Mark of the Hapsburgs

Professor Ringel, who is a follower not of Freud but of Alfred Adler, also an Austrian, who founded the school of indivictual psychology, noted that the countries that once belonged to the empire of Austria‐Hungary had the highest suicide rates. Even more significant, he said, is that an analysis of Yugoslav statistics for Croatia, Slovenia and other regions that until 1918 were under Hapsburg rule found that suicide was much more frequent there than in Serbia and other Yugoslav areas that had been outside Austria‐Hungary.

While Professor Ringel said he was unable to substantiate his hunch that the downfall of the Hapsburgs had had lingering effects on suicide rates in the‐lands their empire had encompassed, he rejected theories that climate or other geophysical phenomena were a factor in the frequency of suicide.

Asked why there were so many suicides in affluent nations, Professor Ringel, who suggested that some countries underreported suicides for religious, political or social reasons, offered what he said could be assumptions only for Austria.

First he cited unhappy childhoods, noting that the family structure was all too often repressive. “Obviously, a high quota of people here did not get the right start in life when basic decisions—encouragement or discouragement, trust or distrust, self‐evaluation—are made,” he explained, adding that the result could be to establish destructive patterns that persist through life.

Second, he said, there is a dearth of interpersonal relationships. “There is no real solidarity n our society,” he said. “People live side by side without taking real interest in or responsibility for one another.”