Sense of self-determination and the suicidal experience. A phenomenological approach

Even though there are important differences between Jean-Luc Marion’s understanding of phenomenology and my understanding of phenomenological work, his description of “saturated phenomena” is highly stimulating for a description of the experience of being rescued. For him, a saturated phenomenon has an “essentially unforeseeable character” (2002, p. 199f), saturates one’s experience so that one “suffers bedazzlement” (p. 202f), and “appears absolute according to relation, which means it evades any analogy of experience” (p. 206f), which especially holds true in reflective retrospect. These three features of its experiential structure can be retrieved in the fabled description of being rescued by Friedrich Hölderlin (1770–1843), one of the most important german poets. In Patmos he describes the connection of despair and rescue (“Wo aber Gefahr ist, wächst das Rettende auch”, trans.: “Where there is danger, rescue sprouts.” (1992/1998, I, p. 463), the impossibility to catch the experienced in a meaningful predication (“Keiner aber fasset/Allein Gott.”, trans: “But nobody comprehends/except God.”) and the implication of radical change (the potentially rescuing force is also “Wie Feuer, in Städten, tödlichliebend”, trans.: “Just like fire, in cities, loving fatally”).

Fairbairn seems to be of a similar opinion, claiming these two conditions as necessary conditions for suicide (1995, p. 73). His third, and also necessary as well as sufficient condition for suicide, is that the “person who suicides wishes to be dead, intends to die and enacts that intention” (p. 79).

It is a well-known fact that people often report to have tried to kill themselves impulsively and without giving it elaborate consideration or having explicitly ambiguous second thoughts in the very moment of doing it. Yet, even though this seems to be especially possible in adolescents, and may even be more pronounced in repeated suicide-attempters, it is nevertheless a necessary condition to be aware of one’s mortality in order to have this option of intentionally killing oneself, whether in an impulsive or a highly planned way. In other words: in order to go watching a film in a cinema impulsively, the possibility to do exactly that must be a behavioural option embedded in the person’s pre-conscious and habitualized ‘structure’, even if the person is not self-consciously aware of this possibility in the very moment of acting it out.

It is an interesting observation from various psychological studies that the most reliable predictor for future suicide are suicide attempts in one’s personal history or the history of one’s family (an overview, Runeson and Asberg 2003). Following our phenomenological description this fact can be understood as a process of habitualization or ‘embodiment’: the more one gets familiar with a certain behaviour, via training, mental training, or stimulating narrations, the better one is in performing this behaviour. This is not saying that talking about suicide ‘introduces’ the idea and elevates the risk of doing it, especially when talking to already suicidal people. Quite to the contrary, it can be concluded that, since every person will sooner or later discover this behavioural option for herself, it should be highly effective, from a suicide-prevention point of view, to debate more openly about suicidal crises as not unusual experiences in one’s life-span, not necessarily leading to death. This could especially include life-stories of celebrities, who overcame suicidal crises, therefore allowing suicidal people to model their own behaviour on successful coping.