Jann E. Schlimme

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The borderlines of the current psychiatric and psychological discourses concerning suicidality are ascertained when asked: What is it like to be suicidal? A phenomenological understanding concerning this question presents to us the paradox of suicidality. The suicidal person lives in a contradiction with himself. On the one hand there is the basal feeling of despair and inevitable helpless insufferability, showing life itself as a destructive force. On the other hand the extinguishing of ones own life appears as a salvation, showing death itself as a release not found in life. Indeed the paradox of suicidality – the contradictory meanings of annihilation and salvation – appears incontrovertible and cannot be solved in suicidality, for this requires either the experience of overcoming suicidality or the act of suicide itself.