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When Editor of the Journal invited me to guest-edit a special issue on the impact of patient suicide on clinicians, trainees, and organizational dynamics, I was excited to work on a project I feel connected to via my research interests. For the past several years I have conducted a research project interviewing psychoanalysts and psychoanalytically oriented psychotherapists who have had a patient commit suicide. These interviews are painful, poignant, and occasions for deep reflection on both the loss and the learning that occurs when a patient ends the treatment by ending his/her life. Many therapists I interviewed told me that they had turned to the literature on suicide to make sense of their experience. They found helpful articles on epidemiology and some case reports on what had gone awry in treatments ending in suicide. The voice of the therapist experiencing the loss is not often the focus of the writing. This project is an attempt to invite therapists who have knowledge of the effects of patient suicide into a more public discourse.
In addition to my excitement about the opportunity to shepherd what I believe to be a valuable contribution to the literature, I experienced trepidation about my ability to secure papers about such a deeply personal experience. Writing about the personal and occasionally, shameinducing topic of patient suicide invokes the twin specter of exhibitionistic grief on the part of the therapist, and perhaps voyeuristic interest as a guest-editor or reader of the papers. In part, I think that the exhibitionistic/voyeuristic axis inhibits therapists from openly revisiting one of the most painful professional experiences within a more public sphere. This dilemma contributes to the feeling many therapists I have interviewed have expressed—that this topic may be taboo within us and within our professional community. Despite the fact that, during their career, many therapists will have a patient commit suicide, our professions do not seem to p