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Concept
Murder–suicide
Summary
A murder–suicide is an act in which an individual kills one or more people either before or while killing themselves. The combination of murder and suicide can take various forms:
Suicide after or during murder inflicted on others
Murder that entails suicide, such as suicide bombing or the deliberate crash of a vehicle carrying the perpetrator and others
Murder of an officer or bystander during the act of suicide by cop
Suicide after murder to escape criminal punishment(s)
Suicide after murder as a form of self-punishment due to guilt
Suicide before or after murder by proxy
Murder linked with a person with suicidal ideation
Joint suicide in the form of killing the other with consent, and then killing oneself
Suicide-lawful killing has three conceivable forms:
To kill one's assailant through proportionate self-defense killing oneself in the process
Lawful killing to prevent an individual from causing harm to others, in so doing killing oneself
Lawful killing indirectly resulting in or contributing to suicide
Many spree killings have ended in suicide, such as in many school shootings. Some cases of religiously motivated suicides may also involve murder. All categorization amounts to forming somewhat arbitrary distinctions where relating to intention in the case of psychosis, where the intention(s) is/are more likely than not to be irrational. Ascertaining the legal intention (mens rea) is inapplicable to cases properly categorized as insanity.
Some use the term murder–suicide to refer to homicide–suicide, which can include manslaughter and is therefore more encompassing.
According to psychiatrist Karl A. Menninger, murder and suicide are interchangeable acts – suicide sometimes forestalling murder, and vice versa. Following Freudian logic, severe repression of natural instincts due to early childhood abuse may lead the death instinct to emerge in a twisted form. The cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker, whose theories on the human notion of death are strongly influenced by Freud, views the fear of death as a universal phenomenon, a fear repressed in the unconscious and of which people are largely unaware.
Official source
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