Almost no one understands suicide very well. Almost no one.
Some of you might say -- but Dr. Peter, I've been really down and out. I've been really suicidal. I've been there. I lived it.
Not gonna argue with you about having been suicidal. But having intense feelings, almost irresistible impulses toward suicide, constant suicidal thoughts
-- that doesn't mean you understand suicide. Not at all.
I don't think most people who have attempted suicide really understand their experience.
I don't think most therapists really understand suicide.
Why ?
Because we're afraid to really enter into what is behind suicide. We don't want to go there. We're terrified of what lurks underneath. We have parts of us that don't want to understand.
Lauren Oliver, Delirium “Suicide. A sideways word, a word that people whisper and mutter and cough: a word that must be squeezed out behind cupped palms or murmured behind closed doors. It was only in dreams that I heard the word shouted, screamed."
And I'll go further than that. And it's not so much because we're afraid of what we'll find in another person, a friend or relative or colleague. It's because we are terrified that finding the darkness inside of others will wake up our own sleeping giants of darkness. The darkness inside us. The terror inside us. That's why we avoid, why we distract, why we skirt the edges of this topic.
Benjamin Franklin knew this: Nine men in ten are would-be suicides -Poor Richard's Almanack.
Freud popularized it in 1920 -- book the Pleasure Principle. -- he discussed the death drive: the drive toward death and destruction, often expressed through behaviors such as aggression, repetition compulsion, and self-destructiveness. Death drive or drives went by the name Thanatos -- the Greek god personified death.
Caught a lot of flak for it, then and now. Not really widely accepted. I think he was on to something. Something we don't want to think about others -- that they have drives toward self-destruction. It's something that we don't want to admit about ourselves.
If we are really honest with ourselves in looking at suicide
we would realize, with John Bradford There but for the grace of God go I. We would give up our false presumptions about our own strength and our own natural resiliency.
We would realize, with Shakespeare's Lord Chancellor in Henry VIII “We all are men, in our own natures frail, and capable of our flesh; few are angels.” ― Lord Chancellor William Shakespeare, Henry VIII
We would understand Mahatma Ghandi when he said: “If I had no sense of humor, I would long ago have committed suicide.”
We would have a lot less judgement about the souls and experience of those who killed themselves. Yes, the action of suicide is wrong, gravely wrong, and we'll discuss that in next week's episode. We're not minimizing the gravity of the act -- I'm talking here about the phenomenological experience of those on the brink of self-destruction and why they are there.
And we would understand something about the spiritual dimensions, the dark spiritual powers at work in suicide as well.
I could be wrong about this, but I don't think you really have any accurate idea about suicide. Suicide is one of the most misunderstood of human actions.
Because we want to avoid the churning darkness, the despair, the hopelessness, the alienation, the trauma within us, we don’t want to see it in others. And if someone near is suicidal, we know, we know instinctively that he is tapping into his despair, his hopelessness, his alienation. We know that our suicidal is really in the grip of her trauma and her isolation, and her excruciating pain.
And our natural response -- is to flee. To get out of dodge. To protect ourselves.
We rationalize it -- I'm not a professional, I'm not a counselor, I don't know what to do with all of this intensity
Or we stay in there, we force ourselves to stay in relationship, feeling really inadequate, not wanting to go too deep, not wanting to screw it up -- and in our timidity and fear, we actually aren't very helpful.
OK -- I will grant you that you don't really know what to do.
And I get it that you're afraid -- maybe terrified. OK.
This is a tough issue. Suicide is a tough issue. And tough issues are what we specialize in here. [Cue music]
Intro
Welcome to the podcast Interior Integration for Catholics, thank you for being here with me, thank you for making it through the lead in and not fleeing from this episode. I'm glad you and I are in this together. And it's going to be OK. By God's grace, together we can handle, we can work with, we can work through this topic of suicide. We'll do it together.
I am clinical psychological Peter Malinoski and you are listening to the Interior Integration for Catholics podcast, where we take on the toughest topics, the ones others don't want to touch, and we go really deep with them. Why? Not out of some kind of idle curiosity. Not out of disorder curiosity, out of some kind of psychological voyeurism. No. We go there in this podcast because we are working on ourselves. On our own human formation, shoring up the natural foundation for our spiritual lives, so that we can enter into loving union with God. That's why. It's about removing the psychological barriers you have to a much deeper intimacy with God the Father, Jesus the Son, the Holy Spirit, and the Blessed Virgin Mary, our Mother.
In the last episode we looked at specific cases of suicide in Sacred Scripture. This is episode number 78, released on July 26, 2021, entitled The Desperate Inner Experience of Suicidality. We are going to enter into the phenomenological world of the suicidal person.
Why? Why do we do that? Why do that?
Two answers. The second answer is for going into all of this depth on suicide is so that you and I can love.
So that we can love others who are struggling with this -- and there are so many.
Franklin estimated 90%. Nine men in ten are would-be suicides. I think he's right, even though the vast majority of those don't even know there's a struggle going on inside them. I think Benjamin Franklin knew about the latent potential in most people.
Freud: Thanatos. The Death Drives. Freud knew. For all his faults and follies, Freud knew something about the depth of pain in people's souls. The pain that lives in the unconscious. Locked away, at least for a time. Unnoticed, at least for a time.
The first answer: Is so that we can be known and loved. That we can accept others knowing us, and us knowing ourselves.
