Suicide as Historical Phenomenon: Introduction to the Thematic Section

Abstract

There are probably not many things that mark people more than the fact that they are transient. The division between life and death, between Eros and Thanatos, is as old as humanity itself, and while dying and death are exceedingly common themes, suicide has nevertheless been given a particular place and has had different connotations in various cultural contexts over the centuries. The thematic section at hand presents the studies from the project titled Sin, shame, symptom: suicide and its perceptions in Slovenia (1850–2000), financed by the Slovenian Research and Innovation Agency (research core funding No. J6-3123), covering the period from the second half of the 19^th century to the modern period, when suicide victims became viewed as patients and were no longer perceived as criminals and sinners. In the period starting with the formal decriminalisation of suicide and coinciding with the birth of modern statistics – which, for the first time in history, calculated statistically verifiable, demonstrable, and, within specific environments, constant rates of suicide – the perception of suicide changed. No longer deemed a sin, a rebellion against the Creator, and a criminal act, it initially became regarded as “the most intimate act” until it started to primarily represent a reflection of crises and societal circumstances. Suicide was perceived as an issue at the intersection of the sacred and the secular, of the philosophical, sociological, and medical spheres, of the urban and rural domains, while lawyers, doctors, sociologists, theologians, and others dealt with it from their perspectives.