2 University Researchers Claim Link Between Murder, Suicide

Murder and suicide are different manifestations of the same psychological disease--blind anger, according to reports released yesterday by two University researchers. Dr. Daniel H. Funkenstein, Clinical Associate in Psychiatry, and Dr. Hazel M. Hitson, an anthropologist in the Social Relations Department, studied mental hospital records and human behavior patterns to reach their conclusions.

"In most of us, anger is a temporary thing which wanes in a short time," Funkenstein stated, "but if one suffers from mental illness, rage is sustained for very long periods." Murder and suicide represent the extreme forms of these two aberrant conditions, he explained.

The two researchers, working with grants from the Scottish Rite Foundation and the United States Public Health Service, also examined behavior patterns in non-Western cultures.

Dr. Hitson lived in a Burmese village for a year and a half, and concluded that paternal domination makes murder a far more likely result of mental illness than suicide. The father requires obedience by both wife and children, who become subdued, she stated, and this domination produces outward-directed anger.

In those families of depressives in which the mother shares the authority, the result is more often self-destruction, the two agreed.

"When you should have known, but didn't, you blame yourself and your anger is turned inward," Funkenstein commented. And when sufficient anger is turned inward, he said, the result can be suicide.