Albert J.A. Felling, Michael Scherer-Rath, Johannes A. Van Der Ven, et al.
Leiden
Brill
Images of death are reflections of one's own attitude to life, and in existential crises such as a suicide crisis, their meaning should therefore not be underestimated. This article describes the results of a research that has attempted to discuss attitudes, which people adopt towards death in times of a suicide crisis. The analysis of the data shows that death is looked upon from an immanentistic and religious viewpoint. Within this context the combination and the coexistence of the theistic and deistic image of God is striking, as well as the import of the deistic representation of death of the transition and of the faith in the immortality of the soul. The relevance of these two religious images of death is mainly found in the fact that they create a perspective beyond death for the assumption that there will be possibilities for modelling one's own identity. Images of death are reflections of one's own attitude to life, and in existential crises such as a suicide crisis, their meaning should therefore not be underestimated. This article describes the results of a research that has attempted to discuss attitudes, which people adopt towards death in times of a suicide crisis. The analysis of the data shows that death is looked upon from an immanentistic and religious viewpoint. Within this context the combination and the coexistence of the theistic and deistic image of God is striking, as well as the import of the deistic representation of death of the transition and of the faith in the immortality of the soul. The relevance of these two religious images of death is mainly found in the fact that they create a perspective beyond death for the assumption that there will be possibilities for modelling one's own identity.