Durkheim Suicide Theory

Secondly,an elaboration on the theory of suicide followed the three types of suicide which are altruistic,egoistic and anomic. Durkheim 's (1885) definition: “Suicide is applied to all cases of death resulting directly or indirectly from a positive or negative act of the victim himself, which he knows will produce this result.” For suicides, according to Durkheim, do not constitute a wholly distinctive group of "monstrous phenomena" unrelated to other forms of behavior on the contrary. They are related to other acts, both courageous and imprudent, by an unbroken series of intermediate cases. Suicides are simply an exaggerated form of common practices. The second objection was that such practices, however common, are individual practices, with

Durkheim insisted, this rate was both permanent (the rate for any individual society was less variable than that of most other leading demographic data, including the general mortality rate) and variable (the rate for each society was sufficiently peculiar to that society as to be more characteristic of it than its general mortality rate); and, just as the first would be inexplicable were it not "the result of a group of distinct characteristics, solidary with one another, and simultaneously effective in spite of different attendant circumstances," so the second proved "the concrete and individual quality of these same characteristics, since they vary with the individual character of society itself." (1897b: 51). Thus Durkheim concluded, each society is predisposed to contribute a definite quota of suicides; and it was this predisposition which Durkheim proposed to study sociologically.

Among primitive peoples, we find several categories of suicide.Men on the threshold of old age, women upon the deaths of their husbands, followers and servants upon the deaths of their chiefs, in which the person kills himself because it is his duty. Durkheim argued, sacrifice is imposed by society for social purposes and for society to be able to do this, the individual personality must have little value, a state Durkheim called altruism, and whose corresponding mode of self-inflicted death was called obligatory altruistic suicide.Like all suicides, the altruist kills himself because he is unhappy but this unhappiness is distinctive both in its causes and in its effects. While the egoist is unhappy because he sees nothing "real" in the world besides the individual, for example, the altruist is sad because the individual seems so "unreal"; the egoist sees no goal to which he might commit himself, and thus feels useless and without purpose while the altruist commits himself to a goal beyond this world, and henceforth this world is an obstacle and burden to him. The melancholy of the egoist is one of incurable weariness and sad depression, and is expressed in a complete relaxation of all activity the unhappiness of the altruist, by contrast, springs from hope, faith even enthusiasm, and affirms itself in acts of extraordinary energy.Altruistic suicide thus reflects that crude morality which