an end to our own being We know now that this bit of hubris on our part proves our anthropomorphism applies even to suicide.
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Dolphin Suicide
It turns out that dolphins, too, commit suicide by silent suffocation. They simply stop breathing, sink, and die. Our autonomic nervous system makes us breath whether we wish to breath to or not. In fact, to commit suicide by suffocation, humans place plastic bags over their heads or hang themselves. Not dolphins.
Their breathing depends on their conscious choice to continue breathing, each and every breath.
Although these two species may choose suicide in different ways, and possibly others do too, we and they share similar reasons for suicide. Loneliness, separation anxiety, pain, fear, and loss of our self-reliance may lead to suicide.
For dolphins and humans, suicide remains available as a choice, as a reaction, as a solution.
Suicide in some cases would be a veiled attack on others in which the victim harms their self for sympathy. Many view felt the current
