Durkheim: The Theory of Suicide

The two currents and the four types

Two social conditions, each capable of being deficient or excessive, yield the four types. Setting the answer out as a two-by-two is the clearest way to reproduce it.

Egoistic suicide

Cause: insufficient integration. The individual is inadequately attached to a group, so the ties that would have restrained them and given their life meaning are weak, and they are thrown on their own resources.

His evidence, and it is the best-known part of the study: rates varied inversely with the strength of the social groups a person belonged to. He found them lower among Catholics than Protestants, attributing the difference not to doctrine, since both condemn the act, but to the greater density of shared belief and collective practice among Catholics; lower among the married than the unmarried, and lower still among those with children; and lower in periods of political crisis and war, when the group is drawn together.

The religious comparison rests on nineteenth century European data and should be presented as his finding on that data rather than as a general truth.

Altruistic suicide

Cause: excessive integration. The individual is so completely absorbed into the group that their own life counts for little against its demands.

His types: obligatory, where the group requires it in defined circumstances; optional, where it is not required but is honoured; and acute, undertaken for the joy of sacrifice itself.

His examples were military suicide, where rates were higher among officers and career soldiers than conscripts, which is the reverse of what a deprivation explanation would predict, and the practices of certain societies in which the aged or the widowed were expected to die.

Anomic suicide

Cause: insufficient regulation. Anomie is Durkheim's term for a state of deregulation in which the norms that limited desires have lost their authority and no new ones bind.

The mechanism, which is the subtle part. Human desires are not limited by anything internal; only society limits them, by telling people what it is reasonable to expect. When that framework is dislocated, desire becomes unlimited, and unlimited desire cannot be satisfied by any attainment, so it produces perpetual dissatisfaction.

His evidence: rates rise in periods of sudden economic depression and of sudden prosperity alike, which is the finding that makes the theory. A deprivation explanation predicts the first and cannot explain the second; the deregulation explanation predicts both, because either dislocation destroys the customary scale of expectation.

Domestic anomie is the parallel case: he found rates higher among the divorced, attributing it to the dislocation of the regulation that marriage supplies.

Fatalistic suicide

Cause: excessive regulation. The individual's future is pitilessly blocked and their desires violently choked by oppressive discipline.

Durkheim gave this type very little space, mentioning it briefly and describing it as of little contemporary importance. An answer should say so: the fourth type completes the scheme logically and is the least developed in the book. His illustrations were persons under extreme constraint, and later writers have applied it to conditions of total control.

The criticisms

1. Official statistics are unreliable, and this is the most serious objection. Suicide is recorded by officials applying a definition, and both stigma and legal consequences suppress recording. Douglas's criticism is the standing one: the very variations Durkheim explained, between Catholic and Protestant regions, may be variations in recording rather than in occurrence, since a community that regards the act as gravely sinful has stronger reasons to record a death otherwise. This is exactly the dark figure problem from [Crime and Social Deviance] applied to the most famous study in sociology.
2. The ecological fallacy. Durkheim inferred from rates in populations to the condition of individuals, which the caution in [Political Parties and Voting Behaviour] forbids: that Protestant regions had higher rates does not establish that the individuals who died were Protestants.
3. The meaning of the act is ignored. Interpretive sociologists object that the same act means different things to different actors, and that a study which never asks what it meant has left out the essential fact.
4. The categories overlap. Real cases are hard to assign to one type, and egoistic and anomic conditions typically occur together.
5. The concepts are hard to measure. Integration and regulation are not operationally defined in the sense of [The Stages of Data Collection], so the theory is difficult to test.
6. Circularity. A high rate is taken as evidence of low integration, and low integration is inferred from the high rate, unless integration is measured independently.

What survives

The method. Take a phenomenon that appears wholly individual, establish that its rate is a social fact, eliminate the non-social explanations, and show covariation with a social condition. That procedure is the discipline's model.

The concepts. Anomie has become one of sociology's central terms and reappears in [Explaining Deviance: The Sociological Theories] as the root of Merton's strain theory.

The finding. That integration into groups protects, which is supported by a very large body of later research on social support and health, whatever the fate of Durkheim's particular figures.

And the caution. That the sceptical objection about statistics is not a reason to abandon the study but a reason to read every official rate as a record of what was recorded.

A worked example

India's National Crime Records Bureau publishes annual figures for suicides, with breakdowns by state, occupation, sex, age and stated cause.

What a student should do with such a figure, and this is the chapter applied.

Do not treat it as a count of events. It is a count of recorded events, and the recording is affected by stigma, by the family's interest, by the classification practice of the police and by whether a death is investigated at all.

Notice that the legal position changed. Attempted suicide was treated as an offence, and section 115 of the Mental Healthcare Act 2017 provides that a person who attempts suicide shall be presumed, unless proved otherwise, to have severe stress and shall not be tried and punished. A change of that kind alters the incentive to report and therefore the recorded rate, quite apart from any change in occurrence, and confusing the two is exactly the error this chapter warns against.

Then apply the framework, cautiously. Variation between states, between occupations and over time is what a Durkheimian analysis would examine, asking whether it tracks measurable conditions of integration, such as household structure and migration, and of regulation, such as economic dislocation and indebtedness.

And state the limits. Association is not causation; the ecological fallacy forbids inferring from a state's rate to the persons in it; and the figures record what was recorded. A student who writes those three sentences after quoting a figure has understood both Durkheim and his critics.

Quick revision

1. Suicide: A Study in Sociology, 1897. The rate is a social fact, stable although the individuals change.
2. Method: official statistics, comparison across countries, religions, marital status and periods, and the elimination of non-social explanations, mental illness, race, climate and imitation, each of which failed to vary as the rate varied.
3. He explains the RATE, not the individual case.
4. Two currents, four types: integration too little gives egoistic, too much gives altruistic; regulation too little gives anomic, too much gives fatalistic.
5. Egoistic: lower among Catholics than Protestants on his data, lower among the married and among parents, lower in war. Altruistic: obligatory, optional, acute; military examples.
6. Anomic: rises in sudden depression and sudden prosperity alike, which a deprivation theory cannot explain; domestic anomie among the divorced.
7. Fatalistic: excessive regulation; Durkheim gave it very little space and called it of little contemporary importance.
8. Criticisms: official statistics record what is recorded (Douglas); the ecological fallacy; meaning ignored; overlapping categories; concepts hard to measure; circularity.
9. Survives: the method, the concept of anomie, and the finding that integration protects.

Test yourself

1. Why did Durkheim choose suicide as his subject? Because it is the hardest possible case for sociology. If any act appears wholly individual, private and psychological, this is it, so demonstrating that its rate is determined by social conditions establishes the discipline's central claim that social facts exist and cannot be reduced to facts about individuals. The stability of a society's rate from year to year, although the individuals composing it are different people in different circumstances, is the fact requiring a social explanation.

2. Name and explain the four types. Egoistic suicide arises from insufficient integration, the individual being inadequately attached to any group, and Durkheim found rates lower among Catholics than Protestants on his data, and lower among the married and among parents. Altruistic suicide arises from excessive integration, the individual being so absorbed into the group that their own life counts for little, and it appears in obligatory, optional and acute forms. Anomic suicide arises from insufficient regulation, when the norms limiting desires lose their authority. Fatalistic suicide arises from excessive regulation, where the future is blocked and desires violently choked.

3. Why is the finding about prosperity so important? Because rates rise in periods of sudden prosperity as well as sudden depression, and no explanation based on deprivation or hardship can account for the first. The deregulation explanation accounts for both: human desires are limited only by the framework of expectation that society supplies, and any sudden dislocation of that framework, upward or downward, destroys the customary scale, leaving desire unlimited and therefore incapable of satisfaction.

4. State the strongest criticism of the study. That it relies on official statistics, which record not events but classifications made by officials, and that the recording is affected by stigma, by families' interest in another verdict and by legal consequences. Douglas's objection is that the very variations Durkheim explained may be variations in recording rather than in occurrence, since a community regarding the act as gravely sinful has stronger reasons to have a death recorded otherwise. To this is added the ecological fallacy of inferring the condition of individuals from rates in populations.

5. How should an Indian suicide figure be read? As a count of recorded events rather than of events, since recording is affected by stigma, by the family's interest, by police classification and by whether a death is investigated. Changes in the legal position matter independently: section 115 of the Mental Healthcare Act 2017 provides that a person who attempts suicide shall be presumed to have severe stress and shall not be tried and punished, and a change of that kind alters the incentive to report and therefore the recorded rate. Any Durkheimian analysis of the variation must add that association is not causation and that the ecological fallacy forbids inferring from a state's rate to the persons within it.