According to “Emile Durkheim”, any voluntary act of individual, which results in his death, despite being aware the effect of the act, is known as suicide. Durkheim explained four types of suicide in his book “suicide”, published in, 1897. Which are as follow, egoistic suicide, altruistic suicide, anomic suicide and fatalistic suicide.
Egoistic Suicide
When individual do not have strong ties with the society or is not connected and associated with the group or society; in such circumstances the probability of committing suicide by individual is higher. Suicide committed by individual due to lack of social cohesion is termed by, Durkheim as, “egoistic suicide”. This type of suicide mostly occur in modern or urban societies because such societies lack social solidarity. Furthermore, individuals who are unmarried or non-believer have high rate of committing egoistic suicide because such individuals have low social cohesion. People who are believers and married have strong ties with society have low rate egoistic suicide.
Anomic Suicide
Human beings differ from every other animal because, they can never be satisfied with what they possess. According to Durkheim, the limits of desires are not provided to human beings by, biological makeup. However, there is a solution for this phenomenon, those limits are provided by society in the shape of norms and regulation, which is imprinted by society in our mind that, we should limit our desires according to our means. Norms and regulations guide individuals, what they hope to achieve and what they should abandon, for the reason that, it is not realistically obtainable. However, in modern society this mechanism does not work the way it should, there is absence of those rules and regulation which guide individuals to limit their desires, according to their means, this situation is called by Durkheim anomie. In modern society when economic conditions become volatile; rich people lose their money overnight and the poor people become very rich all of the sudden, in such circumstances people do not internalize any limits. They become dissatisfied beyond repair, which leads to committing suicide. This type of suicide is called by Durkheim, anomic suicide.
Altruistic Suicide
This type of suicide occur in a society, where social cohesion or social solidarity is very high. Individual of a group do not think beyond the group interest. Life and ideas of the individuals do not hold any meaning. In such social setting individual give his life for group interest or norms which is termed by Durkheim as altruistic suicide. The example of altruistic suicide is soldiers dying in war, ritual of sati; in which wife is burned alive with her husband dead body and suicide bombing of radical groups.
Fatalistic Suicide
Such type of suicide occurs in a society where regulation are very intense. Example of fatalistic suicide existed in primitive society where salve was supposed to kill himself when his master dies.
By Khushdil Khan Kasi
