Intervenções Psicológicas na Iminência do Suicídio à Luz da Gestalt-Terapia / Psychological Interventions in the Imminence of Suicide in the light of Gestalt Therapy

Resumo: A proposta deste artigo é discutir os processos de intervenção da Gestalt-terapia em situação de iminente suicídio, dentro do processo de psicoterapia. Para tal, foi realizada uma pesquisa qualitativa através de uma revisão bibliográfica, utilizando-se da análise de conteúdo do material encontrado. Desse modo, ressalta-se que a pesquisa percorre um caminho histórico do fenômeno suicida e da abordagem gestáltica, para assim, entender e discutir sobre possíveis intervenções frente a iminência do ato suicida. Ademais, pretende-se refletir sobre o papel do Gestalt-terapeuta, frente a esta demanda e como é visto a pessoa que atenta contra a sua própria vida. Posto isso, salienta-se o papel do Gestalt-terapeuta com o manejo as situações de suicídio, possibilitando uma abertura para ouvir o desejo de morte, atuando de modo a realizar desvios éticos, políticos e antropológicos, bem como prestando acolhimento ao sofrimento dos consulentes para a criação conjunta de novas possibilidades de futuro para além da morte. Logo, destaca-se a importância do compromisso ético-político do profissional psicólogo perante o sofrimento do sujeito frente ao suicídio. Palavras-chave: Gestalt-Terapia; Suicídio; Clínica psicológica. Abstract: The purpose of this article is to discuss the intervention processes of Gestalt therapy in situations of imminent suicide, within the psychotherapy process. To this end, a qualitative research was carried out through a literature review, using the content analysis of the material found. Thus, it is noteworthy that the research follows a historical path of the suicidal phenomenon and the gestalt approach, in order to understand and discuss possible interventions in view of the imminence of the suicidal act. Furthermore, it is intended to reflect on the role of the Gestalt-therapist, facing this demand and how the person who attacks his own life is seen. That said, the role of the Gestalt-therapist with the management of suicide situations is highlighted, enabling an opening to listen to the death wish, acting in a way to carry out ethical, political and anthropological deviations, as well as welcoming the suffering of the consultants for the joint creation of new possibilities for the future beyond death. Therefore, the importance of the ethical-political commitment of the professional psychologist is highlighted in the face of the subject's suffering in the face of suicide.Keywords: Gestalt-Therapy; Suicide; Psychological clinic.

Reading the represented city and society: signs, theory, and the dynamic interpretativeness of Peircean semiotics

In the era of visual media, cities, and society are represented, experienced, and interpreted through images. The need for interdisciplinary visual approaches, therefore, is indisputable. By focusing on cinema, this paper aims to develop a conceptual, methodological framework through which theory helps a broad range of researchers in social sciences, humanities, and arts interpret the represented phenomenon. Based on Peirce’s model of signs, the framework provides the basis for a dynamic interpretation of the city and society. This paper shows that Peircean cinesemiotics takes advantage of theory in three ways: First, as the basis that provides scholars with clues necessary for identifying eligible “image-signs”; second, as the guiding framework that helps them reach a final interpretation; third, as ideas are being criticized from visual perspectives. As an example of its application, using Jane Jacobs’ “The Death and Life of Great American Cities,” the final part of the paper applies Peircean cinesemiotics to an image-sign from Death Wish (2018) and interprets it as the representation of safety/crime in a neighborhood.

Baldwin’s Perfect Storm

James Baldwin’s arrest in Paris in December 1949 gave birth to his perfect storm. His ten days in Fresnes jail weakened him physically and emotionally. He made it out, but upon release he was mired in self-doubt and enveloped in a bout of depression. He returned to his hotel, ready to try to get back to his life, however daunting that effort would be. The hotelier’s demand that he settle his bill, and do it quickly, awakened his obsession with suicide. He simply could not handle one more obstacle in his path; he chose to kill himself in his room. Ironically, he saved his life when he jumped off a chair with a sheet around his neck. In a matter of seconds his death wish was replaced by his equally obsessive need to write, witness, think, party, drink, challenge, and love.

E’ lecito ai poeti alterar le favole: The story of Dido according to Giovan Battista Busenello

The aim of this paper is to analyze the rewriting of Dido’s myth by Giovan Battista Busenello, the librettist of the first opera named after the queen of Carthage. The imposing regality of Dido and the highly dramatic tension of the Aeneid are absent in Busenello’s libretto. Interestingly, if in the fourth book of the Virgilian poem Dido kills herself with Aeneas’ sword, in the final act of the opera she marries Iarbas, king of Gaetulians. Poignantly, in her only aria Dido sings her rejection of Iarbas’ advances, instead of her death wish or her sorrow for Aeneas’ departure. The tragic éthos we expect of Dido surfaces in two other characters in the opera, Hecuba and Cassandra, specifically through their laments. The basso lines of their laments call to mind the formal archetype at the heart of the famous Dido’s lament, Dido’s aria in Dido and Eneas, composed by Henry Purcell forty-eight years after the Didone. In that way, Hecuba and Cassandra constitute the actual tragic characters in the Didone, while, conversely, Dido is granted a happy ending, a deviation from the source just as peculiar as its author.

The Death Wish in the Hebrew Bible

This is the first book to systematically investigate the texts in the Hebrew Bible in which a character expresses a wish to die. Contrary to previous scholarship on these texts that assumed these death wishes were simply a desire to escape suffering, Hanne Løland Levinson employs narrative criticism and conversation analysis, together with diachronic methods, to carefully hear each death-wish text in its literary context. She demonstrates that death wishes embody powerful, multi-faceted rhetorical strategies. Grouping the death-wish texts into four main rhetorical strategies of negotiation, expression of despair and anger, longing to undo one's existence, and wishing for a different reality, Løland Levinson portrays the complex reasons why characters in the Hebrew Bible wish for death. She concludes that the death wishes navigate the tension between longing for death and fighting for survival - a tension that many live with also today as they attempt to claim agency and autonomy in life.