Life instinct and gender

• Autores: Olatz Napal, Aitor Francos Ajona
• Localización: Psychopathology in women: Incorporating gender perspective into descriptive psychopathology / coord. por Margarita Sáenz Herrero, 2015, ISBN 978-3-319-05869-6, págs. 303-339
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • The instinct for survival or self-preservation represents the most relevant tendency of the human being, as the development of other instincts and vital functions depends on it.

    Life and death are interdependent; they exist simultaneously and not consecutively and they exert an enormous influence on experience and behavior.

    Our life and hence our experience, behavior, and identity (including gender) are related to experiences of change, pain, risk, symptoms, ambivalence, loneliness, the experience of �the other,� grief, anxiety before death, and the perception of the meaning of life.

    Based on Pierre Bourdieu�s model, through his work Masculine Domination, we conduct an analysis of how culture and society interfere/interact in our behavior, and therefore in our lifestyle and our identity (from a gender perspective), to the extent that we unconsciously add incorporations (from that culture/society) and subsequently assume them as �natural,� �immovable� aspects that are determined by our sex (�biologically�).

    However, things are not as simple as that because, if so, we would not feel disagreement with those behaviors/manifestations/ways of feeling that are given to us �naturally,� and that is where the human being (regardless of sex/gender) makes an effort to �take the reins� of what belongs to him: his life, his body. We thus approach the subject of suicide, as well as the subject of self-harm, specifically self-mutilation, from some different theoretical perspectives and models and conclude by providing our own reflections.