Suicide : a study in sociology

Translated by John A. Spaulding and George Simpson.. Edited with an introduction by George Simpson

Book 1 - Extra-social factors. 1 Suicide and psychopathic states. 2 Suicide and normal psychological states--race, heredity. 3 Suicide and cosmic factors. 4 Imitation. Book 2 - Social causes and social types. 1 How to determine social causes and social types. 2 Egoistic suicide. 3 Egoistic suicide (continued). 4 Altruistic suicide. 5 Anomic suicide. 6 Individual forms of the different types of suicide. Book 3 - General nature of suicide as a social phenomenon. 1 The social element of suicide. 2 Relations of suicide with other social phenomena. 3 Practical consequences. Appendices

'...But in addition to its historical and methodological import, Le Suicide is of abiding significance because of the problem it treats and the sociological approach with which it is handled. For Durkheim is seeking to establish that what looks like a highly individual and personal phenomenon is explicable through the social structure and its ramifying functions. And even the revolutionary findings in psychiatry and the refinement and superior competence of contemporary actuarial statistics on this subject have yet to come fully to grips with this....'

Hardcover