Note 365 — Chapter IV · (continued 3)

‘Suicidal’ is here not a mere rhetorical expression. If the tyrannical power of instinct always ends by leading the individual in the long-run to his destruction, it sometimes does this directly. Instinct, namely, may have for its direct object suicide or self-mutilation; and the ‘free’ man obeying his instinct has then the ‘liberty’ of mutilating or killing himself, although that so little tallies with his real wish that he seeks in others a protection from himself. See Dr. R. von Krafft-Ebing, Lehrbuch der gerichtlichen Psychopathologie. Dritte umgearbeitete Auflage. Stuttgart, 1892, p. 311.