Commentary on "Suicide, Language, and Clinical Practice"

We must be grateful to Gavin Fairbairn for his careful charting of the lexical and the phenomenological basis of suicide. He shows us how there are patterns of match and mismatch between the meaning of the intentional actions of people who injure themselves sometimes unto death, and the meaningful actions of a variety of others involved with the central actor. These patterns are integrated, when they are, by the meanings given to their own and the self-injurer’s action. Meanings appear in the talk and writing within which the main action is embedded. As Fairbairn points out, the choice of lexicon is crucial to the subtlety of the attributed meanings. This approach allows him to use the action/act distinction to show how it is possible for the same action (in one sense of “same”) to be read in more than one way. He suggests a certain program of language management in which some common uses of the word “suicide” are proscribed and some new, more differentiated terms are introduced, such as “cosmic roulette.” The aim is to match the clinical picture more closely to the meanings and intentions of the actor.

There are several different cases in which the actor’s and observer’s understandings of intended acts may differ, each instance having its own peculiar epistemological difficulties. (a) There is the case where the actor (he or she who carries out an action) and the observer or interactor (he or she who responds or otherwise reacts to what the actor has done) believe different acts have been, or to be about to be, performed. I suppose most of the time doctrines like mens rea express the commonsense view that the actor is the best authority regarding the act he or she performs, roughly on the grounds that the actor knows best about what was intended. The fact that occasionally the interpretations of someone other than the actor may be regarded as authoritative does not upset this general principle. A case has to be made ad hoc for assigning the interpretative responsibility elsewhere. (b) There is also the case in which two or more people each carry out very similar actions, by socio-behavioral criteria, and onlookers are inclined to take these as performances of the same act. But close attention to circumstances, the life stories of the people involved, and subsequent happenings, might lead knowledgeable onlookers to see them from this perspective as performing different acts.

Fairbairn gives us instances of both types of case. In what circumstances are we justified in overriding an actor’s claims regarding the meaning of the actions? Likewise, when is an actor required to give up his or her presumptions as to his or her own intentions? In what circumstances, and for what reasons, do we rightly distinguish the acts of one person from those of another, when each seemingly performs the same actions? The currently fashionable terminology for describing these different “takes” on a pattern of actions is to call the differing descriptions “versions.”

There are two outstanding problems with these cases, and in Fairbairn’s treatment generally. First, what are the criteria by which actions are individuated, and how do these differ from the criteria by which acts are individuated? These criteria must be different, or the real life situations described by Fairbairn would be impossible. And second, can we make sense of the idea of “what he really meant” or “what he actually thought”? Throughout Fairbairn’s paper, these concepts are the driving force of the analysis. The art of the clinician and caretaker involves being able to home in on this reality. But that art is vulnerable to philosophical skepticism about the very right of the clinician to make claims about what the client or patient really thinks, plans, or intends regarding actions.

Certain postmodernist writers, such as K. J. Gergen, would be hostile to the suggestion that a kernel of fact exists within these situations. There are, for these thinkers, nothing but a plethora of versions. If the versions are to be distinguished from one another, it...