The Psychoanalytic View of the Problem of Suicide on the Example of South Korea

This work is devoted to the problem of suicide in modern society of South Korea from the perspective of psychoanalysis. The peculiarity of the study is that suicide is considered as a multifactorial phenomenon, taking into account social and cultural points of view, and also provides an overview of various psychoanalytic views. At the moment, psychoanalysts mainly have data regarding working with patients in Western-oriented societies. Since psychoanalysis originated and developed in Europe, and later began to be used in the West, it is not at all surprising that Asia, with its specificity and special view of the world, special culture and philosophy, still remains a “blind” zone for theoretical and practical psychoanalysis. In view of this, the purpose of this final qualifying work was not only a broader consideration of the problem of suicide, taking into account the social, cultural and religious aspects, but also consideration of suicide using the example of Asian culture, namely the society of South Korea. In the theoretical part of the work, a large analysis of literary data was carried out, ranging from the works of the classics of psychoanalysis to modern views on the problem of suicide. In the empirical part, the author examines in detail the society of South Korea, taking into account the peculiarities of history, culture, religion and social structure of this country. The work done presents a broad view of the problem of suicidal behavior in an Asian country that is among the leaders in the number of suicides, which makes this study even more interesting and visual. In conclusion, the results are summarized and it is noted that the culture of collectivism, the origins of which is Confucianism, is the source of the phenomenon of “shame” suicide, characteristic of South Korean society. In addition, based on the results of the analysis, it was concluded that for South Korean society the most significant reasons leading to suicide are identity problems and narcissistic issues, which in turn are the main causes of depression.