| Summary: | 碩士 === 國立東華大學 === 族群關係與文化研究所 === 97 === This thesis discusses the personal agony of people who suffer from depression. Drawing on personal writings and physical experiences on BBS Community [PTT] and two interviews, the thesis interprets how the patients struggle between the paradoxical cravings for life and despairing wish for death, and how they survive the predicament through collective unbosoming of troubles. By sharing life experience and medical information, the patients derive emotional supports and assurance of existence from this virtual community. When the patients cannot convince themselves that their life is worth living through comforting languages, they develop a different way to ascertain the meaning of their existence: through self mutilation. For some patients, self mutilation is a means to temporarily relieve themselves from anxiety and depression. Paradoxically, hurting body became a way of measure to protect the patients from self-destruction. Through bleeding and hurting, they mitigate the possible danger of suicide, and struggle to maintain the tensional balance between self and the world. The patients live with the disease in compromise as they recognize how fragile and limited life is. They strive to guard the boundary between controlled composure and total collapse since it is impossible to believe in none as well as it is impossible to believe in everything. Through studying these subjects--people who crave for death as well as living--this research deliberates their special philosophy of life, the unique way they treat their own body and the deep irony of human existence.
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