The Passage to Suicidal Action and Preambles in Inhibition and Impulsivity

Although suicidal crisis can emerge in any psychic constellation in this book we investigate the psychoanalytic concepts that would lend themselves to understanding the transition to suicidal acts and their preambles in three forms of affectation understood in the open range between inhibition and impulsivity: passion obsessive neurosis and melancholic drug addiction. We start from Freud's work which separated action from act later evolving into agieren where acting out was theoretically lodged. We also draw on Lacan's work which adopted the psychiatric concept of passage to the act in psychoanalysis distinguishing it from other forms of acting out thus redefining both concepts. We use as paradigms the characters Werther by Goethe illustrating suicide in passion; Hamlet by Shakespeare in the passage to the act of obsessive neurosis; and two clinical cases Pedro and Maria in melancholic drug addictions. We attempt to demonstrate the theoretical and clinical specificity of psychoanalysis in relation to other fields of knowledge with which it interfaces in the understanding of suicide and its preliminary forms: suicidal fantasies suicidal ideation suicidal planning and suicide attempts.