Identidade, trabalho e suicídio: uma análise fenomenológico-hermenêutica

Abstract

This study aims to analyze how the exercise of work activity and work relationships lead the individual to appropriate a certain identity, commonly called professional identity, with the impacts of this unreflective appropriation on the existence and decision of the person to commit suicide at the moment in which this identity is threatened (or ruptured). To achieve our objective, we followed the three stages of the methodological path of phenomenology-hermeneutics: reconstruction, phenomenological destruction and phenomenological construction. In the reconstruction, we sought to carry out the phenomenological reduction and suspension of the theories and concepts that guide the theme of suicide in its relation to work, which led us, through research in scientific publications, with their manuals and compendiums and academic publications, to reconstruct the history of work from its beginnings to nowadays, with its concepts of personal achievement and unlimited productivity. In the same idea, we sought to understand the meanings that suicide has acquired over time. In the second stage, with phenomenological destruction, we sought, through Heidegger's thought that questions the truths established in the modern world, other possibilities of thinking about the work-identity-suicide relationship. Thus, the philosophy of existence led us to a vision of man in co-belonging with the world. Literature also inspired us to escape the reductionism that often marks the scientific model, towards a look directed at the sensitive character of existence. In the third stage, the phenomenological construction occurred in three moments: monitoring the internal vectors to the phenomenon, description and explanation of the experience and, finally, in the conclusion reached by using the method, analysis of the general structure of the experience. Through documentary research, the first moment occurred by describing four suicide situations and two attempts, which, in some way, referred to relationships with work. In the description and explanation of the experience, we performed the analysis of the units of meaning in what the phenomenon of suicide could tell us about the work-identity-suicide relationship. At this point, it was possible to see that the suicides analyzed converged on some points, such as: failure and blaming oneself or others, impact and despair in the face of changes in professional reality, suffering due to the loss of professional identity, worry with family members and suicide as a gesture of denouncement. In the analysis of the general structure of the experience, it was verified that the suicide experiences presented have the singular character of the specific experience, which is articulated with the historical determinations of our era. We conclude that the investigations allowed the emergence of clues, but not causal determinations in relation to the decision to commit suicide in its association with work. The clues allow us to recognize professional identity as one of the reasons that leads a person to commit suicide in various situations related to work, but it is not possible to affirm professional identity as the “cause” that determines such a gesture. Thus, we consider here the enigmatic, non-tangible character of the suicidal gesture, since, as an existence, such a gesture holds indeterminacies that are not always amenable to measurement and control. Therefore, it is necessary to open ourselves to the mystery that often underlies the motives that lead to the decision to commit suicide, even when logical evidence attempts to delimit it. Given this finding, it is urgent that companies and society as a whole develop effective policies to prevent suicide in workplace situations.