‘Door eigen hand. Zelfmoord en de nabestaanden’ by Joost Zwagerman

After his father attempted suicide in the late 1990s, author Joost Zwagerman wrote Door eigen hand about the survivors of persons who commit suicide. In this book, he argues that the ideal of accepting a loved one’s self-chosen death does not honor the complex feelings of survivors, such as helplessness, guilt, incomprehension, and the sense of being deliberately abandoned. At the same time, he notes – referencing Al Alvarez’ The Savage God (1971) – that the perspectives of others rarely influence the considerations of the person committing suicide. Although Zwagerman believes that loved ones have the right to feel betrayed by those who commit suicide, he also empathizes with them. This does not mean that he supports medically assisted suicide for psychological suffering. In fact, he is strongly opposed to it. He argues this position by referring to publications by people who have suffered from depression, such as American authors William Styron (Darkness Visible, 1990) and Andrew Solomon (The Noonday Demon, 2001).

The position Zwagerman defends in Door eigen hand is partly shaped by the strategic way he uses intertextual references, which do not always do justice to the nuance and complexity with which the authors he refers to approach the subject. Zwagerman has no sympathy for libertarian considerations and statements about the philosophical dignity of a self-chosen death. He himself experienced the allure of suicide, but he did not perceive it as a form of freedom at all. After Zwagerman ended his own life in 2015, his writings were increasingly seen as an expression of his own obsessions. Yet given his many media appearances, the relevance of Zwagerman’s work to the Dutch debate can also be viewed independently of his untimely death. In his work, the author acknowledges that the assisted dying movement raises an important question for those involved in suicide prevention, namely, whether assisted dying for depression should always be considered undesirable. Characteristic of Zwagerman’s position is that he wanted to keep the scope of suicide prevention as broad as possible. This distinguished him in the Dutch debate from advocates of euthanasia and assisted suicide, who, in his opinion, regarded life in a too lighthearted manner.