death wish

A desire, either conscious or, most often, unconscious, to die or to ruin oneself. The term dates from the late 1800s and originally was a translation from the German psychological term, Todeswunsch. By the 1930s it was being used figuratively, as in a 1947 article in the Partisan Review: “Even in America the death-wish of the business community appears to go beyond the normal limits of political incompetence and geographical secu- rity.”