Exploring Suicide
Works Cited Not Included
Durkheim became interested in the subject of suicide while in France
in the late 1880’s, he offered a series of lectures to the public and
later published what was his third major work ‘le suicide’ in 1897.
‘Le Suicide’ is of great importance because it is his first serious
effort to establish empiricism in sociology, an empiricism that would
provide a sociological explanation for suicide which was traditionally
regarded as exclusively psychological and individualistic. Durkheim
proposed this definition of suicide "the term 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.” Cited in (http://durkheim.itgo.com/suicide.html)
In Rules of Sociological Method (1895), Durkheim has begun to define
the field or discipline of sociology, by recognizing that there are
specific approaches and understandings that belong to sociology or the
study of social relationships, as different from biology and
psychology, which also affect human growth and relationships. By a
social fact, Durkheim is referring to facts, concepts, expectations
that come not from individual responses, but that come from the social
community which socializes each of its members. Although we might
embrace the normative community behaviour and share its values, we are
constrained by its very existence. "When I fulfil my obligations as
brother, husband, or citizen, when I execute my contracts, I perform
duties which are defined exte...
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...the regulative
effect of structures are weakened, and the individual may feel
rootless. In this situation, an individual may be subject to anomic
social currents. People that are freed from constraints become "slaves
to their passions, and as a result, according to Durkheim's view,
commit a wide range of destructive acts, including killing themselves
in greater numbers than they ordinarily would." (Morrison 1995). In
addition to economic anomie, Durkheim also spends time examining
domestic anomie. For example, suicides of family members may occur
after the death of a husband or wife.
The fourth type he identified was fatalistic, when regulation is too
strong, Durkheim considers the possibility that "persons with futures
pitilessly blocked and passions violently choked by oppressive
discipline" may see no way out.