Jann E. Schlimme, Uwe Gonther, Borut Škodlar
[Journal für Philosophie & Psychiatrie, Jg. 3 (2010), Ausgabe 1]

Abstract

In this paper the experience of another person's suicide is addressed. Clinical and sociological observations attest the fact that witnessing another person's suicide as an imminent or immediately completed event may influence one's own suicidal ideation.  Our thesis is that prereflective, intersubjective experience of other person's suicide raises explicit retrospective questions about the meaning of suicide for the other and provokes explicit questions about the potential meaning of suicide for myself. In the first part of the article, experiences of another person's suicide are described as immediate, short-term, long-term, and other. Then, drawing on a phenomenological description of intersubjectivity and on the theory of mimesis, we characterize the experience of another person's suicide in terms of the mimetic power of suicide. Our two main conclusions: a) Every experience of another person's suicide bears a mimetic quality which implies the potential reflection of one's own suicide (not necessarily increasing his or her suicide risk), and, b) Surviving a suicide attempt and overcoming a suicidal crisis can bear this mimetic quality. The last insight should inform some strategies for suicide prevention, e.g. mass media reporting.

Key words: phenomenology, interpersonal dimension, mimetic experience, empathy, imitation

Zusammenfassung

Die mimetische Kraft des Suizids. Eine Untersuchung zu den Merkmalen der Erfahrung des Suizids Anderer
In dieser Arbeit wird die Erfahrung untersucht, die gemacht wird, wenn sich ein anderer Mensch das Leben nimmt. Klinische und soziologische Untersuchungen haben wiederholt gezeigt, dass das direkte Erleben des Suizids einer anderen Person einen Einfluss auf die eigene suizidale Erfahrung hat. In unserer Arbeit vertreten wir die These, dass die Erfahrung des Suizids einer anderen Person unbeabsichtigt dazu führt, dass explizit rückblickende Fragen zur Bedeutung dieses Suizids gestellt werden und dadurch zudem (unbeabsichtigterweise) Fragen hinsichtlich der eigenen Möglichkeit, sich töten zu können, aufkommen.  Im ersten Teil wird die Erfahrung des Suizids einer anderen Person in ihren sofortigen, kurzfristigen und langfristigen Eigenarten beschrieben. Anschließend zeigen wir, unter Bezug auf ein phänomenologisches Verständnis der Intersubjektivität und der mimetischen Theorie, dass diese Erfahrung mit der Begrifflichkeit der mimetischen Kraft des Suizids konzeptuell gefasst werden kann. Unsere zwei wesentlichen Schlussfolgerungen aus diesen Überlegungen sind: a) Jede Erfahrung des Suizids einer anderen Person weist eine mimetische Qualität auf, welche sowohl unbeabsichtigt als auch gegen die gefasste Absicht dazu führt, über die Möglichkeit, sich töten zu können, nachzudenken (was jedoch nicht zwingend mit einer Erhöhung des Suizidrisikos einhergeht); b) auch das Überleben eines Suizidversuchs bzw. das Überwinden einer suizidalen Krise kann für andere Menschen einen solche mimetische Qualität aufweisen. Diese letzte Einsicht könnte neue Suizidpräventionsstrategien, beispielsweise bezüglich der Berichterstattung in Massenmedien, anregen.

Schlüsselwörter: Phänomenologie, interpersonale Dimension, mimetische Erfahrung, Empathie, Imitation

I. Introduction

The decision to kill oneself seems to be a very personal decision, even though it is typically heavily influenced by psychological disturbances, for example profound desperation or heartache ("psychache", Shneidman); or even more special influences, for example delusional convictions or imperative voices. Interpersonal issues are of crucial and outstanding importance with respect to the evolvement of desperation and suicidal ideation. These influences seem to be more or less "indirect" since they are mediated via the mental state of the suicidal and despairing person. Yet, when considering the interpersonal dimension more closely, it is long-standing knowledge that the structure of our experiences, thoughts and behaviours are profoundly and prereflectively interpersonally and/or culturally determined. The importance of the other for my personal identity is much more profound than usually considered in suicidological concepts. With the exception of debates about a short-term effect of suggestion on suicide, suicidology focuses mainly on intrapsychic mechanisms, for the most part on intrapsychic representations of social interactions.

In this study we will switch points of view and ask how a suicide of another is experienced on the reflective and prereflective level - whether being witnessed directly, or experienced indirectly when a loved one kills herself not in our presence - and how the structure of this experience can be described adequately. We will argue that the suicide of another person is always experienced as a very meaningful behaviour for the other person. Drawing on phenomenological insights into the structure of intersubjectivity, we will further argue that this experience is not only reflective in nature, but also prereflective in the sense of provoking interpersonal empathizing that is natural, automatic and immediate. Since it is normally impossible to prevent such prereflective experience, every committed suicide leads to typical feelings and attributions regarding the other's behaviour. It can appear e.g. as desperate or heroic, as embarrassing or relieving. It is our thesis that this prereflective intersubjective experience raises explicit retrospective questioning about the meaning of suicide for the other and provokes in a further step the explicit questioning about the potential meaning of suicide for myself. Therefore we can say that a committed suicide is accompanied by a mimetic power which should be taken into account.

In this paper we will investigate the experience of the suicide of another person in three ways. First of all, we will describe the intersubjective effects of a committed suicide in detail. We will differentiate imitative effects with respect to their timing after witnessing a suicide; for example, immediate effects (e.g. empathizing, emotional reactions), short-term effects (e.g. being directly inspired by another's behaviour), and long-term effects (e.g. being indirectly influenced by cultural trends). Additionally, we will describe other non-overt imitative and non-imitative effects which are much more diverse than is represented in these concepts and are far less easily observed than overt imitative effects. Then, we will briefly present two psychological concepts for understanding this experience and argue that these concepts insufficiently cover all aspects of these effects. In a third step we will propose a phenomenological understanding of the experience of a committed suicide of another person ('How committed suicide by others is experienced'), which will focus on the description of the mimetic experience, that is to say the (conscious) experience of imitating another person's behaviour both intentionally and unintentionally. This kind of experience is not limited to the experience of another person's suicide, and furthermore, does not cover all its aspects. But it does describe the main point of this experience, which we shall call "the mimetic power of a committed suicide." Finally, we will discuss possible consequences stemming from the description and understanding of the experience that we go through if another person commits suicide in our presence or if a loved one kills herself.

II. Different intersubjective effects of suicide

Before describing various intersubjective effects of suicide, we emphasize that the imitation of the perceived behaviour means in our case that we commit suicide. Such imitation quite clearly implies a drift in one's experience when experiencing another person's suicide. Even though it is difficult to relate a person's entire behaviour to another person's single behaviour if these behaviours do not resemble each other, we will describe four characteristics of 'How committed suicide by others is experienced' with examples from actual suicidological insights, debates or historical events: a) immediate effects; b) short-term imitative effects; c) long-term imitative effects; d) other effects.

II.a. Immediate effects

The observable shape and situational placement of another's dead body after committed suicide is typically not in the normal range of experience². Depending on the suicide technique (e.g. lying in one's bed as if sleeping or lying in an armchair and covered with blood on the mangled head and upper part of one's body) or the moment of one's own encounter with the other (e.g. seeing a person actually jumping from a high building or seeing a crowd of many people standing on the pavement around someone from whom I can only see a glimpse of a part of its immobile body), the interpretation of the other's body shape and situational placement is more or less easily objectified as 'suicide'. Still, even in the most overt situation imaginable (e.g. a limp body swinging slightly in a room with at a rope slung around his neck) one typically experiences a short moment of astonishment or disbelief regarding the actual occurrence. This 'initial shock', in which one experiences oneself as immobile and as if being suddenly stopped and having dropped out of the normal rhythms of life, can even go so far that the whole situation appears to be unreal. Then, after "realizing" the scene, many conflicting feelings come up, often connected with various questions coming to mind quickly: Did it hurt? How could he? Did he really do it on his own? This initial 'shock' indicates that suicide is typically not in the range of one's own familiar experiences, though this can be the case when one is often confronted with it (whether as a police officer or as a family member). Furthermore, typically, a fixed image of the scene is remembered afterwards for a longer or shorter period of time.

Whereas the initial experience of being shocked could be described as the problem of simulating internally the perceived shape of the others body in its situational placement, or the other's behaviour, the moment of realizing what happened would in this case indicate successful internal simulation. This moment seems also to correspond to the beginning of the mimetic experience. Quite logically, feelings and thoughts matching the other's behaviour are experienced in that moment. In that manner I experience a pain in myself when seeing a person lying immobile on the pavement with a smashed and broken body, perhaps even a pain localized in the perceivably hurt regions of the other's body. Or I experience the short sensation of losing ground and a radical blackness around me when seeing a suicide victim hanging heavily from a rope around its neck with its head dropped to one side, which equals my usual experience when encountering the corpse of patients who died more or less expectedly in my medical care for reasons other than suicide. These immediate effects of another person's suicide seem to match the typical experience of grief right after the loss of a loved one ('stage of denial'; see Lewis 2001; Shuchter/Zisook 1993; Bonanno/Kaltman 1999). This is well known from studies of the experiences of people who lost loved ones via suicide (e.g. parents of suicide victims, Waern 2005). The immediate experience, after realizing the scene, ranges from ongoing disbelief to very intensive emotional reactions such as guilt, despair, fear, anger, or shame, or even relief. Connected with these feelings are ideas formulated as questions that cannot be answered any more by the suicide victim. Why did she do it? Was there no other possibility? Could I not have helped her in any way? Why did I not sense her desperation or intent to kill herself? These questions are typically mixed with fantasies regarding possible answers. But since these questions and their possible answers are typically short- and long-term effects, we don't want to go more into detail at this point (see III.b-d).

It is noteworthy that this puzzling means that the perceived object is initially not perceived as a human being who committed suicide. Even though it is perceived as a human being, and a mimetic experience is on the verge of taking place, this otherwise taken for granted givenness of mimesis is interrupted due to the unfamiliarity of the perceived other's shape and situational placement. Summarizing the characteristics of the immediate effects of experiencing a committed suicide of another person, we can therefore differentiate three aspects: a) A prereflective and passive (basic) form of experiencing the encountered object so that further empathizing is indispensably taking place; b) An interruption in this prereflective and passive process, which implies a conscious experience in the sense that the encountered behaviour is strange and incomprehensible at first sight; c) A successful empathizing, which implies the conscious realization of being placed in front of a suicide victim respectively that the other person committed suicide. Quite obviously this process of empathizing is taking place without any need for explicit reflection or explicit initiative demonstrating its passive quality in the sense of being always already involved in. This passive quality of being moved equals what is usually called an emotion (Ekman 2004; Krüger 2006). Now, we admit that our distinction of three steps in the process of empathizing appears to be quite artificial. Yet these distinctions would match the above mentioned circumstance of being puzzled, since this 'initial shock' seems to be connected with the immobility of the other person or with the kind of behaviour the other is involved in which is unusual since it is out of one's normal range of behaviour (at least actually in our modern societies). But be it as it may, at least these immediate effects indicate quite clearly that empathy is an active act and must be achieved. Yet this intersubjective resonance is typically not suspended in a natural encounter and is usually given quite automatically in the (passive) way of being always already achieved, implying that one is already internally moved.

II.b. Short-term imitative effects

To our understanding, short-term effects in the first four weeks, whether imitative or non-imitative, are higher and elaborate forms of intersubjectivity. They can occur when realizing that one is experiencing the committed suicide of another person. The imitative effect means in our case the imitation of suicide itself, which can be differentiated regarding the question of time and of style. Regarding the question of time the most prominent short-term effect is the so called 'Werther-Effect' as described by David Phillips in 1974 (Phillips 1974). Even though this effect was debated controversially, the basic idea is the direct and short-term (within two weeks) pro-suicidal influence of the suicide of 'positively attributed others' - especially celebrities or personally known loved ones and especially when combined with images of the victim - on one's own behaviour. This effect of behavioural imitation after experiencing committed suicide by others is well documented. Notably, investigations of the Werther-Effect are limited to instances of indirectly experienced suicide communicated through modern mass media (Wassermann 1984; Etzersdorfer/Sonneck 1998; Stark 2005; Pirkis et al. 2006; Cheng 2007; Gonther 2009). It is also a very old and well recognized cultural reality, as can be seen, to give one example, in Greek Theatre, arguably the first mass media in antiquity. Euripides  (485-406 BC), for example, used the topic of sacrificing oneself for one's polis frequently in his dramas, thereby further enhancing the willingness of the audience to give their own lives for their polis. Most prominent regarding this topic is tragedy, "Iphigenie on Aulis", in which Iphigenie is at last rescued by the goddess Artemis while sacrificing her life freely for Hellas (Euripides 1950, p. 61f.). But also the Stoic philosopher Seneca (1 BC-65 AC) complained about the often rash decisions of young Romans to commit suicide unreflectedly and in the wake of others (Seneca 1992, Tranq. an., 2, 9ff).

Yet, this 'Werther-Effect' is no necessity, especially when one is not in a suicidal state of mind before witnessing a suicide or losing a loved or admired one through suicide. When Johann Wolfgang Goethe (1749-1832) published his epistolary novel "The Sufferings of Young Werther" in 1774, there was no 'Werther-Effect' in the sense of Phillips, but the kick off of a sub-cultural movement of young and educated people imitating Werther and Lotte in style and form, as Goethe himself reported in 1813 (Goethe 1998, 9, p. 583-9) and as historical findings confirmed (Scherpe 1970, p. 31; Steinberg 1999; see also III.c.). Admittedly there were a few meticulous imitations of Werther's suicide in style and form even years later, indicating that imitative effects of suicide can appear long after the event and even after experiencing another's suicide indirectly (Steinberg 1999). But additionally, when Kurt Cobain (1967-1994), most famous frontman of the rock band Nirvana, killed himself violently in 1994, no 'Werther-Effect' was detected, even though many fans of Cobain were preoccupied with suicidality afterwards (Jobes 1996). Most probably Cobain's behaviour itself led to this effect of increased thematizing of suicidality without killing oneself, since it was Cobain himself who talked openly about his inner conflicts, problems and feelings of desperation, thereby promoting intersubjective communication regarding one's state of mind (Gonther 2009; see also III.c. and III.d.).

Now what is the experiential structure of these different short-term effects, whether leading to suicidality or even attempted or committed suicide? In what way does the suicide of another person persist in one's lived experience such that an ongoing reflection over it takes place and short-term effects are possible? As already mentioned images and fantasies concerning the other person's suicide repeatedly come to mind after the encounter with the suicide victim. This implies beside feelings of guilt, anger, fear and sorrow explicit questions which are not answerable by the suicide victim any more (e.g. Why did she do it? Was there really no hope left?). Usually these questions provoke fantasies concerning possible answers. Yet, these fantasies are not direct answers of the suicide victim, but are answers of the fantasizing person due to its mimesis of the situation the suicide victim is assumed and perceived to have been in. They are, in a special way, personal answers, given out of a (more or less subliminal) simulation as if I were in this or that supposed situation. Surely one can repress the memory, but then the other's decision to commit suicide remains an unsolvable riddle (see III.d.). If one wants to answer these questions it is necessary to empathize profoundly with the experiences of the suicide victim, thereby also comparing one's own life-situation with the supposed life-situation of the suicide victim. Consequently, it is the experienced suicide itself with its persisting and (emotionally) moving images, fantasies and probing questions that drives the other to thematize the topic of suicide personally and self-consciously. Consequently ongoing drift stemming from the experienced suicide of the other leads to questions such as: What would be a situation in which I would think about suicide? And furthermore: What would be a situation in which I would do it myself? Of course this need not lead to a suicide attempt or a committed suicide, it can result in a cathartic overcoming of one's own 'induced suicidal crisis' (see III.d.; see also Bättig 2006). But it is noteworthy that the experience of a suicide of another person unfolds a drift going in the direction of thematizing suicide as an option for oneself, be it accepted or rejected. We call this kind of experience a mimetic experience. Summarizing, we can conclude that the suicide of the other is, in a peculiar way, initiative for my own lived experience, as if this other person would still be there and would unfold an actual and somehow incomprehensible behaviour affecting my life-world. It is exactly this peculiarity of a mimetic experience that can be called a mimetic power and that obviously also has the potential to fuel a suicidal process.

II.c. Long-term imitative effects

The experience of another person's suicide can also have long-term imitative effects occurring after the four weeks period. This does not simply mean an exact imitation of another's suicidal style a long time afterwards, even though this can occur (see III.b.), but especially the development of certain personal attitudes and cultural traits regarding suicide and suicidality. Of course cultural aspects of one's own possible behaviour must be considered when trying to understand the diversity and variety of suicide styles and techniques in special subgroups (for example, in the case of army officers, we may consider the codes of honour of officers of the Roman Army in antiquity, the European armies in the 18th to 20th century, or the Japanese samurai). The long-term effect of an ongoing mimesis of suicidal behaviour (and/or the imagined effects of committed suicide) and the reflection on this repeated empathizing can also be seen in the Renaissance and Humanism in the early modern era. Drawing on the Stoic interpretation of suicide as a possible way to liberate oneself from a world in which one is not able to live "according to nature" any more, especially Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592) thematized the option of suicide as a knowledge which helps one get along - even in the most miserable of moments - offering a last option to achieve relief (Montaigne 1998, II,. 35 a. III, 417). In his essays Montaigne typically used vivid images to demonstrate the familiarity of suicide in antiquity thereby implying that one would behave like a noble Roman or Greek when killing oneself. It was the widespread re-reading of texts from antiquity which promoted the notion of suicide as a liberating and freely chosen act in certain populations in the early modern era (Schlimme 2010, p. 105ff). The power of Montaigne's argument stemmed also from the images he provoked in his readers, thereby easily allowing a mimetic experience of the described behaviour. Not to mention the mimetic power when witnessing a suicide out of love for another on stage like in Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet" (1597), a most popular drama in London's rapidly evolving theatre scene. Apparently, the slow changing of attitudes towards suicide in the humanistic population stratum in the early modern era can be interpreted as a long-term imitative effect of the literally mediated experience of committed suicide by others (especially figures from antiquity).

This long-term imitative effect is more often observable than expected at first sight. In the last decades of the 18th century a completely new and different debate concerning suicidality and suicide developed heavily fuelled by the "Werther" and by David Hume (1711-1776). Hume also used the essayistic technique of visualising and metaphorically speaking in his famous essay "On Suicide" in order to change the attitude towards suicide of his fellow citizens (Hume 1995). This was in accord with Hume's own understanding of intersubjective influence mediated via internal simulation of other's attitudes and behaviour ('sympathy'; Hume 2000, p. 206ff and 368 ff; see Schlimme 2010, p. 156ff). Both Hume and the already mentioned "Werther" helped focus on the question of how to understand suicidality as a mental state (Schlimme 2010, p. 267ff). And quite obviously they are still effectively influencing this debate, as can be seen from the fact that Hume's essay and Goethe's "Werther" are frequently used in writings and in schools concerning a mindful examination of suicide and suicidality.

Nowadays this long-term imitative effect in experiencing suicide by others can be seen in the extreme visualising as given in the debate regarding euthanasia or medically assisted suicide taking place in the feuilletons and cultural sections of European newspapers, magazines, televisions and online fora. This was most prominent in the television broadcasting of "The Suicide Tourist" on British Pay-TV at 11th December 2008 (Zaritsky 2008). The repeated experience of suicide by others seems to be quite influential, since the repeated empathizing with suicidal people and suicide victims provokes and affords an ongoing internal occupation with one's own possibility of killing oneself. It is our thesis that this is at least one factor in the actual drift towards accepting suicide as an option for oneself, as is presently taking place in most European countries and as can also be seen e.g. in the attitude of German physicians towards suicide (in a study 66% named suicide as an option for themselves, and 50% already thought about doing it (Reimer et al. 2005); in a telephone survey nearly 40% named assisted suicide as a wishful option (TNS Healthcare 2008); see also Vogel et al. 2007). This does not say that there could not be substantial arguments for respecting a person's decision to kill herself. Our intention at this point is not to judge these decisions, but to describe the quite logical idea that images are not without influence on the direction of one's actual standpoints. All this indicates that the experience of suicide by others influences cultural trends and debates regarding suicidality and suicide profoundly and over a long-time, especially when it can be witnessed or observed by many participants of this debate and can thereby become a discursive reference point.

This long-term imitative effect is furthermore related to the topic of suicide as a 'family tradition'. This means more than just missing support by family members in difficult situations, even though this is an important risk factor for suicide (McGarvey 1999; Randell et al. 2006; Skodlar et al. 2008). And it means more than a family tradition of poor problem-solving skills, especially with regard to challenging interpersonal and emotional situations, which is also an important risk factor (Jeglic et al. 2005). It means that families can trade suicide as a possible behaviour from one generation to the next. This is of outstanding importance, since nearly 3/4 of all suicidal people have a family history of suicide when taking first- and second-degree relatives into account (Runeson 1998). Every individual member of these families has a more or less direct contact with a person who attempted or committed suicide. Even if it is only some knowledge due to an oral tradition in the family, it implies at least a 'superficial' internal mimicking of the suicidal behaviour on one's own. In that way it is no wonder that there are even families that pass the tradition of suicide from generation to generation (Schleiffer 1979, Runeson u. Asberg 2003).

How can the experiential structure of these long-term effects of another person's suicide be described? Quite obviously the experienced suicide, whether directly encountered or only indirectly, acts as a reference point in a repeatedly thematizing internal preoccupation with suicide. Comparable with short-term imitative effects this ongoing consideration focuses on questions like 'What would be a situation in which I would think about suicide?' and  'What would be a situation in which I would do it myself?' (see III.b.). Yet the suicide of the other affects my life-world also in its intersubjective dimensions, since this effect seems to be stronger regarding the cultural drift when empathizing with the suicide victim is more easy thereby implying that a greater part of a society gets involved in an internal (and external) debate. To be modelled on someone implies to stand in the line of a special (sub-)cultural tradition or a family tradition and implies having the support of the elders (whether from one's family or a certain cultural movement). Of course one could claim that this support is imaginary and only a support in one's own mind, but nevertheless it is obviously experienced as given in one's life-world and can well be described as mimetizing these models. These imaginary relationships demonstrate not only the cultural prescription of one's behaviour, but can generate a specific form of a simulated or fantasized 'intersubjectivity' as can often be observed in suicidal people ('suicide fantasies', see already Henseler 1974). Similar to the short-term imitative effects we can summarize that the experience of a committed suicide of another person can act also in the long run as a reference point which can be described as a repeated mimetic experience and a reflection on one's mimetic experience. Further this experience can thereby influence - via such repeated engagement - the public debates on suicide as an option for oneself, be it culturally or traditionally accepted or rejected, thereby altering cultural prescriptions. We already named this peculiar power of a committed suicide by another person a mimetic power.

II.d. Other effects

Beside the mentioned imitative effects there are various effects of an experienced suicide by another person that appear to be non-imitative. Anger about the other person leaving one alone and behind seems to be quite non-imitative, even though we could argue that it already implies a mimetic experience when understanding that the other person killed herself. If we take a closer look at the short- and long-term effects which are at least not overtly imitative, the main non-imitative effect seems to be the rejection of suicide - whether only in the actual situation or in general. This effect is much more frequent than an imitative effect, though it is not so often thematized in public, and has a more or less cathartic dimension. On the other hand it is typically intertwined with imitative effects, since if affords at least a more or less elaborate and profound retracing of the supposed situation the suicide victim was in right before committing suicide. In that sense experiencing another person's suicide is an internal and/or external reference point regardless whether the (intra)-subjective or intersubjective debate goes into the direction of imitating suicide, overcoming an actual suicidal crisis, accepting suicide as an option for oneself and having it in store as a behavioural option for a supposed future situation, or rejecting suicide as an option for oneself. And even when a person represses the memory of a directly encountered suicide - of its repeated internal reliving of the scene, its vivid emotions concerning the other's suicide and its probing questions unanswerable by the suicide victim (all of it indicating the extensive mimetic experiences taking place) - the experienced suicide of the other person still acts as a reference point when consciously rejecting suicide for oneself.

Often mentioned is the cathartic effect of the experience of a suicide by another person. Goethe e.g. mentioned explicitly that writing the "Werther" helped him to overcome his own suicidal crisis (Goethe 1998, 9, p.588). This motivation is not unusual regarding ongoing consideration - be it artificial or even scientific - of suicide or suicidality (see for artists also Alvarez 1999 and Brown 2001). But it is also a traditional knowledge that the behavioural option of suicide can be relieving when one is in a despairing situation, as was first explicitly mentioned by Seneca (Seneca 1992, De ira, III, p. 15; Schlimme 2010, p. 95ff). In that sense e.g. Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) wrote in his book Beyond Good and Evil as the 157th statement:  "The thought of suicide is a great comfort: it helps one to get through a bad night." (Nietzsche 1994, III, p. 94) It is important to notice that this is not an effect of deterrence, but means modelling oneself on someone who also overcame a suicidal crisis. This can be described as imitating a person who successfully dealt with a suicidal crisis, like e.g. Elton John. In that way I am a little bit like Elton John when I successfully overcome my despairing difficulties in life. Again it is noteworthy that this cathartic effect seems to rely on a mimetic experience of the suicidal state of mind as described above (see III.b.) and that it influences cultural traditions as well (see III.c.).

III. Psychological concepts of imitative experiences

The most frequently used concept for understanding the effects of the experience of another person's suicide is 'social learning theory'. The newest development of 'social learning theory' by Albert Bandura is the conceptualization of observational learning in 'social cognitive theory'. According to his concept people actively extract "rules and conceptions" of the observed behaviour which are then settled in "cognitive representations" representing "behavioural conceptions" as a "generative guide" for the construction of the observed behaviour. According to Bandura's concept, it is only with these representations in the background that the observed behaviour can be transferred or translated into "appropriate courses of action" when the person is motivated to model the behaviour (p. 90). Bandura points out that "social cognitive theory distinguishes between acquisition and performance […] of behaviour." (p. 90). Obviously, Bandura claims that people are taking a 'cognitive detour' when learning via observation in order to simulate someone else (Bandura 1997, p. 89ff).

The main problem in understanding mimetic experiences with social cognitive theory is precisely this 'cognitive detour'. Even though it seems quite convincing to claim that people actively extract explicit "rules and conceptions" of observed behaviour when trying to simulate another's behaviour consciously (e.g. when learning the rules of a game such as "Monopoly"), it is not very convincing to claim exactly this kind of extraction when copying another's behaviour without thinking. For example if a baby imitates its mother sticking out its tongue, it copies the bodily movements of its mother without elaborate reflection. This does not mean that no mental processes are taking place. But it does imply that this behaviour is also trained by one's own movement and not simply by observing that of another person. And yet it can be a mimetic experience in the sense of an experienced imitation of each other, as for example becomes clear when this movement is integrated in a play of hide and seek. Quite obviously, this inferential character of "social cognitive theory" is the main problem for understanding the nature of imitation.

A different psychological concept for understanding such experiences of imitation is the concept of mimesis as developed in anthropology and literature studies (Gebauer/Wulf 1993). This psychological concept draws on the thesis of a prereflective internal simulation of the experienced behaviour of others, implying that imitation is only possible because of such prereflective internal simulation and that literal behavioural imitation is only a very special form of this mimetic process (p. 330ff and p. 432ff). Drawing on the work of René Girard (Girard 1988) Gebauer and Wulf develop a psychological theory that the experienced world of the other - e.g. even when this other is only a character in a movie or in a book - is immediately "internally simulated" as an "inner world" in contradistinction to one's own world. Furthermore, if this "internally simulated inner world" is sensed to be better than the world one is presently living in, the new inner world begins to work unconsciously as an "internal medium". Tension arises in one's experience which is directed towards imitating this "inner world". For Gebauer and Wulf, such desire of the other's world is typical for mimetic processes and demonstrates, from the very beginning, the intersubjective quality of subconscious drives and desires. Since visual perceptions especially provoke internal simulations, images are often very powerful in a mimetic sense (p. 434).

When trying to understand the intersubjective effects of suicide, the main challenge for this psychological concept is the requirement of an elaborate reconstruction of an "inner world". Surely, this kind of elaborate fantasies and daydreams will occur when reading a novel such as "Moby Dick", but it is not very convincing to claim that equally elaborate fantasies are evoked when coping with a witnessed suicide. Additionally, and this is an even more important argument, would the thesis of an "inner world" not misinterpret the reflections, memories and fantasies doubtlessly taking place after the experience of another person's suicide as hints and proofs for such an elaborate "inner world" even though this is not really experienced? For us, the claim that people internally simulate such an "inner world" after experiencing another person's suicide seems to be an 'as if'-concept. This does not say that such an elaborate imitation is not possible. And it does not say that it is then not given in exactly the way the psychological concept of 'mimesis' describes it. But it acknowledges that such an elaborate simulation in the sense of an "inner world" is usually not experienced in the case discussed here. Nevertheless, given that the psychological thesis of a tension or drift remains an important question for our study - whether connected with such an elaborated internal simulation or not - and is helpful as a starting point to describe the experiential structure when experiencing another person's suicide, since these qualities of being shifted into a suicidal state or of being intensified in one's suicidal state are of major interest.

IV. A phenomenological understanding of the mimetic experience

Our more detailed descriptions of the intersubjective effects of a committed suicide show the importance of what is herein called a mimetic experience. Quite obviously this mimetic experience is characterized by an experienced mimetic power of another person's behaviour. Both psychological concepts sketched out above (the concept of mimesis and the 'social cognition theory') seem to explain parts of this experience. Whereas 'social cognition theory' faces the challenge of trying to explain such a mimetic experience via a 'cognitive detour' which contradicts its character as a lived experience, the concept of mimesis does explain at least parts of this mimetic experience on the experiential level. It interprets the drift towards a certain behaviour or the experienced desire for this behaviour as the product of a meticulous internal simulation of the other's situation. Yet, drawing on our description of immediate and short-term effects, this thesis is not very convincing. Contrary to the concept of mimesis, people experiencing themselves imitating a suicide do not seem to experience the other person's behaviour as an elaborately fantasized "inner world", but are instead more involved in reflecting on their own situation triggered by the experienced suicide of the other person. Surely this involves reflecting upon the other person's situation and the memory of images of the witnessed situation or having fantasies about the other person. And surely there can be people who truly reconstruct another person's life-world in such an elaborate way. But we believe that in the concept of mimesis those reflections, memories and fantasies are taken as a hint and proof for such an elaborate "inner world" as if they would really experience it. This raises the question of how we can describe the structure of this experience without residing to this 'as if'-concept of an internally simulated "inner world"? This style of asking focuses on the relationship between the experiencing subject and the experienced object (in this case: the committed suicide). In a general sense this means adopting a phenomenological attitude which further implies an investigation focusing on the first-person-perspective (Drummond 2007). In a more narrow sense this means taking lived experience in its given forms and scopes into account; both the conscious and explicit perspective of the person and the prereflective (subliminal, embodied, interpersonal and situational) structures of the person which are the antecedent basis of their explicit perspective (Schwartz & Wiggins 2004, p. 356ff). Thereby the structure of the subject's relatedness to his world becomes the subject matter of understanding. This allows us to describe how something is given in concrete lived experience and to answer the question of how the experience of committed suicide by others is structured. In the following we will try to describe the characteristics of this experiential structure. We therefore also account for how observed mimetic phenomena can be conceptualized by the phenomenological investigations of intersubjectivity.

Starting with Edmund Husserl, the phenomenological investigation of intersubjectivity tackles among others the problem of empathy, since the experiences of the other person are not directly experienced (by the phenomenologist) and yet they are not simply reflective attributions of mental states to the other (Bernet/Kern/Marbach 1996, p. 144). This dilemma raises the question - in what ways is the other experienced in my own lived experience? Crucial for our investigation here is the following phenomenological insight: On the one hand, I can only experience indirectly that the other has experiences in the sense of a first-person-perspective in the same manner as I do. On the other hand, I experience directly the other as another. Both aspects are of pre-eminent importance in this context on the prereflective as well as on the reflective level because the person who committed suicide can definitely not be experienced any more and cannot be questioned in order to evaluate one's own feelings, ideas or interpretations regarding the other's motives or intentions. But even though it is only indirectly possible to infer consciously in retrospect what this person experienced before killing themself, everyone has doubtlessly immediate feelings, ideas and interpretations about the person's experiences. Obviously, in order to describe the characteristics of one's own experience of another person's suicide, we need to better understand the basic problems of intersubjectivity.

Husserl pointed out that this immediate and simultaneous experience of the other without being able to be in his stead literally ("Appräsentation") is the crucial element of empathizing. It is not a reflective attribution but a naturally and immediately prereflective givenness when experiencing other human beings (and not, for example, when experiencing tea cups or cars) (Hua I, p. 124). Following Scheler (1973, p. 232ff) and Merleau-Ponty, empathizing is no conclusion from analogy (e.g. following the experience of analogy of bodyshapes), but is accompanied by a (prereflective) detailed internal comparison and identification of the other's behaviour as directly experienced ("facial expressions of the other and of me are compared and identified (sont comparées et identifiées)" Merleau-Ponty 1966, p. 404). This is not only true for gestures or facial expressions, but for every observable movement of the other "living body being in action"1 ("un corps vivant en train d'agir", p. 406). Merleau-Ponty describes in detail how the movements and behaviour of the other rearranges and alters the 'objective things' in my life-world, so that the other is experienced as the point of a certain unfolding of initiative actions: "A certain handling of things is happening there, which were exclusively mine until now. Somebody is using my familiar objects. […] As soon as I am born, being in possession of a body and a natural world, I can come across alien behaviour in my world, with which my own behaviour is intertwined as described above." (p. 406 and p. 410) Merleau-Ponty points out that this description of intersubjective resonance does not explain this experience of the other but that it is only a reflective description ("une sorte de réflexion", p. 404) of the already appresented other as another (p. 410ff). Since the other's first-person-perspective is in no way directly accessible for me, the other is in the same instance given and not-given in my experience. This radical alterity of the other cannot be changed and demonstrates quite clearly that: "The social sphere or dimension (le social) is already there before we recognize it or judge about it." (p. 415) In a similar vein Sartre and Lévinas conceptualized the indispensable basis of intersubjectivity as confrontation with the radical otherness of the other (Sartre 1943/1976; Lévinas 1979). An important insight of phenomenology regarding the subject's relatedness to its world is therefore its indispensable intersubjective quality (Zahavi 1996, p. 91ff).

Both aspects mentioned above seem to be crucial for what one could call the intersubjective resonance (directly experiencing the other as another) which is usually called empathy and which seems to be at the 'heart' of intersubjectivity. Though we don't want to go deeper in the elaborate discussion about a phenomenological understanding of intersubjectivity, we want to point out that in the phenomenological understanding used in this study the interpersonal quality of all our experiences is deemed to be indispensable, just like being embodied or being situated in a world (Rombach 1994, p. 167ff). We therefore agree with the phenomenological perspective that experiencing another is a direct embodied and embedded experience of transcendent, radical otherness (Zahavi 2005, p. 147; Zahavi, 2001 drawing on Edith Stein claiming that 'empathic experience is a sui generis mode of experience'). Intersubjective understanding can thus not be explained as a kind of a simulation in the sense of projecting oneself imaginatively into the situation of another (see for a detailed discussion Zahavi, 2008). It is just as Merleau-Ponty pointed out: All our descriptions are only reflective descriptions ("une sorte de réflexion", Merleau-Ponty 1966, p. 404).

If we follow these insights, the mimetic experience of another person's suicide can be described as a prereflective and reflective imitation of another's behaviour. As such, it involves the immediate experience of affections, motives and values belonging to this special behaviour without actually taking this behaviour out. A further characteristic of this mimetic experience is the upcoming of questions regarding the mental state of the suicide victim, the situation he/she was in and the motivation for his/her behaviour. It thereby implies a confrontation with one's own mortality or, perhaps, sometimes, even the loss of a loved one. In the repeated (fantasized) imitation of this behaviour, suicide becomes more and more familiar, and the questions become more and more personal and have to be answered personally. In addition, the experienced suicide serves as an internal and external, and as subjective and intersubjective reference point in an ongoing or repeatedly taken out thematizing of suicide as a possible option for oneself. We already named this drift of the mimetic experience of another person's committed suicide or suicidality the mimetic power of the experienced suicide. This description of the mimetic experience remains on the epistemological level of a phenomenological description, meaning that it is not itself the natural experience, but instead a way to describe this experience of intersubjectivity.

V. Discussion

In this study we described the experiential structure of experiencing another person's suicide and differentiated immediate, short-term, long-term, and other effects. We demonstrated that the description of how committed suicide of others is experienced focuses on an intersubjective experience which can be called a mimetic experience. It seems to be this mimetic experience that corresponds with most of the intersubjective effects of a suicide which can be observed with respect to the topic of imitation. This can be seen in the intertwining of typical immediate emotional and behavioural aspects whenever encountering a committed suicide; in long-term effects regarding the changing of cultural prescriptions; in the circumstance that the further reflection on the experienced suicide always already involves one's own feelings, attitudes and values concerning the topics of mortality, despair and suicide; and especially in constant and prereflective comparisons between oneself and the other. The experience of a committed suicide by another person is, in the case of the mimetic experience, already prereflectively structured in a comparative style before the person is able to think about the topic more closely. Modelling one's behaviour is therefore neither only a reflective nor only a cognitive act, but a prereflective process taking place in an 'intuitive comparison' as if I were the other. Yet, when encountering a suicide victim or if witnessing a suicide, a mimetic experience cannot simply be taken for granted, but must be actively achieved. This does not deny that experiencing another person's behaviour as another person's behaviour implies that one is automatically, immediately and preflectively provided with affections, motives and values ('interpretations' in the widest sense) linked with the other's movements, even though these 'interpretations' are of course open for improvement and reevaluation since they are genuinely mine ("My first feeling when I saw him doing this or that was …, but then I noticed that ….").

Yet, it is necessary to keep in mind that this thesis is a phenomenological description and not a psychological or anthropological theory. If this thesis would be misunderstood as an anthropological theory, intersubjectivity would be limited to the range of this theory (which is of course nonsense). The phenomenological description of an experienced internal imitation - whether being simulated in one's imagination or in one's thought in the sense of 'thinking as behaviour in rehearsal' - is not easily integrated with the psychological conceptualisation of a sub-personal process called 'internal imitation' as can be found in the concept of 'mimesis', which might even be compatible with certain processes in the mirror-neuron-system of the human brain. It is further important to notice that the conceptualisation of such a sub-personal process of 'internal simulation' faces the difficulty to differentiate meaningful 'sub-atomic' parts of such an 'internal simulation'. This difficulty comes up, since simulation always means (unintentionally or intentionally) imitating intentional actions of another person in its situational context (see for the later argument Gieser 2008). In a phenomenological sense such a psychological concept of an 'internal simulation' can therefore be 'bracketed' and understood as an 'as-if'-conceptualisation of intersubjective experiences in psychological terms. Exactly with respect to this difficulty the understanding proposed in this paper demonstrates the main advantage, since we are able to describe and understand imitative effects of suicide as a mimetic experience without assuming a sub-personal process of an 'internal simulation'. Yet we have to admit that even though we succeeded in integrate aspects of the psychological concept of mimesis into a phenomenological understanding of intersubjectivity via describing the characteristics of the mimetic experience, this integration still seems to be a challenge both for psychological and phenomenological work.

Our description of how committed suicide of others is experienced on the reflective and pre-reflective level demonstrates that a committed suicide gains a mimetic power for the concerned person. Of course this does not imply committing suicide, but it implies (usually) at least experiencing a touch of a suicidal crisis. It is therefore not an expression of oneself being emotionally instable or of being threatened with mental illness when one comes up with a question such as 'What would be a situation in which I would do it on my own?'. On the contrary, it provides us with an opportunity to envision one's own behaviour in future cases of urgency. Such envisioned "knowledge" can have a preventative effect and can keep persons from suicidal behaviour in times of crises. From this point of view, it can also be said that personal knowledge of people who have successfully dealt with a suicidal crisis is extremely stimulating to challenge one's own difficulties with suicidality. For suicide prophylactic approaches it would be desirable to have more public knowledge about such success in order to foster a slowly developing tradition that suicidal crises are exactly what they are - crises and not downfall. In this vein, the findings from our study could inform the policy of media, being a well known and strong mediator of informing public on suicidal behaviour of other people. Reporting not only about suicides but also about successfully overcome suicidal crises, could contribute to suicide prevention. On the other hand this does not dissolve the intersubjective riddle that experiencing another person's suicide leaves me behind with only personally answerable (and typically unanswerable) questions regarding the other's suicide: "Yet our existential shudder remains." (Jaspers 1994, II, p. 314).

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Endnotes

¹ In this section, but also in the other sections, we draw extensively on our own experiences of directly witnessing people who had just committed suicide or were on the very brink of actually doing it, covering a total of 14 cases.

² All translations, except where indicated, by the authors.

Jann E. Schlimme MD MA
Research Group "Phenomenological Psychiatry, psychiatric Anthropology and History of Psychiatry"
Clinic for Psychiatry, Socialpsychiatry and Psychotherapy
Hannover Medical School
30625 Hannover, Germany
schlimme.jann@gmx.de

Jann E. Schlimme is a senior lecturer for psychiatry and psychotherapy at Hannover Medical School (MHH, Germany) and leads the section "Phenomenological Psychiatry, Psychiatric Anthropology and History of Psychiatry" integrated in the Department for Psychiatry, Socialpsychiatry and Psychotherapy at the Center for Mental Health of the MHH. He was also a senior registrar in this department until 08-2009 and is now a senior registrar at the Clinic for Psychiatry and Psychotherapy II, University Clinic of the Paracelsus Medical University Salzburg, Austria. Jann E Schlimme holds an MD from Hannover Medical School since 1998 and received his licence to lecture in 2007. He also studied Sociology, Social Psychology and Philosophy at Leibniz-University Hannover (Master of Arts, 2004) and actually finalized his dissertation in philosophy regarding the impact of a phenomenological enquiry of suicidality for mental health services. In 2005 he won the Prize for Philosophy in Psychiatry of the German Association for Psychiatry and Psychotherapy (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Psychiatrie, Psychotherapie und Nervenheilkunde) and was a DAAD-Fellow in 2009 (German Academic Exchange Service). He is editor-in-chief of the "Journal for Philosophy and Psychiatry" and editor of the yearbook "psycho-logik" (Alber Verlag, Freiburg/Breisgau). In 2010 Jann E. Schlimme will start a two-year Marie Curie Fellowship at the Department of Philosophy,  Karl-Franzens-University Graz.


Uwe Gonther
Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy
Klinikum Bremen-Ost
28325 Bremen, Germany

Uwe Gonther is in 2009 a senior registar at the Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Klinikum Bremen-Ost in Bremen, Germany. Starting with 2010 he is head of the Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, Klinikum Bremerhaven in Bremerhaven, Germany.


Borut Škodlar
a) University Psychiatric Clinic Ljubljana
Center for Mental Health
1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia
b) Danish National Research Foundation:
Center for Subjectivity Research
University of Copenhagen
2300 Copenhagen S, Denmark

Borut Škodlar was in 2009 post-doctoral research fellow at the Danish National Research Foundation's Center for Subjectivity Research, University of Copenhagen. He defended his PhD-thesis (under supervision of Martina Tomori and Josef Parnas) Phenomenological analysis of reasons for suicide in schizophrenia patients at the University of Ljubljana in 2008. He permanently works as a Senior Registrar in the Unit for psychotherapy of psychoses, University Psychiatric Clinic Ljubljana.