Historical Phenomenology: Understanding Experiences of Suicide and Suicidality Across Time

Abstract

Different cultures at different moments in history have constructed suicide differently. That seems an obvious statement, and any book which offers up a history of the topic confirms the fact. For Ian Hacking, “[t]he meanings of suicide itself are so protean across time and space that it is not so clear that there is one thing, suicide” (Crit Inq 35:1, 2008), and it is not so hard to agree that meanings, descriptions and representations change, but beyond these, are there non-contingent (ahistorical and acultural) features of suicide? Is there perhaps an unchanging experience of suicidality? Many modern theories implicitly suggest there is (e.g. Edwin Shneidman’s notion of psychache and Thomas Joiner’s constructs of perceived burdensomeness and thwarted belongingness can be read as attempts to describe underlying universals in the experience of suicide).

This chapter argues that theories, representations and accounts of suicide are necessarily contingent on the contexts (cultural, historical, discursive) within which they arise, but that so too are the experiences of suicidal subjects. Historical phenomenological approaches are well placed to help illuminate these issues, and by casting light on the contingency and heterogeneity of not only representations but also experiences of suicide, assumptions implicit in contemporary ways of understanding suicide can be usefully called into question. How notions of personhood, subjectivity and agency, as well as experiences of emotions and feelings, change over time and the ways in which these contingent aspects of life might relate to experiences of suicidality are considered, and the implications for contemporary suicidology, both in terms of theory and practice, are discussed.