Reading to Stay Alive

The book begins with rich descriptions of the experience of despair, drawn from real life case studies from the author''s clinical practice, and a review of current evidence of suicide prevalence, risk and protective factors. A review of theories about suicide highlights two contemporary explanatory models: Integrated Motivational-Volitional (IMV) model, with focus on perceptions of defeat and entrapment; and Interpersonal Theory (IPT), with focus on thwarted belongingness and perceived burdensomeness. The book provides an overview of recent analyses of how literary and poetic texts confront the dilemma of existence in the face of grief and loss, and how literary readings can act as points of transformation.
After reviewing Tolstoy''s general approach to the question of suicide in his literary outputs and other writings, the book examines how this plays out in Anna Karenina, with regard to the four main characters in the novel: Anna, Kitty, Vronsky and Levin (Tolstoy''s alter-ego). The book then undertakes a detailed analysis of the turmoil and despair expressed by Gerard Manley Hopkins in his so-called Terrible Sonnets. It shows how his descriptions of visceral, heart-wrenching grief present the legitimacy of distress and provide a sense of connection, enabling us to make the journey from despair to hope.
Turning to moral philosophy, the book considers why our sense of coherence, our desire to persevere in our own being, may become overwhelmed; and whether engagement - whether communal or spiritual - may be the critical element in the existential preservation of the self, enabling us to recover or create reasons to be. After considering how music and dance can also enable us to stay alive, the book reviews lessons learnt from the author''s encounters with Tolstoy and Hopkins, and how they can inform therapeutic encounters with people considering suicide. Finally, the book explains how people in caring roles may act as catalysts or reagents, or simply bear witness, to the processes of transformation from death towards life.