Melancholia and (im)permanence: Fundamentals for a Freudian Suicide Theory

Abstract

In this theoretical article, we aim to establish the paradigmatic character of the melancholia’s freudian concept in relation to suicide. We shall begin this journey by recourse to Freud's early writings and attempt to circumscribe the relevance of a peculiar loss in melancholia (1895/1996). We will proceed through the works dedicated to metapsychology in which the theme of melancholia (1917 [1915]/1996) is articulated to suicide by means of the proposition that the ego only kills itself since identified to the lost object. From this support, it will be possible to question the passage to the suicidal act as the extreme of the refusal to the ephemeral. Since the unconscious is incapable of executing the act of killing itself, the refusal puts in evidence a rejection of the unconscious. From the Lacan’s teaching (1962-63/2005), we will argue that the passage to the suicide act structures itself as a rejection that has in the triumph of the object a T the moment in which the subject is suppressed and identified with what is irreducible to the signifier.