Abstract

In his sharply observed book The Culture of Narcissism, the American social critic Christopher Lasch remarked that, in modern life, ‘The usual defences against the ravages of age – identification with ethical or artistic values beyond one’s immediate interests, intellectual curiosity, the consoling emotional warmth derived from happy relationships in the past – can do nothing for the narcissist’. There is more than a whiff of narcissistic survivalism in the openness of many Western societies to assisted suicide. This was best symbolised by the trip Gill Pharaoh, a healthy, 75-year-old retired nurse, took to the LifeCircle suicide clinic in Switzerland. Pharaoh, who died on 21 July this year, was not ill, but wished to die.