Citation

Movahedi S. Revista Latinoamericana de Psicopatologia Fundamental 2009; 12(1): 71-98.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2009)

DOI

10.1590/S1415-47142009000100006

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

The paper examines the psychology of martyrdom through the analysis of death speeches, the final letters, wills, and testaments left behind by men in the Middle East who undertook suicidal missions in war. The author maintains that the human body is as much a social object as it is a biological entity, and death is as much a social event as it is a physical happening. The biologically living body may be symbolically dead, and the physically dead person may be more powerful than the living. A communication that a person makes while he or she is anticipating an impending death is an overloaded message, comparable to the first or the last dream in psychoanalysis. It may provide important clues not only to the person's immediate psychic experience, but also to one's characteristic mode of encounter with the object world. Final letters, near-death or suicide notes have a particularly demanding, commanding, and pleading quality. The author finds several modes of communication and metacommunication in the notes: disengaged, abstract, and intimate, each differently conveying their thoughts, fantasies, and relatedness to the world, God, justice, vengeance, death, immortality, loved ones, and enemies. © 2009 Associação Universitária de Pesquisa em Psicopatologia Fundamental.

Language: en

Keywords

Body uses; Death speeches; Psychology of martyrdom; Suicidal missions