November 25, 2012 - What is Psychological Death - Dimitrios Kiriazis

November 25, 2012

What is Psychological Death - Dimitrios Kiriazis

“Psychological death” is a word formation which is occasionally used metaphorically to express great desperation by a suffering patient. This denotes an absence of purpose and the desire to die. Such desperation brings on a urge to commit suicide, thus imposing upon oneself a type of “self- healing”.  On another hand, it intertwines the “dead – living objects”, which seem to have permanently settled into the inner psychic unconscious fantasy level, or it expresses mental and emotional deadness, manifested by feelings of emptiness, boredom or apathy, isolation and the petrification  of emotions. The patient feels as if he has died for some time, or either “locked up in a tomb” or returning from Hades - feeling as he has left a “physic tomb” moving towards revenge: to kill or commit suicide particularly if manic incidents and illusions are present.

From the presentation  given at the “2^nd International conference on Pastoral Health Care” in Rhodes 2011

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