ABSTRACT
The suicidal person is in the ultimate position of ambivalence, with life and death balanced on a knife edge. In the suicidal individual, at the moment of suicide, it is as if the actual body is regarded as a separate being and identified with the hated stuff of life, the hated, the lost, or the never had life, and then killed off. The suicidal person seems convinced that suicide is the right thing to do but at the same time he is also imagining life after the act—as if there is a life for him somehow separate from his death. This chapter explores in more detail the concept of suicidal fantasy. Herein lies the deadly heart of the matter of suicide. Behind every suicide, there exists a suicidal fantasy and at the time of acting out the suicide this has distorted the person’s view of reality such that it has the power of a delusional conviction.
