SCIENTIFIC CONTRIBUTION Sense of self-determination and the suicidal experience. A phenomenological

The Author(s) 2011. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com Abstract In this paper phenomenological descriptions of the experiential structures of suicidality and of self-deter-mined behaviour are given; an understanding of the pos-sible scopes and forms of lived self-determination in suicidal mental life is offered. Two possible limits of lived self-determination are described: suicide is always experi-enced as minimally self-determined, because it is the last active and effective behaviour, even in blackest despair; suicide can never be experienced as fully self-determined, even if valued as the authentic thing to do, because no retrospective re-evaluation from some future vantage is possible. The phenomenological descriptions of the possi-ble scope of lived self-determination in suicidality, pre-sented in this paper, should prove to be extremely helpful in three different fields of interest: (a) ethical debates regarding the pros and cons of autonomous or heterono-mous suicide; (b) clinical day-to-day practice with respect to treating suicidal people; (c) people who suffered a sui-cidal crisis, attempted suicide or lost loved ones through suicides. (155 words)