The role of the father in a pre-suicide state.
In the self-examination that followed a patient's suicide attempt, the author was worried by three features which he had observed in an earlier suicide attempt by another patient: (1) the father had not featured in the analysis as much as would have been expected, (2) the suicide attempt occurred during a period when the time and place boundaries of the analytic setting were in jeopardy, e.g. the patient was absent from sessions; and (3) this coincided with the author having temporarily underestimated the suicidal risk. These three features were illuminated by a transference to a father who did not claim his child for himself and offer an alternative to fusion with a dangerous mother. Although the patient's suicide fantasies were based on a pathological bond with his mother, during the pre-suicide state the internalised father who had failed to protect his son from mother was evoked in the countertransference to function as a sanction for the suicidal act.
Campbell
D
D
D000328:Adult; D003379:Countertransference; D005201:Fantasy; D005219:Father-Child Relations; D006801:Humans; D007389:Internal-External Control; D008297:Male; D009034:Mother-Child Relations; D011574:Psychoanalytic Theory; D011575:Psychoanalytic Therapy; D012307:Risk Factors; D013406:Suicide, Attempted / Q000517:prevention & control / Q000523:psychology*; D014167:Transference, Psychology