Twenty-second International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities

Abstract

In the Western Literature tradition, few passages are more famous than Hamlet’s soliloquy wherein he wrestles with the decision to end his life. This paper examines William Shakespeare’s description of suicidal ambivalence in light of the contemporary study of suicidology. The fundamental problems of the discipline have been far from resolved (how can we assess and know which person might kill themselves versus those who remain in ambivalent pain? what treatments and interventions can work to prevent suicide? how do risk factors change across subgroups, cultures, and societies?), while other disciplines of prevention (reducing breast cancer and heart disease) have made progress. Suicidal ambivalence has drawn the attention of the central figures in psychiatric care over the last century. Most interventions for suicidal persons have the objective of enhancing reasons for living and/or reducing reasons for dying. Clinical interventions address this dangerous calculus, including identifying unnoted reasons for living, challenging irrational reasons for dying, expanding perspective beyond the crisis, and invoking and strengthening unrealized resilience in the face of adversity. In the end, it is speculated, that, despite the “technological” innovations in our lives over the past 400 years, the task of diffusing suicidal ambivalence remains a deeply personal and unassailed forest where artificial intelligence and other contemporary technologies have proven little value. This mental state of ambivalence still requires a compassionate human presence for admittance—and it is hoped that this human presence is armed with the right words to ease a human soul back from the brink of suicide.