Because of the increased stress that people endure today, the number of different types of suicide is becoming increasingly common.
We use the term “suicide” too loosely, failing to recognize that the act of suicide involves varied motivations and intentions.
Durkheim’s research focused on determining what causes a person to commit suicide. As well as what influences or variables may have led to that ultimate decision or deed.
Furthermore, according to Durkheim, various sociological causes and pressures were at work, including work pressure and financial, religious, and marital influences.
Suicide, according to “Emile Durkheim,” is defined as “any voluntary act of an individual that culminates in his death despite being conscious of the effect of the act.”
In his book “Suicide,” published in 1897, Durkheim defined four types of suicide. Egoistic suicide, altruistic suicide, anomic suicide, and fatalistic suicide are the four different types of suicide.
1. Egoistic Suicide
Individuals who do not have significant ties to society or who are not connected and associated with a group or society are more likely to commit suicide.
Besides, Durkheim refers to suicide committed by an individual due to a lack of social cohesion as “egoistic suicide.”
Because modern or metropolitan communities lack social solidarity, this type of suicide is more common.
Furthermore, because such persons have minimal social cohesion, unmarried or non-believers have a higher rate of attempting egoistic suicide.
Additionally, people who were religious, married, and had strong social relationships had a lower rate of egoistic suicide.
2. Altruistic Suicide
Altruistic suicide is also one of the different types of suicide that occur when individuals and groups get too close and intimate for this sort of suicide to occur.
However, this type of suicide is caused by an individual’s excessive absorption of social proof.
Furthermore, individuals’ lives and opinions have no significance. In such a social situation, an individual will surrender his life to the group’s interests or standards. Which Durkheim refers to as altruistic suicide.
Furthermore, soldiers dying in battle, the sati ceremony, in which a surviving spouse is burned alive alongside her husband’s body, and extreme group suicide bombings are all examples of altruistic suicide.
3. Anomic Suicide
Humans are unlike any other species in that they can never be satisfied with what they have.
Additionally, according to Durkheim, biological makeup does not endow human beings with the boundaries of their desires.
There is, however, a solution to this issue; those boundaries are provided by society in the form of standards and regulations, which are imprinted in our minds by society, that we should limit our desires according to our means.
Additionally, individuals are guided by norms and laws regarding what they expect to achieve and what they should forsake since it is not practically achievable.
They grow so dissatisfied that they commit themselves because of their dissatisfaction. Durkheim coined the term “anomic suicide” to describe these different types of suicide.
However, this mechanism does not function as it should in modern society. As there are no laws or regulations to aid individuals in limiting their desires to their means, a scenario Durkheim refers to as anomie.
Furthermore, when economic situations grow unpredictable in modern culture, affluent people lose their money overnight and poor people become extremely wealthy overnight, individuals do not internalize any limitations.
4. Fatalistic Suicide
Fatalistic suicide is also one of the different types of suicide. When a person or group of individuals are subjected to strict rules or have high expectations placed on them, they develop a sense of self or individuality.
Additionally, suicide of this nature occurs in a society with a high level of regulation. Salve was meant to kill himself when his master died, which was an example of fatalistic suicide in primitive civilization.
Conclusively, Durkheim’s theory of suicide has contributed significantly to our understanding of the phenomenon due to his emphasis on social rather than biological or personal factors.
The theory’s main flaw is that it emphasizes one factor, namely social factors.
While forgetting or undermining other factors results in a defective and one-sided theory.
