Papers Gallery

Durkheim had four separate types of suicide, egoistic, altruistic, fatalistic, and anomic. Egoistic suicide, Durkheim consider it to be a result of lack of social integration, those who are not tied to social groups and had little to no support from others. In a scholarly article titled, From Psychological Strain to Disconnectedness A Two-Factor Model Theory of Suicide by Jie Zhang, he explained how a person with a lot of social integration should have a low chance of committing suicide, while a person with low social integration has a higher chance of committing suicide, Zhang explained Durkheim’s theory in a very easy to read way, he says that Durkheim used the idea of social integration to show that people who are single, divorced, or have little to no social interactions feel like they are not part of a community. Zhang also explained how Durkheim thought that gender had a part in an individual’s choice in suicide, that men have a higher chance at committing suicide than women all over the world, because men are more independent and free that could lead into fewer close relationships with other people while that could also lead into not seeking advice or comfort from people they are close with. So if you have no close social relationships, you are more likely to die from suicide, according to Durkheim, if you asked a person who has attempted to commit suicide why they tried, their answer will mostly be “I felt isolated”, proving what Durkheim’s theory of Egoistic suicide. However Altruistic suicide affects a person who in a large society and also has high levels of social integration, but instead of focusing on the individual’s needs, the see the needs of the whole society, Durkheim says that Altruistic rates of suicides are lower because they are often seen as not important, an example of this is the Japanese aircraft kamikaze, in World War II the Japanese had a few aircrafts filled with explosives and would make the pilot crash on to an enemy target