on the urge to jump from high places

Regarding this column from Cecil – I recall some discussion, I think here on the boards, about a related (and also nearly always harmless) urge: to kill one’s baby.

Okay, not an actual urge to do this, but (like the cliff jump), more of a fleeting curiosity about what would happen. I recall we decided it had to do with the unusual fragility of such moments: you realize how* easy* it would be. These are moments where the action involved is so small (just take a step over there; just drop the baby thus), but the consequences are so huge. That’s what piques our curiosity: the unusual gulf at such moments between action and consequence.

(You could counter that just about every moment you’re driving a car is such a moment, too – it would be so easy to turn the steering wheel a bit while you hurtle down the highway – but for some reason we don’t usually feel it. Perhaps we’ve become inured to the sensation when driving?)

I thought “oral rehydration therapy” was a typical snark by Cecil. I mean, c’mon, isn’t that just drinking water? Turns out it’s a real thing: Oral rehydration therapy - Wikipedia

If the internet is to be believed, lots of people do feel this sensation while driving. It’s mentioned in Annie Hall, at any rate:

Duane: Can I confess something? I tell you this as an artist, I think you’ll understand. Sometimes when I’m driving… on the road at night… I see two headlights coming toward me. Fast. I have this sudden impulse to turn the wheel quickly, head-on into the oncoming car. I can anticipate the explosion. The sound of shattering glass. The… flames rising out of the flowing gasoline.

I recall a thread on this very subject awhile back. Many Dopers said they experienced this sensation despite being otherwise nonsuicidal.

Re. this description of frontotemporal dementia… I work at a agency serving homeless people and we have a young 20-something client who maybe has an amplified version of this condition. She is fairly delusional and lacks all impulse control - we’ve thought schizophrenia and/or drugs - and she just creates mahem immediately. She walks up to others and tells them they’re ugly, proposes obscene acts, reaches into people’s handbags, grabs things out of offices and runs. Frankly I can’t believe she’s still alive. She’s been in and out of various institutions, according to her notes, but I don’t know that they have a diagnosis.

Yup, I’m one of them. I just get this mental picture of myself walking up and vaulting right over the edge. :frowning:

I have a real fear of heights if I am not secured. I sometimes think my urge to jump comes from the need to reduce the stress caused by my fear. One time I had to reair a valve on a large pipe about 40 feet in the air, my boss told me to just scoot across the pipe and sit on the pipe while I made the repair. I actually thought I was going to give into my fear and just let go.

This is the sort of thing you can only really talk about on an anonymous message board, but I often have a similar urge to jump in front of oncoming traffic. Not at all because I want to die - I’m quite partial to living, thanks - just the sensation that . . . I could. I chalk it up to the sudden realization of the amount of control we have over our destinies . We live thinking we “should” do this and that - that school, that job, that house, that retirement plan. Everything is careful, cautious, calculated. But you could just scream obscenities at your boss, jump out the window, and book a flight to a remote Peruvian village. We’ve got options.

If these impulses, especially ones of violence to loved ones, begin to seriously interfere with your everyday life, they can be classified as obsessive recurring thoughts - the “O” in OCD.

Duane: Can I confess something? I tell you this as an artist, I think you’ll understand. Sometimes when I’m driving… on the road at night… I see two headlights coming toward me. Fast. I have this sudden impulse to turn the wheel quickly, head-on into the oncoming car. I can anticipate the explosion. The sound of shattering glass. The… flames rising out of the flowing gasoline.

Alvy Singer: Right. Well, I have to - I have to go now, Duane, because I, I’m due back on the planet Earth.

Annie Hall (1977)

Ha, I loved that in Annie Hall. I have had that…sort of…Okay, well, I was more merciful than the guy. I would give the oncoming car a chance to dim its headlights first, you know, turn off the high beams. I would cue them by flicking mine to high for second as a hint, and then, if they didn’t respond by dimming their own? BLAM. Of course I never did. But sometimes, driving by myself, I was actually a little afraid I might, I mean, why would I even think that?

The payoff:
**
Mom Hall**: We’re going to take them (Alvy and Annie) to the airport.
**
Dad Hall**: No, no, Duane can…I’ve got to finish my drink.
**
Annie Hall**: Yes, Duane is…

[cut to Alvy looking nervously at Duane as he’s driving to the airport on a dark stormy night with oncoming headlights]

and very much so. i have the fear when remembering having done it or watching other people do it. particularly scenes in films where someone is forced to cling to a building ledge or stay on a diagonally oriented section of roof.

what’s really scary is that, allegedly, when i was too drunk to remember, i was convinced by significant other and coworkers to come on to the diagonally oriented roof of the building i worked in.

it scares me that they could convince me to do that.

and for me, who has a phd in psychology and has studied what the various bits of the brain do, it’s not that the urge to jump is a misinterpreted “urge for safety” signal that comes before perceptual reckoning about the danger faced, for two reasons.

first, if it was a misinterpreted safety signal that comes before the perceptual linking that justifies the safety signal, it would go away when the connection is made. but i have the urge for as long as i am in the situation, as long as the possibility to make the leap is present. and i can have the sensation just thinking about it.

which is the second reason. i know on a conscious level what i am afraid of. it’s the situation of having leapt off the building and those numerous seconds that i am falling and thinking about what a terrible decision i have made because i couldn’t resist the urge to jump.

the delay between the jump and the splat seem to make it different than more instantaneous actions like grabbing a gun. on the other hand, i am around razor blades all day and have no urges to use them to cause myself to slowly bleed to death. but perhaps that’s because there’s probably enough time to change my mind and get help.

It’s a pretty useful instinct in fledgling birds…some monkeys (and other tree-dwelling species) too in some ways?
One can see places in nature where “gotta jump” is a necessary survival/developmental instinct.

Maybe in humans it’s deeply atavistic.

Previous thread.

I remember having the exact same urge on the city wall in Dubrovnik (around here).

If you’ve ever been on a cruise and standing alone on a railing looking at the ocean below, their is always an urge to jump.

I have the urge to jump. I also get vertigo - dizziness. I wonder if the two are connected.

Also the idea of accidentally going over the edge. I worked in a 6 story building with a large inner atrium, and a stairwell that went up the middle that was exposed, connecting to a landing bridge across the gap. There were 3-bar rails as the safety rails, so it was very exposed. At the top, the part where the sloped rail met the flat rail made a bit of a drop off that looked very exposed to me. I would get the sensation that I might trip and go right over the rail.

That’s what I get, too. I was on a chair lift recently (I know, my fault), and the thought process was ‘This is so horrible! But if I let go and slide off, it will be over!’.

I am actually more physically horrified by watching others wander around near cliff edges etc - because I am totally not in control. Watching your kids on the scary rides at the theme park (the ones that you were too scared to go on) is the worst.

Coincidentally, I was searching for a term for this about an hour ago. Found this:

Another 10 Untranslatable Words

I don’t have the urge to jump from high places (my mind does boggle at seeing the distances), but I am occasionally struck by images of how I could die violently in a car crash. Not the actual urge to make it happen, but a “wow, if that happened, this would happen, and it would all be pretty unpleseant” thought will pop into my head from time to time.

:confused: