In order to understand the nature of suicide, it is necessary to go deep into the mechanisms of our own internal functioning.
This exploration must first consider the nature of desire and what desire can lead to.
In various appearances, a haunting theme returns without ceasing : the quest for happiness - not of a temporary happiness, but of a total, definitive happiness.
In this unceasing quest, happiness is first searched for in external objects : profession, sentiments, foods, sex, objects of various nature...
When the desired object has been obtained, there is a period of satiety, that can last for a short or long time. But sooner or later, the quest is resumed.
When the desired object can not be obtained, the feeling of dissatisfaction, of lack returns, and new substitutes are looked for.
A moment comes when the happiness brought by objects no longer appears sufficient. A period of distress then arises. This distress, if it persists, can be transformed into real despair.
It is necessary to understand better the nature of this distress. Happiness is searched for in objects, but these no longer appear sufficient to appease the "hunger", to mask a deep feeling of lack, a suffering.
The emergence of this semi-consciousness of a happiness that can not be grasped can be brutal or progressive.
More intense the appetite for happiness is, the more intense and painful is the frustration.
This state of lack generally does not appear in periods "where all is fine", that is in periods where situations generate a relative well-being.
It appears especially when there is a lack of situations on which the well-being rests : professional satisfaction, a loved one, self-esteem...
It is in these moments of rupture of rhythm, of unexpected change, that a pain that one believed to be forgotten suddenly appears.
If this suffering is too intense or too prolonged, and can not be pacified by anything external, the idea of self-destruction can arise as a sudden revelation, a hope of no more suffering.
Suicide generally is the last door, that which remains half-open when the other exits are closed.
As we can see, the suicidal desire is intimately linked to the suffering, to the desire to no longer suffer, and to the desire for happiness.
When suffering stops, happiness is.
Where therefore is the fault, in what seems to be an implacable logical process ?
The fault, if one can use this word, resides in the comprehension of the nature of suffering and remedies for suffering.
Replace the word "suffering" by contracture. The suffering is a contracture. This term, already less vague, gives a glimpse of the remedy.
Indeed, this contracture can already be felt in the body, the stomach, the solar plexus, the back or the throat.
The suffering is then objectified. It is no longer an invisible enemy which can not be seized, but it becomes an object of observation.
At this exact moment, there is already a change in the perspective, a beginning of maturation.
Instead of seeking causes of suffering or artificial means to no longer feel it, one observes it, one listens to it, one pays attention to it, as if one wanted to discover its secret.
This facing of it is an important moment in comprehension.
One no longer escapes suffering but one sits down beside it. It is a radical change in perspective.
And what can be discovered ? That when one faces it, the suffering decreases, the contracture disappears. And the more the face of it continues, the more the pain dissolves. When clouds go, the sun shines.
The understanding comes that all these years of struggle and conflicts were only an attempt to escape this direct confrontation with what is the most apprehended : the suffering. And as long as one escapes it, it becomes denser, it strengthens.
When one faces suffering, one slides from the role of actor to that of spectator.
It is a position already more comfortable. When the actor of the film laments, the spectator smiles.
This silent observation of rhythmical contractures of the personality that refuses to die is in itself liberating.
When there is no more involvement in what is seen, a distance is created between the object of observation and the one who observes. The process of disidentification has then begun.
This body that suffers, that struggles, I know it, I see it, I feel it. I can not be what I see, I know that I am the connoisseur of what is perceived.
This connoisseur of myself is as an eye which knows itself as a look but can not see itself, as a hand that can seize and grasp everything except itself.
This complete reversal in perspective is in itself transformation.
When it is clearly seen that one can neither take nor seize anything, that happiness can neither be taken nor seized, at this right moment there is a suspension, a stop. The ultimate desire appears to be a non-desire. This non-desire is not an absence of something, but a presence of ourself, a plenitude conscious of itself that disappears when one wants to seize it and reappears when one gives way to it.
The comprehension invites a total release, a complete letting-go of all what one thinks one is, of all what one believes one is.
This absence of ourself is revealed as a presence containing an indescribable beauty.
To live beauty in its essence, to live a plenitude without object, here is the end of a therapy that will have seen the death of myself replaced by the life in itself.
Of course this process can not be made in its totality in a few minutes in the mind of a patient determined to commit suicide. But if just an opening is created during a talk, during a short moment a new perspective arises intuitively.
The quest for happiness is the most normal of quests. The desire not to suffer is the most normal of desires. But corporal destruction no longer appears to be the true remedy for suffering. What has to die is the false "myself", the idea of "myself" created by thought, subtle image conditioned by environment and memory.
Death is the price of liberty. Not the death of the body, but the death of what one believes one is, prelude to the birth of the new man, unblemished, free, united for always to what he has always sought, himself.
Lecture given at the XIII° Congress of IFOTES,
International Federation of Telephonic Emergency Services, July 10-15,
1994, Jerusalem