THEORY OF SUICIDE: A CRITICAL STUDY

PROJECT SUBMITTED TO:

DR. Ayan Hazra
(ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF SOCIOLOGY)

PROJECT SUBMITTED BY:

SAUMYA
RAIZADA

Semester II, Section C

ROLL No. 140

HIDAYATULLAH NATIONAL LAW UNIVERSITY

NAYA RAIPUR, C.G.

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 DECLARATION

I hereby declare that this research work titled Theory of Suicide: A Critical
Study is my own work and represents my own ideas, and where others ideas or
words have been included, I have adequately cited and referenced the original
sources. I also declare that I have adhered to all principles of academic honesty and
integrity and have not misrepresented or fabricated or falsified any
idea/data/fact/source in my submission.

SAUMYA RAIZADA

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 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to extend my heartfelt gratitude to everyone who has played a

substantial role in helping me do this project my teacher Ayan Sir, my friends and

my family.

I am greatly indebted to Ayan sir for his generous support throughout the semester

and his guidance in the making of this project.

The HNLU Library was also very helpful for it contained all the basic information

I needed to have before starting my project and clearing my understanding of the

topic.

I have put my best efforts in preparation of this assignment but suggestions, if any
are more than welcome.

Saumya Raizada (SEM II, Roll No. 140)

HNLU

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 CONTENTS

Declaration
.. Page 2
I. Introduction....Page 5
II. Objective ......Page 5
III. MethodologyPage 5
IV. Chapters(His Works)
1. SOCIAL FORCES AS REAL CAUSES OF SUICIDE...........Page 7
2. TYPES OF SUICIDE.... Page 8
3. CRITICISMS........Page13
V. Major FindingsPage 14
Bibliography/References..Page 15

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 I. INTRODUCTION

According to Durkheim, suicide refers to every case of death resulting directly or

indirectly from a positive or negative death performed by the victim himself and
which strives to produce this result. It is clear from the definition of Durkheim that
suicide is a conscious act and the person concerned is fully aware of its consequences.
The person who shoots himself to death, or drinks severe poison, or jumps down from
the 10th storey of a building, for example, is fully aware of the consequences of such
an act.

II. OBJECTIVES

1. To study the various theories propounded on Suicide by Durkheim

2. To analyze the extreme form of social realization.

3. To co-relate role of social forces and real forces behind suicide.

4. To criticise the sociological theory on account of various flaws in the subject.

III. METHODOLOGY

The research is based on secondary sources. Literature review has been done
extensively in order to make a comprehensive presentation. Books from the
universitys library have been used. Computer from the computer laboratory of the
university has been used for the purpose. Articles from journals and material available
on internet have also been used.

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Two Main Purposes Behind his Study of Suicide
Durkheim used a number of statistical records to establish his fundamental idea that
suicide is also a social fact and social order and disorder are at the very root of
suicide. As Abraham and Morgan have pointed out, Durkheim made use of statistical
analysis for two primary reasons.
They are stated below:
i) To refute theories of suicide based on psychology, biology, genetics, climate, and
geographic factors.
ii) To support with empirical evidence his own sociological explanation of suicide.
Durkheim Displays an Extreme Form of Sociological Realism

Durkheim is of the firm belief that suicide is not an individual act or a private and
personal action. It is caused by some power which is over and above the individual or
super-individual. It is not a personal situation but a manifestation of a social
condition. He speaks of suicidal currents as collective tendencies that dominate some
vulnerable persons. The act of suicide is nothing but the manifestation of these
currents. Durkheim has selected the instance or event of suicide to demonstrate the
function of sociological theory.
Durkheim Chooses Statistical Method to Know the Causes of Suicide
Durkheim wanted to know why people commit suicide, and he chooses to think that
explanations focussing on the psychology of the individual were inadequate.
Experiments on suicide were obviously out of question. Case studies of the past
suicides would be of little use, because they do not provide reliable generalizations,
about all suicides. Survey methods were hardly appropriate, because one cannot
survey dead people. However, statistics on suicide were readily available, and
Durkheim chose to analyze them.

Durkheim Rejects Extra-Social Factors as the Causes of Suicide

Durkheim repudiated most of the accepted theories of suicide:
i) His monographic study demonstrated that heredity, for example, is not sufficient
explanation of suicide.
ii) Climate and geographic factors are equally insufficient as explanatory factors.
iii) Likewise, waves of imitation are inadequate explanations.

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iv) He also established the fact that suicide is not necessarily caused by the
psychological factors.

SOCIAL FORCES AS REAL CAUSES OF SUICIDE

Suicide is highly individual act, yet the motives for a suicide can be fully understood
only by reference to the social context in which it occurs. In his attempts to
substantiate this fact he came to know that the incidence of suicide varied from one
social group or set up to another and did so in a consistent manner over the years.
Protestants were more likely to commit suicide than Catholics; people in large cities
were more likely to commit suicide than people in small communities; people living
alone were more likely to commit suicide than people living in families were.
Durkheim isolated one independent variable that lay behind these differences: the
extent to which the individual was integrated into a social bond with others. People
with fragile or weaker ties to their community are more likely to take their own lives
than people who have stronger ties.

Durkheims Threefold Classification of Suicide

Having dismissed explanations of extra-social factors, Durkheim proceeds to analyze

the type of suicide. He takes into account three types of suicide: a) Egoistic Suicide
which results from the lack of integration of the individual into his social group. b)
Altruistic Suicide is a kind of suicide which results from the over integration of the
individual into his social group.
c) Anomic Suicide results from the state of normlessness or degeneration found in
society.
Having analyzed the above mentioned three types of Suicide, Durkheim concludes
that suicide is an individual phenomenon whose causes are essentially social.
Suicide- An Index to Decay in Social Solidarity
Durkheim has established the view that there are no societies in which suicide does
not occur. It means suicide may be considered as a normal, that is, a regular,
occurrence. However, sudden increase in suicide rates may be witnessed. This, he
said, could be taken as an index of disintegrating forces at work in a social

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structure. He also came to the conclusion that different rates of suicide are the
consequences of differences in degree and type of solidarity. Suicide is a kind of
index to decay in social solidarity.

TYPES OF SUICIDE
Durkheims theory of suicide is divided into two explanatory parts. In the first,
Durkheim explained suicide on the basis of social integration. Integration refers to the
degree to which collective sentiments are shared or the strength of the social bonds
between the individual and society. Here, egoistic and altruistic suicide form opposite
poles of social integration, i.e., altruistic suicide is associated with a high degree of
integration and egoistic suicide with a low degree of integration. In the second part of
the theory, Durkheim explained suicide on the basis of social regulation. Social
regulation, in contrast to integration, refers to the restraints imposed by society on
individual needs and wants, i.e., the degree of external constraint on people. Here,
anomic and fatalistic suicide form opposite poles of social regulation, i.e., fatalistic
suicide is associated with high regulation while anomic suicide is with low regulation.
Whitney Pope offered a very useful summary of the four types of suicide discussed
by Durkheim. He did this by interrelating high and low degrees of integration and
regulation in the following way:

Social Integration Low Egoistic Suicide High Altruistic Suicide

Social Regulation Low Anomic Suicide High Fatalistic Suicide

Egoistic Suicide
The term egoism originates from the nineteenth century and was widely used by
Durkheim and others at the time to indicate the breakdown of social ties. Egoism can
be described as the process by which individuals detach themselves from society by
turning their activity inward and by retreating into themselves. Egoism is
characterised by excessive self-reflection on personal matters and a withdrawal from
the outside world. Egoism occurs, according to Durkheim, because the tie binding
the individual to others is slacked and not sufficiently integrated at the points where
the individual is in contact with society. Egoism results from too much individualism
and from the weakening of the social fabric. When man become detached from

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society, when they are thrown upon their devices and loosen the bonds that
previously had tied them to their fellows, they are prone to egoistic, or individualistic,
suicide. Egoistic suicide is a product of relatively weak group interaction. Hence,
high rates of egoistic suicide are likely to be found in those societies, collectivities, or
groups in which the individual is not well integrated into the larger social unit .
Societies with a strong collective conscience and the protective , enveloping social
currents that flow from it are likely to prevent the widesp read occurrence of
egoistic suicide. In fact, strongly integrated families, religious groups and politics act
as agent of a strong collective conscience and discharge suicide. Here is the way
Durkheim puts it in terms of religious groups: Religion protects man against the
desire for self-destruction. What constitutes religion is the existence of certain number
of beliefs and practices common to all the faithful, traditional and thus obligatory. The
more numerous and strong these collective states of mind are, the stronger the
integration of the religious community, also greater its preservative value. For
example, regardless of race and nationality, Catholics show far less suicides than
Protestants. In this context, Durkheim stated the superiority of Protestantism with
respect to suicide results from its being a less strongly integrated church than the
Catholic Church.
Family, like religious group, is a second powerful counter agent against suicide.
Nonmarriage increases the tendency to suicide, while marriage rescues the danger by
half or more. Family life reduces egoism by ensuring that greater concentrations of
commitment are focused within the family rather than on individual, and this, in itself,
acts to suppress the tendency to withdraw to the self. Political or national group is the
third powerful counter agent against suicide. This is more obscure category than
either religion or the family and is less developed by Durkheim than the other forms
of attachment. Political society, according to Durkheim, refers to the type of social
bonds, which occur between the individual and society at large, and encompasses the
type of links which develop between individuals and their national group. Durkheim
reasoned that to the extent that these social links exist, it is possible to look at the
extent to which they are manifested in the suicide rates during times of social crisis
and political upheaval. On the basis of collected facts, Durkheim outlined that instead
of breaking of social ties, severe social disruption brought about by a political crisis
increases the intensity of collective sentiments and stimulates patriotism. This, in

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result, increases social integration between the individual and the group and causes a
stronger integration of society. Durkheim generalised that the lack of integration is
the main cause of egoistic suicide.
Altruistic suicide
The second type of suicide discussed by Durkheim is altruistic suicide. This kind of
suicide takes place in the form of a sacrifice in which an individual ends his life by
heroic means so as to promote a cause or an ideal which is very dear to him. It results
from the over-integration of the individual into his social group. In simple words,
altruistic suicide is taking off ones own life for the sake of a cause. It means that
even high level of social solidarity induces suicide. Durkheim first made his
observations about altruistic suicide by looking at tribal societies. He observed that
social customs in these societies played a high degree of social honour on individuals
who take their own lives in the name of social purposes greater than they do. In this
category, Durkheim list three specific types of suicides: i) The suicide of older men
threatened with severe illness; ii) The suicides of women on the death bed of their
husbands; and iii) The suicide of followers on the death of their chiefs.

Examples: i) In some primitive societies and in modern armies such suicide takes
place. ii) Japanese sometimes illustrate this type of suicide. They call it Harakiri. In
this practice of Harakiri, some Japanese go to the extent of taking off their lives for
the sake of the larger social unity. They consider that self-destruction would prevent
the breakdown of social unity. iii) The practice of sati which was once in practice in
North India, is another example of this kind. iv) The self-immolation by the Buddhist
monks, self-destruction in Nirvana under the Brahmanical influence as found in the
case of ancient Hindu sages represent other variants of altruistic suicide.
People take their own lives not because they take the personal right to do so, but
because a social duty is imposed upon them by society. Altruistic suicide is therefore
at the opposite pole of social integration to egoistic suicide. In egoistic suicide, there
is an excess of individualism and autonomy, whereas in altruistic suicide little or no
individualism takes place. In egoistic suicide, the bonds between individual and
society grow weak and this takes its toll on individual life; in altruistic suicide, by
contrast, the bonds between the individual and society are developed to such a extent
that the individual acquires an aptitude for the renunciation of life.

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Durkheim maintained that altruistic suicide takes several different forms and
discussed three distinct types:
i) Obligatory altruistic suicide; ii) Optional altruistic suicide; and iii) Acute
altruistic or mystical suicide
In the first category, obligatory altruistic suicide, society imposes an explicit duty on
individuals to take their own life, but this duty may lack specific coercive pressure
from the community. A second type referred to by Durkheim is optional altruistic
suicide. In this category, the demand placed on the individual by the community is
less explicitly clarified or less expressly required than in circumstances where
suicide is strictly obligatory. In the third category, acute altruistic suicide, the
individual renounces life for the actual felt joy of sacrifice.
Hence, altruistic suicide results from an excess of social integration and is at the polar
extreme of egoistic suicide. The cause of altruistic suicide is excessive social
integration that leads to a lack of development of individualism. Wherever altruistic
suicide is prevalent, man is always ready to sacrifice his life for a great cause,
principle, ideal or value.
Anomic Suicide
The final major form of suicide discussed by Durkheim is anomic suicide, which is
more likely to occur when the regulative powers of society are disrupted. Anomic can
be defined as the decline in the regulatory powers of society. Durkheim first used the
concept of anomic in Division of Labour in 1893. Durkheim attributed anomic suicide
to unlimited aspirations and the breakdown of regulatory norms. The breakdown of
social norms and sudden social changes that are characteristic of modern times,
encourage anomic suicide. When the collective conscience weakens, men fall victim
to anomic suicide. Without the social backing to which one is accustomed, life is
judged to be not worth continuing.
Durkheim believed that the causes of deregulation can be traced to two basic
sources: i) The development of industrial society;
and ii) The dominance of the economy over other institutions.
Anomic suicide is the type that follows catastrophic social changes. Social life

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all around seems to go to pieces. According to Durkheim, at times when social
relations get disturbed both personal and social ethics become the casualities.
Values of life come down and outlook of some persons changes radically. There
are then certain dangerous developments in the society. A sudden change has its
vibrations in both social life and social relationship, which paves away for
suicide. If the change is sudden, adjustments become difficult and those who do
not get adjusted to changes commit suicide. It is this social disruption, which
leads to suicide. According to Durkheim, not only economic disaster and
industrial crisis but even sudden economic prosperity can cause disruption and
deregulation and finally suicide.

Fatalistic Suicide
There is a little mentioned fourth type of suicide -fatalistic that Durkheim
discussed only in a footnote of suicide. Durkheim stated that whereas anomic suicide
is more likely to occur in situations in which regulation is too weak, fatalistic suicide
is more
likely to occur when regulation is excessive. Durkheim described those who are more
likely to commit fatalistic suicide as persons with futures pitilessly blocked and
passions violently chocked by oppressive discipline. As an example of fatalistic
suicide, Durkheim cited the suicide of slaves who, seeing no alternative to
enslavement under the master, takes their own lives.

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CRITICISM
Comments in Appreciation of the Theory
i) As L.A. Coser stated, Durkheims study of suicide could be cited as a
monumental landwork study in which conceptual theory and empirical research are
brought together in an imposing manner.
ii) As Abraham and Morgan have said the larger significance of suicide lies in its
demonstration of the function of sociological theory in empirical science.
iii) A successful attempt is made in this theory to establish logically the link between
social solidarity, social control, and suicide.
iv) Durkheim has thrown light on the various faces of suicide. He is, indeed, the first
person in this regard.
Critical comments
i) Durkheim has given importance only to social factors in suicide. In doing so, he has
neglected the role of other factors, especially the psychological. Hence, this is a one-
sided view.
ii) The theory is based upon a very small sample of data concerning suicide.
iii) As criminologists have pointed out, economic, psychological and even religious
factors may lead to suicide. But the Durkheim did not give any importance to these
factors.

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MAJOR FINDINGS
In brief, Durkheim put forward three concepts making up a social theory of suicide:
egoistic, altruistic, and anomic. The first two suicides, egoistic and altruistic, explain
suicide by looking at the framework of social attachment to society which Durkheim
called social integration. The third concept, anomic suicide, on the other hand,
belongs to framework, which explains suicide by looking at the changes in the
regulatory mechanism of society. Egoistic suicide results from the lack of integration
of the individual into his social group. The first type of suicide occurs due to
overdeveloped individualism, while second is due to a lack of development at the
level of individual. Anomic suicide, in contrast, occurs because of the reduction of the
regularity mechanism of society. In fact, fatalistic suicide has little more relevance in
the real world. Durkheim in his study of suicide has been successful in establishing
a social fact that there are specific social phenomena which govern individual
phenomena. The most impressive, most eloquent example is that of the social forces
which drive individuals to their deaths, each believing that he is obeying only
himself.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY / REFERENCES

Pope, Whitney, Durkheims Suicide: A Classic Analyzed,

University of Chicago Press, Chicago, USA, 1976, pp. 12-3
Durkheim, Suicide, op. cit., p. 279
Raymond Aron in Main Currents in Sociological Thought.
Vol.II. Page 45.
Lukes, Emile Durkheim, P.191.
Durkheim, E. Suicide, Free Press, New York, (1897) 1951, p 43.
Ritzer, George, Sociological Theory, McGraw Hill Publishing
Company, Singapore, 1988, p78
Pope, Whitney, Durkheims Suicide : A Classic Analysed,
University of Chicago Press, Chicago, USA, 1976, pp. 12-3
Modernity, Postmodernity and Sociological Theories by S.L.
Doshi
Thinkers and Theories in Sociology, From Comte to Giddens by
Sujit Kumar Choudhary.

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