Dr. Jelena Seferović : “Other claim that nothing can be found out withouth a gipsy women”: Qualitative analysis of interpretations of suicide in the late 19th and early 20th centuries”

Dr. Jelena Seferović will have the following presentation at the symposium “Karlovački bioetički susreti – zdravlje od rođenja do smrti”, which will be on Friday, December 2, 2022:

“Other claim that nothing can be found out withouth a gipsy women”: Qualitative analysis of interpretations of suicide in the late 19th and early 20th centuries”

The presentation is based on the research of newspaper articles about suicides that were published at the end of the 19th century at the beginning of the 20th century The question of suicidal intentions, attempts and the committing of suicide was also considered in the context of the psychiatric discussions that were published in “Liječnički vjesnik” in the aforementioned period.

Considering the interpretations of the causes of suicide by the authors of newspaper articles, it was observed that they most often brought in connection with the individual’s inability to satisfy traditional patriarchal and religious norms of the community, but also with the time that the community failed to meet his expectations and needs. Psychiatric analyzes of suicidality were based on the presentation of quantitative statistics information about the way in which the suicide was committed and the effort to interpret it with reference to that time current psychological and biological theories and social and economic circumstances of the lives of individuals who are attempted or committed suicide. But for those psychiatrists who referred to the “general laws of life”, that the act was nothing but “an unnatural phenomenon, an anomaly”. It is obvious that it was equally difficult for laymen and experts at the time to figure out the causes of the occurrence of suicides ideas, attempts and realization of the suicide itself.  Therefore it is not surprising that the answer to that question was sometimes sought from someone who possibly has an insight into the transcendental and has some special spiritual powers, that is, from a “gypsy woman”.