"This is an important book that no suicidologist should be without. In it, the author, Edwin S. Shneidman, brings together work he undertook and completed between 1971 and 1993. This work includes an empirical study, some single case studies, some theoretical think pieces, and some suggestions for psychotherapy. In this volume, Suicide as Psychache: A Clinical Approach to Self-Destructive Behavior, Shneidman introduces the concept of psychache, adding to the existing vocabulary on suicide to which he has contributed so generously. Shneidman defines psychache as the hurt, anguish, soreness, aching, psychological pain in the mind. Suicide occurs, he says, when the person experiencing the psychache deems the pain unbearable, suicide having to do with differences in individual thresholds for enduring psychological pain. Other concepts that bear Shneidman's imprint include suicidology, psychological autopsy, postvention, subintentional death, and postself. In the language of Suicide as Psychache, the growing numbers of people committing suicide in the United States give testimony to the growing prevalence of psychache in the U. S. population. Like all of Shneidman's work, this book goes well beyond its primary intent in that it is much more than a book about suicide. It is a theoretical book about the psychology of human behavior as reflected in suicide and about creative ways of investigating and responding to suicide phenomena. The book is divided into four parts: Foundations, Analyses, Response, and Follow-Up. This review, being a review, cannot possibly do justice to Shneidman's Suicide as Psychache: A Clinical Approach to Self-Destructive Behavior. It contains so many rich insights coupled with interesting literary references that help to enlarge readers' understanding and knowledge that persons are advised to read the book for themselves. By bringing together his earlier work and building on it, Shneidman allows rea
Psychotherapy of suicidal behaviour is most effective when it flows from understanding. Professor Edwin Shneidman has spent his working life clarifying this issue and making direct implications for intervention. Now, nearing the end of his career in suicidology, this book is a statement of his conclusions. The book touches upon various integral aspects of suicidology: its definitions, aphorisms, commonalities, typical scenarios, psychological core, psychotherapy and gambits for prevention. These concepts are illustrated by reference to Terman's study of gifted children, to a famous Italian writer, and to a dramatic court martial (of an alleged murder committed in a suicidal context). The key concept in this book is psycache: that is, suicide as caused by an intolerable ache in the psyche; an unacceptable pain in the mind. Further, the book rpeates how this intolerable pain is fuelled by thwarted psychological needs, for which that individual is willing to die. "Suicide as Psychache" is an informative and stimulating book.
It should be a valuable read for anyone who wants to be thoughful about the problems of suicide and who wishes to go beyond the usual statistics and prescriptions that currently exist in the professional literature. There are also Shneidman's provovative aphorisms and maxims about suicide itself, for example, "never commit suicide when you feel self-destructive", "there are many pointless deaths but never a needless suicide", "all suicide is psychache - intolerable mental pain", "each suicide seems logical to the constricted mind that commits it", "the way to lower a person's suicidal lethality is to decrease that person's perturbation", and, "it is precisely the 'can'ts' and the 'won'ts' and the 'could'nts' and the 'have-to's' and 'always' and 'onlys' that are negotiable in psychotherapy". It is this kind of wit and wisdom that makes the book valuable and practical.
