The experience of trauma that converts to destruction of the self: a consideration of suicidal attack during times of global distress

Abstract

ABSTRACT Global traumatic distress associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, poverty, and war contributes to the individual’s subjective experience of painful suffering. Although suicide rates appear to decrease during times of major upheaval, fantasies of self-destruction act defensively to assuage the pain of unbearable suffering and may progress to self-attacking actions. In this paper, we suggest that integrations of psychoanalytic and social perspectives are useful in dealing with the subjective experience of an unbearable external reality and an intolerable internal state that converts external hostility to self-destructive thoughts and actions.