Psychoanalytic perspectives on the treatment of an acute suicidal crisis

Abstract

The psychoanalytic understanding of suicide has greatly expanded in the past 30 years, and the older therapeutic approach has been modified. Although the turning of murder on the self inferred by Freud 90 years ago remains a cornerstone, current practice concentrates on the identification of a precipitating event, the escalation of intolerable painful affect that the patient cannot moderate, the self-perception of helplessness, the evolution of hopelessness as a secondary affect, increasing fantasies of suicide as a means of escape, and ego regression (self-deconstruction), leading progressively to suicide. Recent clinical research, advances in the study of cognition, and neurobiological studies have contributed to the reorientation and enrichment of the psychoanalytic perspective on suicide. The treatment of a university student who had fallen into a suicide crisis is discussed from the psychoanalytic point of view, and evidence for the efficacy of this treatment is reviewed.