The experience of trauma that converts to destruction of the self: a consideration of suicidal attack during times of global distress

ABSTRACT

Global traumatic distress associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, poverty, and war contributes to the individual’s subjective experience of painful suffering. Although suicide rates appear to decrease during times of major upheaval, fantasies of self-destruction act defensively to assuage the pain of unbearable suffering and may progress to self-attacking actions. In this paper, we suggest that integrations of psychoanalytic and social perspectives are useful in dealing with the subjective experience of an unbearable external reality and an intolerable internal state that converts external hostility to self-destructive thoughts and actions.

KEYWORDS:

• Suicide
• self-attack
• global distress
• trauma
• Covid-19

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/01062301.2024.2303568.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mark J. Goldblatt

Mark Goldblatt, MD ([email protected]) is a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He is a Faculty Member of the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute. He is the Chair of the Discussion Group on The Treatment of Suicidal Patients at the annual meetings of the American Psychoanalytic Association. He is an Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, PT, Harvard Medical School and teaches and supervises residents at McLean Hospital. He is a Founding Member of the Boston Suicide Study Group which focuses on the psychoanalytic understanding of self-destructive patients. His extensive writings reflect his interest in suicide and psychoanalysis.

Elsa Ronningstam

Elsa Ronningstam, PhD, ([email protected]) is a clinical psychologist in the Gunderson Outpatient Program and the Adult Outpatient Services at McLean Hospital, and an Associate Professor of psychology (PT) in the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School where she is teaching and supervising. She is also a psychoanalyst, a member of the American Psychoanalytic Association, and a faculty of the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute. As a longstanding member of the Boston Suicide Study Group, Dr. Ronningstam is actively working on identifying, understanding, and treating suicide. She has over 30 years of extensive publications, presentations and lectures focusing on her two major areas of specialty, personality disorders and suicide.

Stephen Briggs

Stephen Briggs, PhD, ([email protected]) is Emeritus Professor at the University of East London, and Honorary Professor in the Universities of Nottingham, and Exeter, where he currently teaches on the Doctorate in Psychoanalytic Clinical Practice. He is a BPC accredited adult psychodynamic psychotherapist and has a private practice in London. He provides supervision and consultation for clinicians working with Time-limited Adolescent Psychodynamic Psychotherapy (TAPP). He previously worked from 1991 to 2012 in the Tavistock Clinic’s Adolescent Department, and he has researched and written on infant observation, adolescent development and psychotherapy, suicide and self-harm and psychosocial research and practice.

Reinhard Lindner

Reinhard Lindner, ([email protected]) Prof. Dr. med, specialist in psychiatry, neurology, psychosomatics and psychodynamic psychotherapy (DGPT), full professor of “Social Therapy” at University Kassel, Institute for Social Work, Head of National Suicide Prevention Programme for Germany (NaSPro). From 1994 to 2012 he was working in the Center for Therapy and Studies of Suicidal Behaviour, University-Hospital Hamburg-Eppendorf, providing short term psychodynamic psychotherapy for acute and chronic suicidal patients, from 2007 to 2018 he worked as consultant for geriatric psychosomatics at the Medical-Geriatric Clinic Albertinen-House, Hamburg and provided a consultation liaison service as well as outpatient (visiting) psychodynamic psychotherapy for very old geriatric patients. His scientific interests are suicidality, suicide prevention, psychotherapy in old age.

Martin Teising

Martin Teising, MD, PhD ([email protected]) is a psychiatrist and training analyst of the German Psychoanalytic Association (DPV). Former president of the DPV and of the International Psychoanalytic University, Berlin. European Representative on the board of the International Psychoanalytic Association (IPA). Working on psychodynamics of suicidality, on the process of ageing and of psychoanalytic conceptualization. Chair of the education committee of the Alexander-Mitscherlich-Institute Kassel, Germany. Working in private practice.