Citation

Giuliani B, Foia MG, Perrone L, Ponsillo NG, De Caprariis L. Neurologia Psichiatria Scienze Umane 1997; 17(3): 475-489.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1997, Il Pensiero scientifico editore)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

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Abstract

The Authors - considering 104 writers who certainly died suicide victims - found and examined a few 'last messages' (13) that had been left. In addition and in comparison, they considered the pre-suicidal notes drawn up by characters of literary invention. About the 'real' notes, the Authors noticed it was impossible to reconstruct and to follow the treatment of the emotions and the ideas preceding the suicidal act, while this sequence completely emerges from the 'invented' notes. The Autors' findings may be enumerated in detail as follows: - the 'real' notes express an implicit issue, that is the difficulty in 'communicating' pain, which is experienced in the dimension of the present and the immediate. For this reason, pain can neither be communicated, nor articulated, nor differentiated; - representing drives while one is being actually driven is difficult; - we have to imagine the presuicidal period at a place where an explicit 'emptiness' of sense coincides with a 'fullness' that represents what can be said; - in these master's last written Words a distinction is made between their own subjective meaning and the others' interpretation. The latter - just because they are placed elsewhere- lend themselves to a distinction and to a further possibility; - perhaps the message is used to split the whole and to contemplate two stumps, of which one is dead; the other one, still alive, goes on leaving; - this hypothesis seems to be confirmed by the effect caused by the 'invented' notes. These turn out to be more 'satisfactory', because the obscure negative aspect of suicide makes way for a tendency to demonstrate love, the need to punish or to expiate. In these messages pain has been explained in its causes and successions, ordinated with respect to the losses; to sum up, it results 'understandable'.

Language: it