Emile Durkheim : Theory of Suicide

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The Study of Sociology was the first systematic study of social facts in the context of society written by French sociologist Emile Durkheim. Suicide refers to death because of a change in the victim’s behaviour, positive or negative, which he knows the result of. According to Durkheim, social integration is also one of the reasons for this. For example, when minority groups became an integral part of society, they faced enormous peer pressure to do something different, which led to high rates of suicides among them.

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There are four types of Emile Durkheim suicide, which shall be covered in this article.

Types Of Suicide

In Durkheim’s view, there are four types of suicide, based on the degree of imbalance between the two social forces of social integration and moral regulation. Durkheim pointed out the impact of various crises on social groups. For example, a war that led to an increase in altruism, an economic boom, or a catastrophe that caused anomie.

According to Durkheim, suicide is not a personal act. It is caused by a power beyond the individual or the super individual. He believed that “we know the consequences of all kinds of deaths, either directly or indirectly, resulting from the victim’s own positive or negative behaviour.” After defining the phenomenon, Durkheim rejected the psychological explanation. Many doctors and psychologists theorize that the majority of those who take their lives are in a morbid state. However, Durkheim emphasised that the power to drive suicide is social rather than psychological. He concluded that suicide results from social turmoil or lack of social integration or social solidarity.

Durkheim’s theory of suicide greatly contributes to the understanding of the phenomenon because it emphasises social factors rather than biological or personal factors. However, this is also the main drawback of Emile Durkheim’s suicide theory. He overemphasized only social factors and overlooked other factors. Therefore, his theory of suicide is said to be highly flawed and unilateral.

The four types of suicide as mentioned in the theory of suicide are as follows :

Egoistic suicide

Egoistic suicide reflects a lasting feeling of being integrated into the community and not belonging. It comes from suicidal ideation that an individual doesn’t have a chain. This absence can lead to meaninglessness, indifference, and depression.

Durkheim calls it distant “excessive personalisation”. It is generally seen that individuals who commit suicide are not attached to society, are left out and receive little social support or guidance. Durkheim found that suicide is more common among unmarried people, especially unmarried men, as there is less need to restrain them or tie them to stable social norms and goals.

Altruistic suicide

Altruistic suicide is marked by the feeling of being overwhelmed by the group’s goals and beliefs. It occurs in a highly integrated society where the needs of individuals are considered less important than the needs of society as a whole. Durkheim explained that there would not be any significant motivation for people to commit an act as heinous as suicide in an altruistic society, as personal interests were considered important. However, he provided one exception-when an individual is expected to commit suicide in the name of society, for example, in military service.

Anomie suicide

Anomie suicide reflects an individual’s moral turmoil and lack of social orientation associated with dramatic social and economic upheavals. It is the product of a failure to define legitimate aspirations through moral deregulation and restraint of social ethics that can impose meaning and order on an individual’s conscience. Anomie suicide is a sign of the failure of economic development and the division of labour to create organic solidarity, as mentioned by Durkheim.

In this condition, people do not know whether they are suitable for society. Durkheim explains that anomie suicide is a state of moral disability in which people are unaware of the limits of their desires and are always in a state of disappointment. Anomie suicide can happen when they experience extreme wealth changes due to economic or natural phenomena. In either case, the expectations of the previous life are set aside, and new expectations are needed before assessing the situations associated with the new frontier.

Fatalistic suicide

Fatalistic suicide occurs when a person is over-regulated, their future is constantly hampered, and repressive discipline causes intense choking of passion. It is the opposite of anomie suicide, which happens in an oppressive society where its inhabitants want to die rather than live. For example, some prisoners may want to die rather than live in prisons with constant abuse and over-regulation. Unlike the other concepts he developed, Durkheim thought that fatalistic suicide was only a theoretical concept and highly unlikely to exist in reality.

Conclusion

Emile Durkheim’s theory of suicide is a study in sociology that examines the event of suicide and the different types of suicide. Despite its limitations, Durkheim’s work on suicide has influenced supporters of control theory and is often referred to as classical sociological work.

Durkheim also examined the rates of suicide between Protestants and Catholics and argued that greater social control among Catholics leads to lower suicide rates. According to Durkheim, Catholic societies show a normal level of integration, while Protestant societies show a low level. This interpretation has been challenged often. It is considered that Durkheim may be over-generalising this idea, as he got most of the data from his previous researchers, especially Adolph Wagner and Henry Morselli. Later researchers pointed out that the difference between Protestant and Catholic suicide seems confined to German-speaking Europe, suggesting that other factors need to be considered as well.

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