Discussion "Delusion of reprieve" - (by some miracle I will be saved)

[eryu]

In psychiatry there is a certain condition known as delusion of reprieve. The condemned man, immediately before his execution, gets the illusion that he might be reprieved at the very last minute. No one could yet grasp the fact that everything would be taken away. all we possessed, literally, was our naked existence.​

- Viktor E. Frankl -- "Man's Search for Meaning"​

I don't see anything about the concept that doesn't reference the Frankl quote but it sounds like it was some documented and discussed phenomenon in psychiatry. The book is about his experience in a concentration camp.
I haven't read it. I heard about it a while ago when I read Two Arms and a Head, a very long suicide note written by a man who was left paralyzed from his upper chest down.
relevant excerpt from that:

But I was wanting to say more about Frankl's book. He says "In psychiatry there is a certain condition known as 'delusion of reprieve'. The condemned man, immediately before his execution, gets the illusion that he might be reprieved at the very last minute." This struck me because it captures something I have felt many times. It's a sort of disbelief concerning my condition. At certain moments my mind might become occupied with something or other and then in a flash I am aware of my condition and simultaneously in a state of utter incredulity concerning it, as if it simply cannot be real. "I really am just two arms and a head attached to a corpse, forever? I will never be who I was again, ever? This is my life forever??" I believe I understand precisely what those prisoners experienced because I have felt it over and over. "They are going to kill me? I'm going to die now? Die??" The facts of the situation are so unthinkable that they just don't register and therefore simply cannot be true. This might have a lot to do with what I see going on with many others in my condition whose minds bear the marks of intense trauma and delusion. This sense of disbelief, of the impossibility of the situation, becomes protracted, stretched out, so that it causes their minds to become almost catatonically fixated on certain ideas without which they would come completely apart psychologically. La Rochefoucauld says we can stare directly at neither death nor the sun. It seems that few can stare directly at paraplegia. They are not disabled. They are still the same. They can do anything.

- Clayton Atreus -- "Two Arms and a Head"
http://www.2arms1head.com/

I thought this would resonate with people here. I know it does with me.
I still hope for some miracle or deus ex machina. I think maybe I always will. I feel my mind will never fully accept that suicide is the only path left even if I know it is the most rational for me.
Even if I finally do kill myself, I don't think I will have truly "accepted it" beforehand. Just tuned things out long enough to get through it.
If I left behind a ghost, I suppose that it would drift around muttering ideas about how things could maybe still be salvaged, trying to bargain with the universe and fate until the end of time.

 

[Smart No More]

Brilliant! This is so good! Thank you for sharing. It definitely resonates with me.

 

[Bookscover]

I've had several near death experience so I don't get those. I used to before though. Death seems like an endless sleep. Cozy.

 

[motel rooms]

I don't see anything about the concept that doesn't reference the Frankl quote but it sounds like it was some documented and discussed phenomenon in psychiatry.

This delusion is very similar to the delusion of immortality