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“The psychological autopsy is a procedure for investigating a person's death by reconstructing what the person thought, felt, and did preceding his or her death.”
I think it is fair to say that I have been preparing this ‘autopsy’ ever since I was born—if not before. That is to say, it has been in my awareness first implicitly and later explicitly for a very long time. And thus I begin this work with excitement and dread. Excitement because of what I may learn. Dread because of what I may learn.
But I have never done a psychological autopsy, and so I must ask, where do I start, what do I do? “This reconstruction is based upon information gathered from … face-to-face interviews.” Brian L. Mishara (2012) continued as if anticipating my uncertainty, “talking in a tactful and systematic manner to key persons—a spouse, lover, parent, grown child …” As I read, I realized that the “grown child” was the only key person still alive. And in interviewing him, I would be “face to face” with my self.
But I am a doctor, and this brings up another conflicted point—self-disclosure. “The doctor should be opaque to his patients and, like a mirror, should show them nothing but what is shown to him” (Freud, 1912, p. 118). I first read Freud's “papers on technique” as a psychiatric resident. I understood then, as I understand now, why Freud felt “the doctor should be opaque.” Why the “mirror” was intended to be held in front of his patient, not himself. Why he cautioned against self-disclosure. And so I understand now (perhaps better than I might have understood then) that with this autopsy I will be crossing a line I thought I never would.
For an autopsy there must be a death. Let me start there. “The cause of death in hanging depends on the condition related