DETAILED TABLE OF CONTENTS
EDITOR’S PREFACE 9
EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION 13
PREFACE 35
INTRODUCTION 41
Need to establish the subject of study by an objective definition. Objective definition of suicide. How it evades arbitrary exclusions and illusory comparisons; elimination of animal suicide. How the definition shows the relation of suicide to the ordinary forms of conduct.
Difference between suicide as an individual and as a collective phenomenon. The social suicide-rate; its definition. Its stability and specific character beyond those of general mortality. The social suicide-rate is therefore a phenomenon sui generis; this is the subject of the present study. Divisions of the work. General bibliography.
Book One: Extra-social Factors
CHAPTER 1 SUICIDE AND PSYCHOPATHIC STATES 57
Principal extra-social factors having a possible influence on the social suicide-rate: individual tendencies sufficiently general in character, states of physical environment.
Theory that suicide is only a consequence of insanity. Two ways of proving it: (1) suicide a monomania sui generis; (2) a syndrome of insanity, not found elsewhere.
Is suicide a monomania? Existence of monomanias no longer admitted. Clinical and psychological reasons against this hypothesis.
Is suicide a specific incident of madness? Reduction of all vesanic suicides to four types. Existence of reasonable suicides not falling under these groups.
But may suicide, without being a product of insanity, be intimately dependent upon neurasthenia? Reasons for believing the neurasthenic type is the commonest psychological type among suicides. Influence of this individual condition on suicide-rate still to be determined. Method to determine it: discover whether the suicide-rate varies with that of insanity. No relation between variations of the two phenomena with sex, faith, age, country, degree of civilization. Explanation of this lack of relation: uncertainty of effects implied by neurasthenia.
A more direct relation with the rate of alcoholism? Comparison with the geographical distribution of drunken misdemeanors, alcoholic insanity, consumption of alcohol. Negative results of this comparison.
CHAPTER 2 SUICIDE AND NORMAL PSYCHOLOGICAL STATES—RACE, HEREDITY 82
Necessity of defining race. Definable only as an hereditary type; but then the word takes an indefinite meaning. Thus need for great reserve.
Three great races distinguished by Morselli. Very great diversity of suicidal aptitude among the Slavs, Celto-Romans, and Germanic nations. Only the Germans have a generally intense tendency, but lose it outside of Germany. The supposed relationship between suicide and stature; result of a coincidence.
Race can be a factor in suicide only if it is essentially hereditary; insufficiency of proofs of this heredity: (1) the relative frequency of cases imputable to heredity unknown; (2) possibility of another explanation; influence of insanity and imitation. Reasons against this special heredity: (a) why should suicide be less often transmitted to women? (b) suicide’s evolution with age irreconcilable with this hypothesis.
CHAPTER 3 SUICIDE AND COSMIC FACTORS 104
Climate has no influence.
Temperature. Seasonal variations of suicide; their very general character. Italian school’s explanation of them by temperature.
Contestable conception of suicide at the basis of this theory. Examination of facts: influence of abnormal heat or cold proves nothing; no relation between suicide-rate and seasonal or monthly temperature; suicide rare in many hot countries. Hypothesis that the first hot periods are harmful. Irreconcilable: (1) with the continuity of the curve of suicides in rise and descent; (2) with fact that first cold periods which should have same effect are harmless.
Nature of causes on which these variations depend. Perfect parallelism between monthly variations of suicide and that of length of days; confirmed by the fact that suicides occur especially by day. Reason for this parallelism: during the day social life is in full activity. Explanation confirmed by fact that suicide is maximum at days and hours when social activity is maximum. How it accounts for seasonal variations of suicide; various confirmative proofs. Monthly variations of suicide therefore depend on social causes.
CHAPTER 4 IMITATION 123
Imitation is a phenomenon of individual psychology. Usefulness of discovering whether it has any influence on the social suicide-rate.
Difference between imitation and several other phenomena with which it has been confused. Definition of imitation.
Numerous cases where suicides are communicated by contagion from person to person; distinction between the facts of contagion and epidemics. Problem of the possible influence of imitation on suicide-rate unsolved.
This influence must be studied through geographical distribution of suicides: Criteria by which it may be known. Application of this method to the map of suicides in France by arrondissements, the map by communes of Seine-et-Marne, the map of Europe in general. No clear trace of imitation in the geographical distribution. Experiment suggested: does suicide increase with number of readers of newspapers? Reasons for the contrary opinion.
Reason why imitation has no appreciable effects on suicide-rate: because not an original factor, but merely reinforcing the influence of others. Practical consequence of this discussion: that there is no occasion to forbid publicity for judicial interpretations of suicide. Theoretical consequence: imitation lacks the social effectiveness ascribed to it.
Book Two: Social Causes and Social Types
CHAPTER 1 HOW TO DETERMINE SOCIAL CAUSES AND SOCIAL TYPES 145
Presumed usefulness of morphological classification of types of suicide as a way to trace their causes; impossibility of this classification. Only practicable method consists of classifying suicides by causes. Why this is more appropriate than any other for a sociological study of suicide.
How discover these causes? Information given by statistics on assumed reasons for suicides (1) are suspect, (2) do not give true causes. Only effective method is to discover how the suicide-rate varies in terms of different social concomitants.
CHAPTER 2 EGOISTIC SUICIDE 152
Suicide and religions. General aggravation due to Protestantism; immunity of Catholics and especially of Jews.
Immunity of Catholics not due to their minority status in Protestant countries, but to their lesser religious individualism, that is, to the greater integration of the Catholic church. Application of this explanation to the Jews.
Verification of this explanation: (1) relative immunity of England with relation to other Protestant countries is connected with stronger integration of Anglican church; (2) religious individualism varies with desire for knowledge: a) desire for knowledge stronger among Protestant peoples than among Catholics, b) desire for knowledge varies with suicide whenever corresponding to progress in religious individualism. Confirmation of the law by the exception of the Jews.
Consequences of this chapter: (1) science the remedy but not the cause of the evil symptomized by the progress of suicide; (2) while religious society protects against suicide, it is only because it is a strongly integrated society.
CHAPTER 3 EGOISTIC SUICIDE (continued) 171
General immunity of married persons as calculated by Bertillon. Inconveniences of the method he had to follow. Need to separate more completely the influences of age and civil status. Tables in which this separation is made. Laws derived from them.
Explanation of these laws. The coefficient of preservation of married persons unconnected with matrimonial selection. Proofs: (1) reasons a priori; (2) reasons of fact drawn from: a) variations of coefficient at different ages; b) unequal immunity of husbands and wives. Is this immunity due to marriage or the family? Reasons contrary to the former hypothesis: (1) contrast between the stationary condition of marriage rate and progress of suicide; (2) slight immunity of husbands without children; (3) aggravation among wives without children.
Is slight immunity of married men without children due to conjugal selection? Contrary proof from aggravation of childless wives. Explanation of partial persistence of this coefficient among childless widowers without reference to conjugal selection. General theory of widowhood.
Recapitulatory table of the above results. Almost all the immunity of husbands and all that of wives due to the influence of the family. It increases with family density, that is, with its degree of integration.
Suicide and political and national crises. Its regression at such times is real and general. Due to the group’s acquisition of a stronger integration during these crises.
General conclusion of the chapter. Direct relation between suicide and the degree of integration of social groups, of whatever sort. Cause of this relation; why and under what conditions society is necessary to the individual. How suicide develops when he lacks it. Confirmative proofs of this explanation. Constitution of egoistic suicide.
CHAPTER 4 ALTRUISTIC SUICIDE 217
Suicide among lower societies: its distinguishing characteristics contrasted with those of egoistic suicide. Constitution of obligatory altruistic suicide. Other forms of this type.
Suicide in European armies; general character of the aggravation resulting from military service. It is independent of the non-marital state, and alcoholism. Not due to disgust with the service. Proofs: (1) it grows with the duration of service; (2) it is stronger among volunteers and re-enlisted men; (3) among officers and non-commissioned officers than among privates. It is due to military spirit and the state of altruism it involves. Confirmative proofs: (1) it is stronger the less inclination peoples have to egoistic suicide; (2) it is maximum among elite troops; (3) it decreases to the degree that egoistic suicide develops.
How the above results justify the method followed.
CHAPTER 5 ANOMIC SUICIDE 241
Suicide grows with economic crises. This progression is sustained during crises of prosperity: examples of Prussia and Italy. International expositions. Suicide and wealth.
Explanation of this relation. Man can live only if his needs are in harmony with his means; which implies a limitation of the latter. Society limits them; how this moderating influence is normally exercised. How it is prevented by crises; whence come irregularity, anomy, suicides. Confirmation from the relations of suicide with wealth.
Anomy is at present chronic in the economic world. Suicides resulting from it. Constitution of anomic suicide.
Suicides due to conjugal anomy. Widowhood. Divorce. Parallelism between divorces and suicides. Due to a matrimonial constitution acting in opposite senses on husbands and wives; proofs. Nature of this matrimonial constitution. The weakening of matrimonial discipline implicit in divorce aggravates the tendency of men to suicide and diminishes that of women. Reason for this opposition. Proofs in confirmation of this explanation. Conception of marriage emerging from this chapter.
CHAPTER 6 INDIVIDUAL FORMS OF THE DIFFERENT TYPES OF SUICIDE 277
Utility and possibility of completing the above aetiological classification by a morphological one.
Fundamental forms assumed by the three suicidogenetic currents in their individual embodiments. Mixed forms resulting from the combination of these fundamental forms.
Is the chosen instrument of death to be considered in this classification? This choice depends on social causes. But these causes are independent of those determining suicide. They are therefore unconnected with the present study. Synoptic table of the different types of suicides.
Book Three: General Nature of Suicide as a Social Phenomenon
CHAPTER 1 THE SOCIAL ELEMENT OF SUICIDE 297
Results of the above. Lack of relations between the suicide-rate and cosmic or biological phenomena. Definite relations to social facts. The social rate therefore corresponds to a collective tendency of society.
Stability and individuality of this rate not otherwise explicable. Theory of Quetelet to account for it: the average man. Refutation: regularity of statistical data found also in facts outside the average. Necessity to admit a collective force or group of collective forces the intensity of which the social suicide-rate expresses.
What this collective force must mean: a reality external to and above the individual. Sketch and examination of objections made to this conception: (1) Objection that a social fact can only be transmitted by inter-individual traditions. Answer: the suicide-rate cannot be so transmitted. (2) Objection that the individual is the only reality of society. Answer: a) how material things external to individuals are erected into social facts and play a role sui generis in this capacity; b) those social facts not thus objectivized unparalleled by individual consciousness. Their substratum is the aggregate of social consciences combined in society. This conception has nothing ontological about it.
Application of these ideas to suicide.
CHAPTER 2 RELATIONS OF SUICIDE WITH OTHER SOCIAL PHENOMENA 326
Method to determine whether suicide should be classed among moral or immoral facts.
Historical sketch of juridical or moral regulations in use in different societies with respect to suicide. Steady progress of the reprobation of it, except in periods of decadence. Reason for this reprobation; it is more than ever founded on the normal constitution of modern societies.
Relations of suicide to other forms of immorality. Suicide and crimes against property; no relation. Suicide and homicide; theory that both consist of a single organic-psychic state, but depend on opposite social conditions.
Discussion of the first part of the proposition. Sex, age, temperature do not affect the two phenomena in the same way.
Discussion of the second part. Cases in which the antagonism is not verified. More numerous cases of its verification. Explanation of these apparent contradictions: existence of different types of suicide, some excluding homicide, while others depend on the same social conditions. Nature of these types; why the former are now more numerous than the latter.
How the above throws light on the question of the historical relationship of egoism and altruism.
CHAPTER 3 PRACTICAL CONSEQUENCES 361
Solution of the practical problem varies as the present state of suicide is regarded as normal or abnormal. Statement of the question regardless of suicide’s immoral nature. Reasons why a moderate suicide-rate may not be morbid. But why the present rate among European peoples is the index of a pathological state.
Means suggested to obviate the evil: (1) repressive measures. What measures are possible. Why they could have only a limited efficacy; (2) education. Being only a reflection of the moral state of society, it cannot reform it. Necessity of reaching the causes of the suicidogenetic currents themselves; though altruistic suicide, not in an abnormal state, may be disregarded.
Remedy for egoistic suicide: to achieve greater consistency in the groups which enfold the individual. Which are best suited for the role? Neither political society, too far removed from the individual—nor religious society, which socializes only by withdrawing liberty of thought—nor the family, which tends to be reduced to the married couple. The suicides of married persons are growing, as well as those of the unmarried.
The occupational group. Why it alone can fulfill this function. What it must become, for the purpose. How it may constitute a moral environment. How it may also restrain anomic suicide. Cases of conjugal anomy. Antinomial statement of the problem: antagonism of the sexes. Means of remedy.
Conclusion. Present state of suicide is the index of a poverty of morals. What is meant by a moral affection of society. The proposed reform demanded by the whole of our historical evolution. Disappearance of all intermediate social groups between the individual and the State; necessity for reconstituting them. Occupational decentralization contrasted with territorial decentralization; why it is the necessary basis for social organization. Importance of the question of suicide; its solidarity with the greatest practical problems of the present time.
APPENDICES 393
Suicides and alcoholism in France (4 maps)
Suicides in France by arrondissements
Suicides in central Europe
Suicides and family density in France (2 maps)
Suicides and wealth in France (2 maps)
Table of suicides by age of spouses and the widowed of both sexes, with or without children, in French departments except the Seine, in absolute figures, for the years 1889-91.