title: Therapeutic empathy with the suicidal wish: principles of therapy with suicidal individuals.
abstract: Several principles of therapeutic work with suicidal individuals are described. These principles represent different aspects of therapeutic empathy with the suicidal wish. They are based on a theoretical model that presents suicide as an end result of unbearable mental pain. Mental pain is believed to emerge from reciprocal interactions between biochemical imbalances, life stress, personality factors, pain-producing inner patterns (e.g., self-hate, sense of being dispensable), and facilitators and inhibitors of self-destructive behavior. The therapeutic approach is characterized by an empathic experiential encounter with the death wish, the pain-producing inner patterns, self-destructive tendencies, and the exploration of the most dreadful and frightening inner experiences. An empathic attitude toward the wish to die, coupled by an uncompromised confrontation of self-destructiveness, can provide the hope of discovering a path of compromise with life's difficulties.
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan 52900, Israel. orbachi@mail.biu.ac.il
authors.forename: I
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Orbach
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001601:Bereavement; D004645:Empathy; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007398:Interpersonal Relations; D008016:Life Change Events; D008297:Male; D008602:Mental Healing; D008875:Middle Aged; D011613:Psychotherapy; D013405:Suicide / Q000523:psychology; D000092864:Suicide Prevention