ABSTRACT
What do people feel like when they are contemplating suicide? The following poets tell us.
(Hamlet, 3.1)
(Thomas Hood 1799-1845, The Bridge of Sighs)
Hamlet’s famous soliloquy in which he debates whether or not to commit suicide in response to a ‘sea of troubles’ illustrates a core theme underlying most suicidal behaviour, the desire to free oneself from overwhelming stresses. Shakespeare, always psychologically authentic, describes the emotional reasons that lead Hamlet to consider making ‘his quietus’. Suicide is essentially a reaction to either internal psychical or extrapsychical pressures. Hamlet went on to rehearse the moral dilemma of his time, when suicide was a ‘cardinal sin’ and perpetrators would be consigned to hell. This is still the case in theological terms with the Orthodox and Catholic churches, although the strength of such religious anathema varies in different countries (Neeleman et al. 1997; Pritchard 1999; Pritchard and Baldwin 2000; Lau and Pritchard 2001). This can still lead to someone who has committed suicide being buried outside ‘holy ground’, e.g. in Greece. Although the Bible makes no specific moral comment about suicide, suicide is condemned in the Koran and remains a virtual taboo in Islam and is even more stigmatised in Islamic countries than in traditional Christian countries (Pritchard and Amunullah 2006).
