Suicide as Psychache: A Clinical Approach to Self-destructive Behavior"This is an important book that no suicidologist should be without. In it, the author, Edwin S. Shneidman, brings together work he undertook and completed between 1971 and 1993. This work includes an empirical study, some single case studies, some theoretical think pieces, and some suggestions for psychotherapy. In this volume, Suicide as Psychache: A Clinical Approach to Self-Destructive Behavior, Shneidman introduces the concept of psychache, adding to the existing vocabulary on suicide to which he has contributed so generously. Shneidman defines psychache as the hurt, anguish, soreness, aching, psychological pain in the mind. Suicide occurs, he says, when the person experiencing the psychache deems the pain unbearable, suicide having to do with differences in individual thresholds for enduring psychological pain. Other concepts that bear Shneidman's imprint include suicidology, psychological autopsy, postvention, subintentional death, and postself. In the language of Suicide as Psychache, the growing numbers of people committing suicide in the United States give testimony to the growing prevalence of psychache in the U. S. population. Like all of Shneidman's work, this book goes well beyond its primary intent in that it is much more than a book about suicide. It is a theoretical book about the psychology of human behavior as reflected in suicide and about creative ways of investigating and responding to suicide phenomena. The book is divided into four parts: Foundations, Analyses, Response, and Follow-Up. This review, being a review, cannot possibly do justice to Shneidman's Suicide as Psychache: A Clinical Approach to Self-Destructive Behavior. It contains so many rich insights coupled with interesting literary references that help to enlarge readers' understanding and knowledge that persons are advised to read the book for themselves. By bringing together his earlier work and building on it, Shneidman allows readers to witness the evolution in his thinking about life and human behavior a |
Contents
Definition of Suicide | 3 |
Aphorisms of Suicide | 19 |
A Conspectus of the Suicidal Scenario | 31 |
Suicide as Psychache | 51 |
Suicide among the Gifted | 61 |
Suicide Notes Reconsidered in the Context of the Life | 93 |
The Suicidal Logic of Cesare Pavese | 115 |
Psychotherapy with Suicidal Patients | 137 |
Implications for Prevention and Response | 149 |
Postvention The Care of the Bereaved | 161 |
The Psychological Autopsy | 179 |
An Example of an Equivocal Death Clarified in a Court of Law | 211 |
Acknowledgments | 247 |
251 | |
255 | |
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Common terms and phrases
alcohol ambivalence aphorisms attempt Barbiturate Bates bathroom behavior bereaved Campbell Campbell's cause of death Cesare Pavese cessation clinical committed suicide consciousness Constance Dowling constriction Curphey death certificate decedent decedent's Definition of Suicide depression Dyspnea E. S. Shneidman emotional event example Excerpt Farberow father feelings frustrated haloperidol Herman Melville highly lethal highly suicidal person homicide hospital human Hyatt implications important individual individual's investigation John Graunt Joseph Campbell Journal kill lethality intent living logical mental mind mode of death mother Pavese postvention present psychache psychiatric psycho psychodynamic psychological autopsy psychological needs psychological pain psychotherapy question reported role Scott-Campbell self-destruction sense shotgun social specific Stanley Bates statistics subintentioned suicidal act suicidal death suicide is best suicide notes suicide prevention suicidology survivors talk Terman testified therapist therapy things thought tion unconscious victim Weisman wife words wrote York