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Rational Suicide: An Impoverished Self‐Transformation
Author(s) -
Maris Ronald
Publication year - 1982
Publication title -
suicide and life‐threatening behavior
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.544
H-Index - 90
eISSN - 1943-278X
pISSN - 0363-0234
DOI - 10.1111/j.1943-278x.1982.tb01089.x
Subject(s) - psychology , human life , suicide prevention , psychiatry , medical emergency , medicine , poison control , political science , law , humanity
The normal human condition is such that even with the best that life can offer suicide is understandable. Life is short, often painful, unpredictable, and lonely. In addition the lives of some individuals are in effect “suicidal careers” in that the harshness of normal life is combined for them with extra suicidal catalysts. Suicide makes sense. Minimally suicide resolves the life problem for the suicide. At the same time suicide is an impoverished self‐transformation. Life, as trying and despairing as it can be, is still all we have. The suicide resolves the life problem by obliterating life itself, rather than by transforming self, history, and society. The suicide gives his or her life back inappropriately. In this sense no suicide is ever rational.