Suicide

A Study in Sociology

Emile Durkheim

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2005
• ISBN:
  9781134470228
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

There would be no need for sociology if everyone understood the social frameworks within which we operate. That we do have a connection to the larger picture is largely thanks to the pioneering thinker Émile Durkheim. He recognized that, if anything can explain how we as individuals relate to society, then it is suicide: Why does it happen? What goes wrong? Why is it more common in some places than others? In seeking answers to these questions, Durkheim wrote a work that has fascinated, challenged and informed its readers for over a hundred years. Far-sighted and trail-blazing in its conclusions, Suicide makes an immense contribution to our understanding to what must surely be one of the least understandable of acts. A brilliant study, it is regarded as one of the most important books Durkheim ever wrote.

Book II
Social Causes and Social Types

1
HOW TO DETERMINE SOCIAL CAUSES AND SOCIAL TYPES

The results of the preceding book are not wholly negative. We have in fact shown that for each social group there is a specific tendency to suicide explained neither by the organic-psychic constitution of individuals nor the nature of the physical environment. Consequently, by elimination, it must necessarily depend upon social causes and be in itself a collective phenomenon; some of the facts examined, especially the geographic and seasonal variations of suicide, had definitely led us to this conclusion. We must now study this tendency more closely.

I

To accomplish this it would seem to be best to inquire first whether the tendency is single and indestructible or whether it does not rather consist of several different tendencies, which may be isolated by analysis and which should be separately studied. If so, we should proceed as follows. As the tendency, single or not, is observable only in its individual manifestations, we should have to begin with the latter. Thus we should observe and describe as many as possible, of course omitting those due to mental alienation. If all were found to have the same essential characteristics, they should be grouped in a single class; otherwise, which is much more likely—for they are too different not to include several varieties—a certain number of species should be determined according to their resemblances and differences. One would admit as many suicidal currents as there were distinct types, then seek to determine their causes and respective importance. We have pursued some such method in our brief study of the suicide of insanity.

Unfortunately, no classification of the suicides of sane persons can be made in terms of their morphological types or characteristics, from almost complete lack of the necessary data. To be attempted, it would require good descriptions of many individual cases. One would have to know the psychological condition of the suicide at the moment of forming his resolve, how he prepared to accomplish it, how he finally performed it, whether he were agitated or depressed, calm or exalted, anxious or irritated, etc. Now we have such data practically only for some cases of insane suicide, and just such observations and descriptions by alienists have enabled us to establish the chief types of suicide where insanity is the determining cause. We have almost no such information for others. Brierre de Boismont alone has tried to do this descriptive work for 1,328 cases where the suicide left letters or other records summarized by the author in his book. But, first, this summary is much too brief. Then, the patient’s revelations of his condition are usually insufficient, if not suspect. He is only too apt to be mistaken concerning himself and the state of his feelings; he may believe that he is acting calmly, though at the peak of nervous excitement. Finally, besides being insufficiently objective, these observations cover too few facts to permit definite conclusions. Some very vague dividing lines are perceptible and their suggestions may be utilized; but they are too indefinite to provide a regular classification. Furthermore, in view of the manner of execution of most suicides, proper observations are next to impossible.

But our aim may be achieved by another method. Let us reverse the order of study. Only in so far as the effective causes differ can there be different types of suicide. For each to have its own nature, it must also have special conditions of existence. The same antecedent or group of antecedents cannot sometimes produce one result and sometimes another, for, if so, the difference of the second from the first would itself be without cause, which would contradict the principle of causality. Every proved specific difference between causes therefore implies a similar difference between effects. Consequently, we shall be able to determine the social types of suicide by classifying them not directly by their preliminarily described characteristics, but by the causes which produce them. Without asking why they differ from one another, we will first seek the social conditions responsible for them; then group these conditions in a number of separate classes by their resemblances and differences, and we shall be sure that a specific type of suicide will correspond to each of these classes. In a word, instead of being morphological, our classification will from the start be aetiological. Nor is this a sign of inferiority, for the nature of a phenomenon is much more profoundly got at by knowing its cause than by knowing its characteristics only, even the essential ones.

The defect of this method, of course, is to assume the diversity of types without being able to identify them. It may prove their existence and number but not their special characteristics. But this drawback may be obviated, at least in a certain measure. Once the nature of the causes is known we shall try to deduce the nature of the effects, since they will be both qualified and classified by their attachment to their respective sources. Of course, if this deduction were not at all guided by facts, it might be lost in purely imaginary constructions. But with the aid of some data on the morphology of suicides it may be made clearer. Alone, these data are too incomplete and unsure to provide a principle of classification; but once the outlines of this classification are found, the data may be used. They will indicate what direction the deduction should take and, by the examples they offer, the deductively established species may be shown not to be imaginary. Thus we shall descend from causes to effects and our aetiological classification will be completed by a morphological one which can verify the former and vice versa.

In all respects this reverse method is the only fitting one for the special problem that we have set ourselves. Indeed we must not forget that what we are studying is the social suicide-rate. The only types of interest to us, accordingly, are those contributing to its formation and influencing its variation. Now, it is not sure that all individual sorts of voluntary death have this quality. Some, though general to a certain degree, are not bound or not sufficiently bound to the moral temper of society to enter as a characteristic element into the special physiognomy of each people with respect to suicide. For instance, we have seen that alcoholism is not a determining factor of the particular aptitude of each society, yet alcoholic suicides evidently exist and in great numbers. No description, however good, of particular cases will ever tell us which ones have a sociological character. If one wants to know the several tributaries of suicide as a collective phenomenon one must regard it in its collective form, that is, through statistical data, from the start. The social rate must be taken directly as the object of analysis; progress must be from the whole to the parts. Clearly, it can only be analyzed with reference to its different causes, for in themselves the units composing it are homogeneous, without qualitative difference. We must then immediately discover its causes and later consider their repercussions among individuals.

II

But how reach these causes?

The legal establishments of fact always accompanying suicide include the motive (family trouble, physical or other pain, remorse, drunkenness, etc.), which seems to have been the determining cause, and in the statistical reports of almost all countries is found a special table containing the results of these inquiries under the title: presumptive motives of suicides. It seems natural to profit by this already accomplished work and begin our study by a comparison of such records. They apparently show us the immediate antecedents of different suicides; and is it not good methodology for understanding the phenomenon we are studying to seek first its nearest causes, and then retrace our steps further in the series of phenomena if it appears needful?

But as Wagner long ago remarked, what are called statistics of the motives of suicides are actually statistics of the opinions concerning such motives of officials, often of lower officials, in charge of this information service. Unfortunately, official establishments of fact are known to be often defective even when applied to obvious material facts comprehensible to any conscientious observer and leaving no room for evaluation. How suspect must they be considered when applied not simply to recording an accomplished fact but to its interpretation and explanation! To determine the cause of a phenomenon is always a difficult problem. The scholar requires all sorts of observations and experiments to solve even one question. Now, human volition is the most complex of all phenomena. The value of improvised judgments, attempting to assign a definite origin for each special case from a few hastily collected bits of information is, therefore, obviously slight. As soon as some of the facts commonly supposed to lead to despair are thought to have been discovered in the victim’s past, further search is considered useless, and his drunkenness or domestic unhappiness or business troubles are blamed, depending on whether he is supposed recently to have lost money, had home troubles or indulged a taste for liquor. Such uncertain data cannot be considered a basis of explanation for suicide.

Moreover, even if more credible, such data could not be very useful, for the motives thus attributed to the suicides, whether rightly or wrongly, are not their true causes. The proof is that the proportional numbers of cases assigned by statistics to each of these presumed causes remain almost identically the same, whereas the absolute figures, on the contrary, show the greatest variations. In France, from 1856 to 1878, suicide rises about 40 per cent, and more than 100 per cent in Saxony in the period 1854–1880 (1,171 cases in place of 547). Now, in both countries each category of motives retains the same respective importance from one period to another. This appears in Table XVII on page 102.

If we consider that the figures here reported are, and can be, only grossly approximate and therefore do not attach too much importance to slight differences, they will clearly appear to be practically stable. But for the contributory share of each presumed reason to remain proportionally the same while suicide has doubled its extent, each must be supposed to have doubled its effect. It cannot be by coincidence that all at the same time become doubly fatal. The conclusion is forced that they all depend on a more general state, which all more or less faithfully reflect. This it is which makes them more or less productive of suicide and which is thus the truly determining cause of it. We must then investigate this state without wasting time on its distant repercussions in the consciousness of individuals.

Table XVII Share of each category of motives in 100 annual suicides of each sex

Another fact, taken from Legoyt,¹ shows still better the worth of the causal action ascribed to these different motives. No two occupations are more different from each other than agriculture and the liberal professions. The life of an artist, a scholar, a lawyer, an officer, a judge has no resemblance whatever to that of a farmer. It is practically certain, then, that the social causes for suicide are not the same for both. Now, not only are the suicides of these two categories of persons attributed to the same reasons, but the respective importance of these different reasons is supposed to be almost exactly the same in both. Following are the actual percentile shares of the chief motives for suicide in these two occupations in France during the years 1874–78:

	Agriculture	Liberal professions
Loss of employment, financial losses, poverty	8.15	8.87
Family troubles	14.45	13.14
Disappointed love, jealousy	1.48	2.01
Intoxication and drunkenness	13.23	6.41
Suicides of criminals or minor offenders	4.09	4.73
Physical sufferings	15.91	19.89
Mental sickness	35.80	34.04
Disgust with life, varied ...