Balance sheet suicide

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A balance sheet suicide is a suicide that is based on a (more or less) rational weighing of circumstances. The term is controversial.

Origin of the term

The term was coined in 1918 by Alfred Hoche (1865–1943), who wanted to use it to name a deliberate act of suicide by healthy people as an act of free will . In doing so, one's own life balance is assessed as negative and, as a summary, the self-chosen death is sought.

The term is often found in connection with suicides, to which a philosophical character is ascribed, as well as with suicides of the elderly (old age suicide) and the terminally ill. An important advocate of the position of suicide as a consequence of a free choice was Jean Améry (1912–1978, philosopher and Nazi victim). In 1981, WA Scobel described accounting suicide as a suicide by people “whose living conditions have become so hopeless and unworthy that they therefore end their lives. The suicide or attempted suicide can then become the ultimate expression of personal freedom without any psychosocial undesirable development or physical illness. "

Controversy over the term

The term 'balance sheet suicide' is still controversial in research today. Stein summarizes the research debate by pointing out that there is no answer to "whether there is a balance suicide in its pure form". At the center of the controversy surrounding the term is the statement that suicide is usually the consequence of suffering, which is linked to the question of "whether a person who suffers - in whatever form - can be completely free in his will" .

Viktor Frankl (1905–1997) therefore advocated using the term accounting suicide exclusively for the perspective of the person concerned. Klaus Dörner (* 1933) wrote in 1993 that he had not yet become aware of a single case of suicide that could have been described as accounting suicide, and concluded that there was no calculated suicide. In his opinion, accounting suicides only exist in the individual perception of the suicides. Albin Eser calls the balance suicide "a (subjectively negative) perceived life balance". The theologian Klaus-Peter Jörns , on the other hand, sees the suicide as a creation of the suicide's environment that wants to shake off all responsibility. The cause of all suicides are broken life relationships, the failure of which is in no case subject to free decision.

Peter Mösgen wrote in 1996:

“Suicide only makes sense as a sacrificial death. Whoever kills himself under different circumstances acts out of a situation that is subjectively perceived as a predicament. There is no objectively comprehensible, well-considered accounting suicide, even if it is gladly accepted by insurance companies: According to Section 169 of the Insurance Contract Act (VVG), the entitlement to benefits for life insurances only remains if the suicide can be attributed to a mental disorder. "

Claudius Stein suggests viewing the balance sheet element at least as a decisive factor in the context of a broader network of causes. Therefore, not only a fundamental rejection of the recognition of self-declared accounting suicides as a free act is wrong, it must even be assumed that even many suicides, which were committed for recognizable pathological reasons, are based on a balancing factor: “In the final analysis, however, we find Even with many suicides in the context of crises or clearly diagnosed mental illnesses, more or less pronounced balancing elements, if the increasing restriction of the perspective of life due to the illness or in the context of the crisis is anticipated. "

literature

  • Klaus Dörner: Suizid - the intersection of the right to live and the right to die. In: Eckhard Frick, Thomas Giernalczyk: Suizidalität . Interpretation patterns and practical approaches. Regensburg 1993, pp. 1-10.
  • Albin Eser : Manifestations of Suicide and Euthanasia - An Attempt to Typify. In: Albin Eser (ed.): Suizid and euthanasia as a human and social science problem. Stuttgart 1976, pp. 4-11.
  • Thomas Klie , Johann-Christoph Student: Dying with dignity. Ways out of the euthanasia dilemma. Herder, Freiburg i. Br. 2007.
  • Viktor Emil Frankl: Medical pastoral care. Basics of logotherapy and existential analysis. 10th edition. Vienna 1982.
  • Peter Mösgen: Suicide or suicide ?: the phenomenon of suicide from a Christian-philosophical point of view . KU Eichstätt 1999 (diploma thesis).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Note: for Hoche's views on free will, see his 1902 book Die Freiheit des Willens von Standpunkte der Psychopathologie. ( Full text on Archive.org )
  2. ^ Scobel: Suicide. Freedom or sickness? In: Henseler (ed.): Suicide risk. On psychodynamics and psychotherapy. 1981.
  3. ↑ Stein: The area of tension in crisis intervention. 2009, p. 106.
  4. ^ Viktor Frankl: Medical pastoral care. Basics of logotherapy and existential analysis. 10th edition. Vienna 1982, p. 66. (first edition 1946)
  5. ↑ Suicide - the intersection of the right to live and the right to die. In: Eckhard Frick, Thomas Giernalczyk: Suizidalität . Interpretation patterns and practical approaches. Regensburg 1993, pp. 1-10.
  6. ↑ Manifestations of suicide and euthanasia - an attempt at typification. In: Albin Eser (ed.): Suizid and euthanasia as a human and social science problem. Stuttgart 1976, p. 6.
  7. ↑ Jörns, Klaus-Peter: Cannot live and cannot die. Suicidal Risk - Finding Life. 2nd Edition. Göttingen 1986, p. 38 f.
  8. ↑ Natural death and accounting suicide . Published in: Suizidprophylaxe 23 (1996), Heft 1, pp. 20 f.
  9. ↑ word for word in his diploma thesis ( Suicide or suicide ?: the phenomenon of suicide from a Christian-philosophical point of view . Eichstätt 1999), p. 98f. and footnote 554. See also pages 61, 69 and 105
  10. ↑ Stein: The area of tension in crisis intervention. 2009, p. 106.