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A typology of suicide

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

A. Giddens
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Extract

Objective investigation into suicide as a social and psychological phenomenon dates back to the opening of the nineteenth century (1). Few other areas of human behaviour, in fact, can have attracted the same measure of continuous interest on the part of students in several disciplines. H. Rost's Bibliographie des Selbstmords, published in 1927, lists well over 3,000 items (2). Today the total must be something over 5,000 (3). The reader surveying this voluminous literature, however, is impressed by several notable lacunae: 1) most of this literature is descriptive rather than explanatory; the great bulk of it consists of surveys of the distribution of suicide, or of clinical descriptions of individual cases (4); 2) there is a marked degree of disciplinary “compartmentalisation”. It has been evident for many years that both sociology and psychology have complementary contributions to make to the explanation of suicide (5); but theory and research into suicide in these two disciplines has tended to proceed separately with little more than a token acknowledgement of the potential relevance of one to the other (6). The object of this paper is to establish a schematic typology upon which a bridge between sociological and psychological theory might be built.

Type
On Suicide
Information
European Journal of Sociology / Archives Européennes de Sociologie , Volume 7 , Issue 2 , November 1966 , pp. 276 - 295
Copyright
Copyright © Archives Européenes de Sociology 1966

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References

(1) An early bibliography of suicide is given in Motta, E., Bibliographia del suicidio (Bellinzona 1890).Google Scholar

(2) Rost, H., Bibliographie des Selbstmords (Augsburg 1927).Google Scholar

(3) I.e., items in English, French and German. The latest comprehensive bibliography of suicide is in Farberow, N.L. and Shneidman, E.S., The Cry for Help (New York, McGraw-Hill, 1961), pp. 325–388.Google Scholar

(4) There is also a very large literature on moral aspects of suicide, which stretches right back to classical times. A few works of this kind are noted in Farberow and Shneidman, ibid. pp. 387–388.

(5) This was recognised, in effect, by the earliest writers on suicide, who commonly distinguished between the “internal”, and “external” or social, causes of suicide.

(6) A notable exception to this is Henry, A.F. and Short, J.F., Suicide and Homicide (Glencoe, Free Press, 1954).Google Scholar

(7) Halbwachs, M., Les causes du suicide (Paris, Alcan, 1930).Google Scholar

(8) Perhaps the most important respect in which Halbwachs failed to confirm Durkheim's findings was in his finding that suicide rates do not rise, but tend to drop, during periods of marked economic prosperity. See pp. 362–374. This is not disastrous for the theory of anomie, although the original data Durkheim presented, indicating that rates of suicide increase not only during depression but also during prosperity, constituted the most striking evidence for the effects of anomie.

(9) A useful statistical source-book is Dublin, L.I. and Bunzel, B., TO Be or Not To Be (New York, Smith and Haas, 1933)Google Scholar. The results, of various ecological studies of suicide in urban areas also basically support Durkheim's general position. See Cavan, R.S., Suicide (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1928)Google Scholar. Schmid, C.F., Suicide in Seattle (Seattle, University of Washington Publications, n° 5, 1928)Google Scholar. Sainsbury, P., Suicide in London (London, Chapman and Hall, 1955)Google Scholar. Also cf.: Faris, R.E.L., Social Disorganisation (New York, Ronald Press, 1955).Google Scholar

(10) Cf. Halbwachs, , op. cit. p. 480 sqq.Google Scholar

(11) Durkheim, E., Suicide (translated Spaulding, J.A. and Simpson, G.) (London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1952), pp. 210–216.Google Scholar

(12) See e.g., Sainsbury, , op. cit. p. 22.Google Scholar

(13) Merton, R.K., “Social structure and anomie”, in Social Theory and Social Structure (Glencoe, Free Press, 1957)Google Scholar. An inventory of subsequent studies using the concept of anomie is given in Clinard, M.B., Anomie and Deviant Behaviour (Glencoe, Free Press, 1964).Google Scholar

(14) Durkheim, , op. cit. pp. 208–216, and 246–257Google Scholar. Cf. also Parsons' comments: Parsons, T., The Structure of Social Action (Glencoe, Free Press, 1937), pp. 332–338Google Scholar, and “The Integration of Social Systems”, in Wolff, K. (ed.), Emile Durkheim (Glencoe, Free Press, 1962), pp. 118–153Google Scholar. Johnson has recently pointed out certain ambiguities in Durkheim's discussion of the types of suicide. He argues that the types which Durkheim claims to distinguish can all be reduced to a single structural dimension—that Durkheim in fact isolated just one structural cause of suicide. The present writer does not agree with this interpretation; but in any case this does not affect the logic of the typology presented in this paper. See Johnson, B., Durkheim's one cause of suicide, American Sociological Review, XXX (1965), 875–886.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

(15) Gibbs, J.P. and Martin, W.T., Status Integration and Suicide (Eugene, University of Oregon Press, 1964).Google Scholar

(16) Cf. Dohrenwend, B.P., Egoism, altruism, anomie and fatalism: a conceptual analysis of Durkheim's types, American Sociological Review, XXIV (1959), 466–472.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

(17) The work of modern anthropologists is tending to indicate more and more that the notion that primitive societies tend towards “maximum integration” is much too simple and quite misleading. All societies have conflicts and strains built into them. Anomie is not a condition of social structure which is confined to industrial societies. It is not possible here to discuss the concept of anomie in any detail, although this would be desirable in view of the various interpretations which have been put on the notion by different writers. It should be emphasised, however, that I do not intend to use “anomie” and “failure” as synonymous terms. Anomie, both structural and psychological, is however, frequently consequential upon a situation where potentialities for “failure” in certain sectors of social activity are built into the social structure.

(18) The evidence cannot be presented in detail here. One of the most recent relevant studies is Breed, W., Occupational mobility and suicide among white males, American Sociological Review, XXVIII (1963), 179–188.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

(19) Freud, S., Mourning and melancholia (Standard Edition) (London, Hogarth Press, 1955), Vol. XVIIGoogle Scholar. Also The Ego and the Id (Standard Edition), Vol. XIXGoogle Scholar. A description of psychoanalytic ideas on suicide is given in Jackson, D.D.: “Theories of suicide” in Shneidman, E.S. and Farberow, N.L., Clues to Suicide (New York, MacGraw-Hill, 1957), pp. 11–21Google Scholar. Throughout this article I have used the term “depression” generically in a very wide sense, to include both neurotic and psychotic depression. While there are several partially distinct psychoanalytic theories of depression, I have confined the account mainly to Freud's classical statement of the nature of melancolia, since the other theories are basically elaborations of the fundamental ideas set out there.

(20) Freud, , Mourning and melancholia, p. 246.Google Scholar

(21) Ibid. p. 251.

(22) Cf. Menninger, K., Man Against Himself (New York, Harcourt Brace, 1938).Google Scholar

(23) Freud, , op. cit. p. 252.Google Scholar

(24) Cf. Wahl, C.W.: “Suicide as a magical act”Google Scholar, in Shneidman, and Farberow, , op. cit. pp. 22–30.Google Scholar

(25) Freud, , op. cit. p. 245.Google Scholar

(26) In this analysis I have followed the basic distinctions set out by Piers. See Piers, and Singer, M.B., Shame and Guilt (Springfield, G.C. Thomas, 1953)Google Scholar. There is no space here to discuss Parsons' treatment of guilt and shame, which in some respects strikingly resembles that set forth in this paper. Parsons seems however to follow the “guilt-internal, shame-external” notion. See Parsons, T.: Family Socialisation and Interaction Process.Google Scholar

(27) Ibid. p. 23 sqq. It should, of course, be understood that the “superego” and “ego-ideal” are “ordering constructs” and not in any sense discrete “entities”.

(28) Ibid. p. 16. Most psychoanalists, following Freud, have regarded shame as being linked specifically to fear of genital exposure, and thus to anxiety over bodily “appearance” more generally. The phenomenon of shame is, in fact, much more pervasive than this in human experience. That this is so is shown by the frequency with which “feeling ashamed” and synonymous phrases (e.g. “feeling humiliated”) occur in the course of everyday speech. While anthropologists have pointed to the importance of shame as a social and psychological mechanism in traditional and primitive societies, little has been written of shame in W. European societies. Indeed some anthropologists have sought to contrast the “guilt cultures” of W. Europe with “shame cultures”. But, although shame may have a more “external” aspect in societies in which tight formalised standards of expected accomplishment prevail, the phenomena of shame and shaming are ubiquitous. Shame is evidently closely related to embarrassment, which may be nothing more than a mild sense of shame. Both shame and embarrassment stem from a questioning of the appropriateness of an identity which an individual is attempting to maintain. The more deep-rooted nature of shame is indicated by the fact that, while we can “be embarrassed for another”, we are “ashamed of another”: in the second instance, the behaviour of the other casts a slur upon ourself, while in the first we feel in an empathic way that he is showing himself in a bad light. Cf. Goffman, E.: The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life (New York, Doubleday, 1959), p. 58Google Scholar sqq., and Stigma (Englewood Cliffs, Prentice Hall, 1963)Google Scholar. Cf. also Riezler, K., Comment on the social psychology of shame, American Journal of Sociology, XLVIII (1943), 457–465.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

(29) Menninger describes cases of suicide following the most trivial of setbacks. Cf. Menninger, K., op. cit. pp. 35–36.Google Scholar

(30) Hendin, H., Suicide and Scandinavia (New York, Doubleday, 1965), p. 26.Google Scholar

(31) These two sets of fantasy meanings are not, of course, entirely exclusive. Cf. Feifel, H.: “Some aspects of the meaning of death”Google Scholar, in Shneidman, and Farberow, , op. cit. pp. 50–57.Google Scholar

(32) Menninger, , op. cit. pp. 23–71.Google Scholar

(33) Durkheim, , op. cit. p. 51.Google Scholar

(34) Cf. Giddens, A., Theoretical problems in the sociology of suicide, Advancement of Science, XXI (1965), 522–526Google Scholar; and The suicide problem French sociology, British Journal Sociology, XVI (1965), 3–18.Google Scholar

(35) This double aspect of depression was pointed out by Rado, Rado S., “Psychodynamics of depression from the aetiological point of view”, Collected Papers (New York, Grune and Stratton, 1956), Vol. I, pp. 235–242.Google Scholar

(36) Fenichel, , op. cit. p. 400.Google Scholar

(37) Hendin, , op. cit. p. 24.Google Scholar

(38) The same general principle probably holds good for risk-taking adventures of all kinds. Deliberate exposure to monetary loss, as in gambling, or to injury or death, as in motor racing, mountaineering etc., provides a test of “worth”; the successful tempting of fate is a reaffirmation of the self. This is probably true, at least, in all cases where an individual has a definite psychological need to participate in risk-taking activities. Risk-taking also characterises a wide area of social behaviour in a rather different way, i.e. when risks have to be taken as one aspect of an instrumental means to an end. Thus a man may take a certain calculated risk in making an investment on the Stock Exchange in order to secure a given margin of profit. Stengel, E., Suicide and Attempted Suicide (London, Penguin, 1964), pp. 103–107Google Scholar. Cohen, J., Behaviour in Uncertainty (London, Allen and Unwin, 1964)Google Scholar. Cf. also Firth, R., Suicide and risk-taking in Tikopian Society, Psychiatry, XXIV (1961), 1–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

(39) Stengel, E. and Cook, N.G., Attempted Suicide (London, Oxford U.P., 1958), p. 114 sqq.Google Scholar

(40) Lynd, H.M., On Shame and the Search for Identity (London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1958), p. 50.Google Scholar

(41) Durkheim, , op. cit. p. 278.Google Scholar

(42) Ibid. p. 286.

(43) Cf. Hendin's discussion of suicide in Sweden: Hendin, , op. cit. pp. 51–87.Google Scholar

(44) Davies, E. Beresford (ed.), Depression (New York, Cambridge U.P., 1964), pp. 22–23Google Scholar. Such states are not necessarily-suicidal. As in the case of classical depressive states, a key factor may be how far death is invested with instrumental significance as a “means to an end”.

(45) Durkheim, , op. cit. p. 288.Google Scholar

(46) Piers, and Singer, , op. cit. p. 16 sqq.Google Scholar

(47) A note is necessary on the relationship between mental illness and suicide. Mental disorder is often regarded as a “cause” of suicide, with the implication that other suicides are “caused” by other factors. The reason for the close relationship between mental disorder and suicide is, however, rather that certain types of mental disorder—and, of course, in particular the depressive disorders—provide “suicidogenic” psychological conditions. These include: 1) a high level of emotional conflict and anxiety; 2) a tendency to extreme states of depression; 3) distorted ideas about the nature of death. In, say, some schizophrenic suicides, the individual may openly give fantasy reasons for a suicide attempt, whereas in other suicides the same ideas may exist at an unconscious level. Thus suicide of the mentally ill does not fall outside the general framework developed in this paper. The causes of suicide overlap with, but do not correspond to, the causes of mental illness. Farberow, N.L. and Shneidman, E.S., “Suicide among schizophrenic mental hospital patients”Google Scholar, in Farberow, and Shneidman, , op. cit. pp. 78–109.Google Scholar

(48) Menninger, K., Psychoanalytic aspects of suicide, International Journal of Psychoanalysis, XIV (1933), pp. 376–390.Google Scholar

(49) Stengel, and Cook, , op. cit. pp. 119–121.Google Scholar

(50) Shneidman, E.S. and Farberow, N.L., “Statistical Comparisons between attempted and committed suicides”Google Scholar, in Shneidman, and Farberow, , op. cit. pp. 28–29.Google Scholar

(51) However, one contributory factor in the case of suicide in old age is probably that any suicidal method used is likely to have more serious and immediate consequences than with a younger person. No doubt many “risk-taking” attempts which a more youthful individual would survive actually produce death in the case of elderly persons.

(52) See, for example, Bohannan, P., African Homicide and Suicide (Princeton, Princeton U.P., 1960).Google Scholar

(53) Giddens, A., Suicide, attempted suicide, and the suicidal threat, Man, LVI (1964), 115–116CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Jeffreys, M.D.W., “Samsonic suicide or suicide or revenge among Africans, African Studies, XI (1952), pp. 77–85.Google Scholar