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Psychopathology in Women pp 303–339Cite as

Life Instinct and Gender

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Abstract

The instinct for survival or self-preservation represents the most relevant tendency of the human being, as the development of other instincts and vital functions depends on it.

Life and death are interdependent; they exist simultaneously and not consecutively and they exert an enormous influence on experience and behavior.

Our life and hence our experience, behavior, and identity (including gender) are related to experiences of change, pain, risk, symptoms, ambivalence, loneliness, the experience of “the other,” grief, anxiety before death, and the perception of the meaning of life.

Based on Pierre Bourdieu’s model, through his work Masculine Domination, we conduct an analysis of how culture and society interfere/interact in our behavior, and therefore in our lifestyle and our identity (from a gender perspective), to the extent that we unconsciously add incorporations (from that culture/society) and subsequently assume them as “natural,” “immovable” aspects that are determined by our sex (“biologically”).

However, things are not as simple as that because, if so, we would not feel disagreement with those behaviors/manifestations/ways of feeling that are given to us “naturally,” and that is where the human being (regardless of sex/gender) makes an effort to “take the reins” of what belongs to him: his life, his body. We thus approach the subject of suicide, as well as the subject of self-harm, specifically self-mutilation, from some different theoretical perspectives and models and conclude by providing our own reflections.

“The irony of man’s condition is that the deepest need is to be free of the anxiety of death and annihilation; but it is life itself which awakens it, and so we must shrink from being fully alive.” [ 1 ]

“Every existing thing is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness, and dies by chance. … The contradiction of our existence as for-itself is that our essence only becomes complete when our existence is no more.” [ 2 ]

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The queer theory is a hypothesis about gender affirmation implying that sexual orientation and sexual or gender identity of people are the results of a social construction and that therefore, there are no essential or biologically registered sex roles in human nature, but socially variable forms of performing one or more sex roles.

    “The subject decides for itself in its full sovereignty. That doesn’t mean ‘against society.’ The individual can destroy what he or she own, which never really was one’s own, for the sake of an authenticity about which one is anxious. One lays hands on oneself.” (Améry)

  2. 2.

    The dark-gothic movement became relevant in the mid- to late 1970s, while the “emo” movement took place in the 1980s. Both styles included a philosophy and a way of conceiving the world that went beyond the musical style and the clothing. Suicide and death are recurrent in the sense that gothic people are given to self-harm, while for “emo” people (the name is an abbreviation of emotional), self-injuries tend to be less aggressive, but rather superficial cuts [81].

  3. 3.

    Miss A explained to Emerson that she self-inflicted that injury when a man she was in love with, and with whom she had had an affair, rejected her when she proposed to him and he called her “whore.” She drank alcohol, took a blade, and marked the letter “w” (for whore) on her calf. For Emerson, Miss A felt that her past did not make her suitable for marriage, an idea that she could not stand; thus, she hurt the part of herself that represented a symbolic embodiment of her torment.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Alava University Hospital, Vitoria, Spain

    Olatz Napal & Aitor Francos

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  1. Olatz Napal
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  2. Aitor Francos
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Correspondence to Olatz Napal .

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  1. Dept. of Psychiatry, Hospital Universitario de Alava, Victoria, Spain

    Margarita Sáenz-Herrero

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Napal, O., Francos, A. (2015). Life Instinct and Gender. In: Sáenz-Herrero, M. (eds) Psychopathology in Women. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-05870-2_13

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