235 myself, who has reasonable knowledge of, or homosexuality, very powerful aspects of and interest in the period, and an interest in Virginia Woolf’s life-story. This absence of the Bloomsbury Group. (My own first analyst consideration of relationships, other than the was Adrian Stephen, then elderly and frail). very earliest one to the mother and to the very But after that, we are in deep waters, where early Oedipal relationship, unfortunately the writings of Virginia Woolf are subjected characterize much of the Kleinian view of to a very close analysis in a language which psychic development, where the significant presented me as the ’general reader’ with so stages are all seen in relationship to the much difficulty that it became off-putting. mother. Incidentally, Klein’s ideas are well The book appears in a series entitled, ’Women set out early in this book. in Culture and Society’ and is written in a Later, Abel does introduce Winnicott’s language of feminism, feminist psychoanalysis and Marian Milner’s notions of the transitional and contemporary literary criticism. To those space as the origin of cultural experience in familiar with this style of discourse, it will be describing Lilly Briscoe’s paintings in To the accessible, but this must be a limited readership. Lighthouse. The paintings are sensitively Elizabeth Abel states that Virginia Woolf discussed in terms of establishing boundaries shared an historical moment with Sigmund of the mother/child relationship, but it became Freud and Melanie Klein, but that she is less very clear to me from Jane Dunne’s book that concerned with influence than with inter- boundary issues were crucial, both to Virginia textuality - although the distinction seems and to her sister, Vanessa, and that they need arbitrary and should be argued, and not to be looked at in terms of that relationship. simply stated. She argues that, together For the general reader, I unreservedly with Melanie Klein, in the 1920s, Virginia recommend Jane Dunne’s A Very Close Woolf offered a deep, visionary matricentric Conspiracy as a beautifully written work of alternative to Freud’s patricentric view of the originality that speaks convincingly of aspects development of culture, but that in the 1930s, of Virginia Woolf’sdevelopment and writings she turned away from this, back to the father, that must be taken into account in any as she feared that the fascist celebration of description in depth of her work. Elizabeth motherhood was becoming too threatening. Abel’s text will probably be closely read and Abel’s argument is at a high level of discussed within a specialized circle, where abstraction and she offers little and only the absence of biographical and cultural selective information about Virginia Woolfs material will not be seen as detracting from life and how the events of her life might the closely argued main thesis. be linked with her writing. Thus, Virginia MALCOLM PINES Woolf own romance family scarcely appears. The Practice this the Group-Analytic Although may satisfy literary world, London and indeed, many are well satisfied, to go by the citations on the cover of the book from such authorities as Nancy Chodorow, I was not. I had just read a most interesting account of Virginia Woolf’s relationship with her Anton J. L. van Hooff, From Autothanasia elder sister, Vanessa Bell, (A Very Close to Suicide: Self-Killing in Classical Antiquity. Conspiracy by Jane Dunne. Jonathan Cape, London: Routledge, 1990. £35.00. 1990), which had illuminated for me the depth and complexity of that relationship. Suicide is a hot historical subject nowadays. So, I found it astonishing that there is no For almost a century, while sociologists were reference at all to Virginia Woolf’s sister in demonstrating how revealing its study could the book, or to sisterhood, or to hetero- be, historians remained mostly indifferent. 236

Occasional books - some of them huge slabs result is that the ambivalence of antique of learning - revealed fascinating information culture to suicide is confused rather than about self-killing. But mostly, their authors clarified; the fabled tolerance and fascinating wasted their time and erudition. The subject points of intolerance of Greek and Roman of suicide fascinated the public, as it still society are noticed but not analysed. Surely, does; it was dismissed as trivial by professional it is the historian’s duty to sort out for us historians, as it often still is. the specific contexts in which suicide was There are signs of change. Recent books celebrated or condemned and to discuss and articles, published in the last six years, clearly any general trends that may be have analysed suicide in England, Switzerland, perceptible. America and France. Among them is one The reversal of contextualization and case masterpiece, Olive Anderson’s Suicide in studies also leads to an intolerable level Victorian and Edwardian England. More of repetition. In order to understand the studies are on their way. At the very least, examples, most of which appear first in what this belated rush to analyse the history the early parts of the book, one has to of suicide has shown is that the sociologists are know something about legal procedures and right - it can be a key to understanding the attitudes, which formed their context. By the culture and social dynamics of whole societies. time van Hooff gets to a full discussion of the But there is a catch. The historian writing latter, we have therefore heard both the about self-killing in a particular period and principles and (in some cases) the specific place must be sensitive to the benefits and authorities and applications several times. feelings of the era; he or she must be an But perhaps the most noticeable example imaginative intellectual. Anton J. L. van of van Hooffa faulty method concerns language. Hooff, it is hard and sad to say, fails the test. He tells us much about the vocabulary of self- He has written a bad book about one of the killing ; he frequently writes as a philologist. most interesting periods in the history of He gives of eight pages of Greek and Latin suicide, a period whose attitudes to self- circumlocutions for suicide in an appendix killing still inform our own understanding of and spends more pages discussing the shades the subject. of meaning in terms for self-killing in the This is a pity, because he and his students text. (The general point of these, which have done their homework pretty well. They seems to be that the flexibility of the language have compiled a large dossier of almost 1,000 of suicide reflects the complexity of con- ancient cases of suicide, real and fictional. An temporary responses, is certainly valid.) But, appendix listing them will be invaluable to having told us that the word ’suicide’ is a future historians of the subject. (Although it seventeenth-century invention, he uses the is not entirely trustworthy; it omits, for Latinized varient of the term, ’suicidium’ in a instance, Anthony and Cleopatra, but includes chapter on its existence as ’an institution and one of the latter’s servants, Charmion.) Van a confession’. Thus a term that is (rightly) Hooff also usefully corrects several errors in said to have been non-existent in the period Yolande Grise’s eccentric La suicide dans la under discussion turns up as a particular, and Rome antique, a book whose arguments are undefined, neologism of the author. For occasionally as hard to follow as van hooff’s. classicists, who are (justly) fabled for their But the problems with this book are precision of language, this should be a myriad. In the first place, it is written punishable offence. backwards. An undisciplined discussion of And what in the world does the title of this the intellectual and legal context of suicide book mean? ’Autothanasia’ is not a word comes at the end of the book, long after the found in the appendix of classical terms for individual cases have been described. The suicide (although, to be fair, ’autothanatos’ 237 is), just as ’suicide’ is not. The juxtaposition Mostly, what one regrets in van Hooff’ss seems to imply a progression or contrast; but book is the lost opportunity. Suicide in the none is discussed. ’Suicide’ was coined to classical world may seem familiar enough, denote a less pejorative conception of self- but it is a topic that raises issues of immediate killing than the alternatives, ’self-murder’, concern, at least in Britain and the United for instance. It thus stood for a particular States. We can only hope for another, better viewpoint that emerged gradually during the book that clarifies the classical heritage that seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The informed so much modern thinking about the author’s Greek neologism has no parallel subject. The best scholarship in English so history, and no clearly-defined meaning. far is Miriam Griffin’s articles on Roman Whatever else we get, Autothanasia to Suicide suicide. More work of similar quality is is emphatically what we do not get. All this urgently needed. The field is wide open. muddle is of terminological symptomatic MICHAEL MACDONALD larger problems. This book has neither a University of Michigan thesis nor a sense of temporal progression.

News and Notes

At the meeting of the Italian Society of Dr Carla Ramacciotti and Prof. Giuseppe History of Psychiatry held on 29 April 1991, Roccatagliata. Prof. G. Roccatagliata (a member of the To enrol in the Society (annual fee Advisory Board of History of Psychiatry) was Lit.25.000), contact the Secretary, Prof. elected President, Prof. Mario Di Fiorino Mario Di Fiorino, Via Ordanino 13, secretary, and Dr Carla Ramaciotti treasurer. Castiglione delle Stiviere (MN), or the The new Managing Committee comprises: Treasurer, Dr Carla Ramacciotti, Vis S. as honorary members, Prof. Giuseppe Ferrari, Martino 83, Pisa. Prof. Antonio Iaria and Prof. Filippo Maria The main office of the Italian Society of Ferro; and as founding members, Prof. History of Psychiatry (a special division of the Carlo Maggini, Dr Luciano M. Canova, Italian Psychiatric Association) is in Via De Dr Antonello Pintus, Prof. Mario Di Fiorino, Toni 5, 16132 Genova.