Paradox of Suicide and Creativity - Authentications of Human Existence

Through a series of case studies, the author explores the paradoxical relationship between creativity and self-destruction. Creativity and suicide, he argues, are both avenues to the resolution of personal catastrophes, with the door to suicide becoming unlocked when creativity's restitutive powers fail.

List of contents

Foreword
Introduction
Chapter 1: 'You Will Rescue Objects from Oblivion': The Case of Iris Chang
Chapter 2: 'Haunted by the Vivid Memories of Killings': The Case of Kevin Carter
Interlude I: Is Creativity Intrinsically Healing?
Chapter 3: 'Give Me One Good Reason to Stay': The Case of Phyllis Hyman
Chapter 4: 'A Dry Place to Call Their Home': The Case of Kurt Cobain
Chapter 5: Individuation through Poetry and Death: The Case of Sylvia Plath
Interlude II: Creativity and Temporality
Chapter 6: 'The Soul We Have Loved, the Soul that Has Left Us': The Case of Jeremy Blake and Theresa Duncan
Chapter 7: A Lifelong Project of Resurrection: The Case of Alan Turing
Interlude III: Suicide as Authentication of the Self
Chapter 8: Existence through Annihilation: The Case of Yukio Mishima
Chapter 9: 'Beauty Is a Dissident Force': The Case of Reinaldo Arenas
Chapter 10: The Drama of the Disintegrating Self: The Case of Robin Williams
Interlude IV: The Medicalization of Life and Death
Conclusion
References

About the author

By M.F. Alvarez - Foreword by George Atwood

Product details

• Authors: M. F. Alvarez, M.F. Alvarez
• Assisted by: Professor of Psychology George Atwood (Foreword)
• Publisher: Lexington Books
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 31.12.2020
• EAN: 9781498523820
• ISBN: 978-1-4985-2382-0
• No. of pages: 204
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Psychology > Miscellaneous; Psychology, PSYCHOLOGY / Suicide, PSYCHOLOGY / Creative Ability, Cognition & cognitive psychology, humanistic psychology, Sociology: Death & Dying, PSYCHOLOGY / Psychotherapy / Humanistic