5 Books for Understanding Suicide

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  I did not prepare a proper article this week, but I have gathered some notes and reading recommendations that I consider essential to a stronger education in the humanities, especially when addressing voluntary death, a question central to our research group, Lysis.

  Some books strike me as simply indispensable, essential reading for anyone seeking to grasp the gravity and complexity of suicide. I could make the list longer, but I would risk losing the reader. As Schopenhauer warned, when we buy a book, we are not given the time to read it. I have therefore chosen only five fundamental works, all of which made a deep impression on me. For readers just starting out, these books demand time and dedication, but I can assure you that the effort is worthwhile. Some of them will be included in the reading for our study series at Lysis.

  Before presenting the books, however, I think it important to share some preliminary reflections on the subject. These are notes from my notebooks that might serve as a starting point for the practice of thinking.

  Choosing One’s Own Death as a Refusal of Silence. The decision to die is perhaps the most intimate and radical of human choices and, at the same time, the most resistant to collective discussion. It generally involves suffering, anguish, and a desire for release. It also calls attention to a truth that societies prefer to keep hidden: there are people who can no longer bear to live. When such a person thinks of dying, why do they not always find room to speak? Might a refusal to listen reinforce the urge to act? These questions deserve reflection. We seldom recognize the ethical urgency of the desire to die before it becomes an act.

  Suicide as a Gesture Against the Impossibility of Dialogue. In my experience, which the reader should always feel free to supplement or correct, when suicide breaks through it is at once an act against oneself and a muffled cry against the absence of dialogue. Many who think of dying find no legitimate space to speak of their pain, their doubts, or their wish to disappear. Nor do they find anyone willing to listen without rushing to correct them, fearing involvement, or immediately treating their words as pathology. Deprived of that careful listening, they often find nothing else.

  The Importance of Time, Space, and Language. Truly considered decisions, and the possibility of reversing choices already under way, require time, space, and language. No one can deliberate clearly in the face of profound anguish without someone to talk to openly. The true misery of people contemplating suicide lies in their pain and in the silence imposed on them. Silence behind walls, thoughts nurtured in secret, nameless anguish, until all that remains is the act, often solitary, irrevocable, and merciless.

  Silence as a Cultural Construct and a Social Pathology. This sentence of silence is political, cultural, and historical. It marks a society that tolerates the desire to die only as a pathology or a threat. If we want to prevent suicide, and if life is a value to preserve, we must challenge the culture that prevents those thoughts from first becoming part of public discussion, rather than fighting those who think of dying. What cannot be said, I repeat, sooner or later ends up being enacted.

  The Desire to Die as Language, Beyond Pathology. In other words, the desire to die must be recognized as a form of language in its own right, beyond its status as a symptom or effect. Recognizing it in this way might allow us to give it an expression that keeps it from turning into action. Words can save where silence cannot. An ethics of care requires spaces where death can be named, discussed, and thought through before it has to be enacted.

  The Difficulty of Listening as an Ethical Imperative. If we want to understand suicide seriously and, above all, keep it from becoming the only possible way out, we have to sustain this difficult practice of listening. We must take responsibility for how our communities, institutions, and cultures speak or remain silent in the face of despair. That begins with those who, at different times, dared to think about suicide without reducing it to a scandal, rushing to exorcise it, or numbing it with moralism.

  The five books below offer neither ready answers nor windows onto some hidden essence of the problem. I would say, instead, that they open small cracks through which we can hear another person’s silence and respond humanely to our own silence in the face of this phenomenon. This depends on our reading with an open heart, beyond the demands of an academic exercise.

1. O Mito de Sísifo, Albert Camus (1942)

  Albert Camus was born on November 7, 1913, in Mondovi, Algeria, then part of the French colonial empire. The son of a French father and a Spanish mother, Camus grew up amid poverty and personal hardship, circumstances that would later be reflected in his philosophical ideas. His work bears the deep imprint of the Second World War, the struggle against totalitarianism, and the search for a meaning to life in a world that appears, at first sight, to be devoid of it. Camus became famous for his concept of the absurd, which he develops in O Mito de Sísifo (1942). For Camus, life is inherently without meaning, and human beings constantly seek meaning in a universe that gives no answers. Faced with the absurd, despair and suicide might seem natural responses. Camus proposes revolt: the decision to go on living even in the face of a complete absence of meaning.

  Few people know that Camus visited Brazil in 1949, when he gave a series of lectures and talks around the country. He was invited to the University of São Paulo (USP), where he presented some of his principal ideas. His philosophy found a significant audience in Brazil and influenced many Brazilian intellectuals, especially those concerned with the existential, political, and social questions of the day. During his stay, Camus took a close interest in Brazil’s political and social tensions under the regime of Getúlio Vargas and met thinkers such as Gilberto Freyre and Sérgio Buarque de Holanda. His criticism of totalitarianism on both the right and the left resonated with Brazilian intellectuals living in a country marked by dictatorship and Cold War tensions.

  Allow me a few more notes. Camus is widely known for his philosophy of the absurd. For him, the absurd arises when human beings realize that the search for meaning is futile. There is no ultimate reason for life, and the universe offers no satisfactory answers. Camus responds to the prospect of suicide or hopelessness with a radically positive proposal: revolt. Revolt against the absurd is a personal stance toward life, distinct from an act of political revolution. The true response to the absurd is to go on living, expecting no higher meaning from life and creating meaning through our own actions.

            Other Important Works:

            Alongside O Mito de Sísifo, Camus wrote several other major works that explore his philosophy of the absurd and revolt, including:

            O Estrangeiro (1942): The story of Meursault, a man seemingly indifferent to life who becomes involved in a murder. His indifference toward life and death embodies the Camusian absurd.

            A Peste (1947): An allegory of resistance to oppression and the meaning of life in the face of collective suffering. It explores how people respond when a plague, an epidemic, strikes their city.

            A Queda (1956): A reflection on guilt, the fall of man, and individual suffering.

  Though influenced by existentialism, Camus distanced himself from figures such as Jean-Paul Sartre because he disagreed with some of its central tenets. Sartre believed that human beings, in their radical freedom, could create meaning for life. Camus regarded the search as futile. In his famous critique, Camus stated: “Existentialism, especially Sartre’s version, fails to recognize that despite human freedom, the absurd pervades the whole human condition.” If I had to sum up Camus’s criticism of existentialism in one statement, I would say simply that for him freedom offers no key to creating a universal meaning, since the search for meaning is itself already absurd. Revolt, then, is to accept this absurd condition and live without illusions.

  Camus died tragically in a car accident in 1960, at the age of 46. His premature death prevented him from developing his philosophical ideas further, but his work remains among the most influential of the twentieth century, especially in existential philosophy, literature, and politics. Camus always kept his distance from closed political ideologies such as Marxism and fascism, and his philosophy reflects an enduring concern with human dignity and resistance to totalitarianism.

  In Mito de Sísifo, Camus asks why anyone should go on living in a world that seems to have no meaning. The essay reflects on suicide as a response to the absurdity of life. Camus begins by observing that, faced with the absurdity of existence, suicide appears to be a logical solution. Yet he rejects this idea and argues that the true human revolt is to go on living in the knowledge that life has no predetermined meaning. The choice between living and dying in the face of life’s lack of meaning is the fundamental question any philosophy must answer.

  Sisyphus, condemned to push a rock up a mountain only to watch it roll back to the bottom, symbolizes human dignity. True revolt consists in accepting the absurd and going on living in spite of it.

  For anyone asking what life is for, especially in a time of existential crisis, Camus offers a powerful and liberating reflection. His work calls on us to persist in living even without the promise of an ultimate meaning. At Lysis, we will read it closely in the second half of 2025 or, at the latest, in the first half of 2026.

2. Levantar a Mão sobre Si Mesmo: Discurso sobre a Morte Voluntária, Jean Améry (1976)

  Jean Améry, a philosopher of Jewish descent, is one of the twentieth century’s most provocative and radical thinkers, especially in his analysis of suicide and voluntary death. His Levantar a mão sobre si mesmo: Discurso sobre a morte voluntária (1976) offers an unprecedented reflection on choosing death as an affirmation of freedom, an existential response to unbearable suffering, and a critique of moralizing and pathologizing views of suicide. Améry’s work is among my favorite reading. It is, in effect, written in blood. It bears witness to his experience of torture and suffering in the Nazi concentration camps, which shaped his radical understanding of human dignity and individual freedom.

   Jean Améry was born Hans Chaim Mayer in Vienna in 1912, and his life was devastated by the Second World War. During the war he joined the Belgian anti-fascist resistance, but the Nazis captured him and sent him to the Auschwitz, Buchenwald, and Bergen-Belsen concentration camps. The physical and psychological suffering Améry endured in captivity profoundly shaped his later philosophy. Torture, the loss of family members, and the dehumanization of the camps were experiences that went beyond Améry’s personal biography and became central themes of his philosophical work.

  After the war, Hans Chaim Mayer adopted the pseudonym “Jean Améry,” giving up his former identity in a symbolic act of reconstruction after trauma. In a sense, his pseudonym was a reinterpretation of “love,” derived from the word “amare,” symbolizing his attempt to rebuild his relationship with the world and with his own identity after the horror he had endured. Améry rejected attempts at a “cure” through conventional psychoanalysis and sought a deeper philosophical reflection. He became one of the foremost thinkers to address the aftermath of the Holocaust.

  In Hand an sich legen. Diskurs über den Freitod (Levantar a mão sobre si mesmo), Améry rejects the idea that suicide is a failure, a mental illness, or an irrational act. To my knowledge, he is the author who has challenged the association between suicide and mental illness most radically. He sees suicide as a lucid choice and, in many cases, as a human right. In one of his most emblematic statements, Améry writes that a person who chooses death is not necessarily in a state of madness or suffering from a pathology that requires treatment. This is a crucial point in his philosophy, since he challenges both psychiatric approaches that pathologize suicide and traditional morality that condemns it. Améry understands suicide as an act of personal sovereignty in which individuals refuse the oppression of unbearable pain and affirm their right to choose their own death. He disputes the idea that life is always a good to be preserved at any cost, proposing that voluntary death be understood as a radical choice in the face of an inability to bear the pain life imposes, rather than as an act of weakness.

  For Améry, suicide is inseparable from freedom. His concept of “radical freedom” challenges any utilitarian or conservative conception of the value of life. For him, freedom extends beyond a simple choice between good and evil to an individual’s capacity to choose in the face of suffering. He argues that for those who can no longer endure unbearable pain, suicide may be the only possible way to regain freedom. Suicide, in his account, is thus the last right of a human being who wants to make a choice in a world that denies them any choice. This point matters in particular because it places suicide outside the normative categories of illness and morality and suggests that it can be understood as a gesture of resistance. It is a radical affirmation of autonomy in a world where chronic pain, psychological suffering, and social humiliation obstruct individual freedom.

   Psychiatrists and mental health professionals fail to understand the depth of the suffering that leads to suicide when they treat it solely as a symptom of mental illness. This still strikes me as an important point in his work. Améry argues that this approach overlooks the complexity of the suicidal act and its existential, cultural, and social roots. When suicide is treated as a pathology, the suffering underlying it is lost in a diagnosis. What is lost is the human being who, in their pain, struggles against forces that seek to keep them captive to life.

   This critique extends beyond psychiatry to morality, which, according to Améry, imposes a burden on those who wish to die. He argues that traditional morality, which regards life as sacred and inviolable, fails to recognize a person’s right to decide on their own existence or its cessation. For Améry, morality is often a form of oppression that ignores people’s living conditions and the painful realities that can lead someone to suicide.

   One of the most provocative questions in Améry’s work concerns his analysis of social solidarity in relation to suicide. He suggests that suicide often occurs in a context of social isolation, when a person can no longer find ways to connect with other people or with a community. He also argues that suicide is both an individual act and a reflection of society’s failure to address human suffering. He calls for deeper social solidarity, so that people’s suffering can be recognized and addressed before it reaches the point of voluntary death.

   Jean Améry’s work has had a profound impact on a number of disciplines, including philosophy, psychology, and sociology. His critique of morality and of the pathologization of suicide helped open a new field of inquiry that moved beyond traditional clinical approaches and began to consider suicide as a social and existential phenomenon. In countries including France, Germany, and the United States, scholars of existential and phenomenological philosophy have taken up Améry’s work as an important contribution to the understanding of human suffering, freedom, and autonomy. By exploring the intersections of pain, suicide, and freedom, Améry becomes a central figure in contemporary debates about the ethics of death, individual freedom, and the role of society in shaping human dignity.

   Is he worth reading? Améry forces us to reflect on the limits of life, of pain, and, above all, on human dignity in the face of oppression and the loss of meaning. This much-loved philosopher died by his own hand in 1978, at the age of 66, giving his philosophy what many saw as a tragic conclusion. His death was a physical end as well as a political and philosophical act, reinforcing the central idea of his work: suicide as an ethical right and a form of radical freedom.

   His death left an important legacy for philosophy and for the study of human suffering, humiliation, oppression, and the right to autonomy. He became one of the foremost philosophers to write about suicide from an existential and ethical perspective, free of moralism. His work shows how it can be understood as a valid and complex existential decision, beyond its treatment as a taboo or a failure.

   Jean Améry never ceased to be a controversial figure, and his ideas about suicide and human freedom continue to provoke philosophical debate. I believe anyone who enters his work emerges from it changed.

   Here is a brief taste:

“There is nothing more to say. Or I would have to start again with the situation ‘before the leap.’ And everything would repeat itself, endlessly, like a canon, a song no one sings to the end. From this point on there is no further path for thought. The circle has closed. We look at it and are perplexed. We can find neither its beginning nor its end. Thinking about suicide ultimately leads to this result, but the result is no more an experience than death itself. What can be experienced is only the absurd reality of living and dying and, when suicide is chosen, an absurd euphoria of freedom. Its value as an experience is far from negligible. For when the moment comes, the recognition that the whole thing was false passes through us like a lightning bolt. Recognition alone is of no use in life. For even the person about to die by suicide, approaching the threshold of the leap, must face the demands of life. Otherwise they would not find the way to freedom and would remain like the concentration camp prisoner who does not dare run toward the barbed wire, still wanting to gulp down the evening soup, then the hot acorn drink in the morning, and the beet soup again at noon, and everything would go on. Yet the demand of life here, and not only here, is the demand to escape a life without dignity, humanity, or freedom. So death becomes life, as though living, from birth, were already dying. And negation then suddenly turns into something positive, albeit useless. Logic and dialectic fail in tragic agreement. What matters is the subject’s choice. But the survivors are right, for what are dignity, humanity, and freedom beside smiling, breathing, and walking? Is what runs against right and propriety, then, of value? Dignity against the very premise of any dignity? Humanity against the human being who is alive, smiling, breathing, and walking? Things are not going well for the person who chooses suicide. They did not go well. We should respect what they do and what they leave undone. We should express our solidarity, especially since we ourselves cut no brilliant figure. We look pitiable, as anyone can see. So we should mourn, with restraint and bowed heads, what has left us free.” Améry, 1976, p. 172-174.

3. Suicide and the Soul (1964), by James Hillman

   James Hillman (1926-2011) was an American psychologist and philosopher and one of the principal founders of archetypal psychology. Trained in Jungian psychoanalysis, Hillman challenged traditional conceptions of psychology by proposing a deeply symbolic and mythological reading of human behavior. He believed that patterns of behavior called for an explanation that went beyond biological or psychological factors to include the archetypal and cultural influences that permeate the human psyche. Throughout his career, Hillman rejected the reductionist and pathologizing outlook of traditional psychology. He adopted an approach that valued the complexity of the human soul and sought a deeper, symbolic understanding of human emotions and actions.

   Hillman proposed that the human psyche is best understood as a web of symbolic images and archetypes that appear in myths, stories, and cultural expressions. In Suicide and the Soul, he applies this approach to suicide, treating it as an expression of a deeper internal conflict beyond mental illness or psychological disorder alone. For Hillman, suicide can be more than an act of despair or a symptom of a troubled mind. It can be a manifestation of a soul searching for something more, something life can no longer provide.

   Suicide and the Soul was introduced to me by the psychologist Jalane Moura, whose master’s thesis I was proud to supervise. The book proposes a radically different view of suicide. Hillman argues that where traditional approaches see suicide as a biological or mental failure, it should be understood as a symbolic symptom of the soul. For him, suicide expresses a profound inner conflict taking place within the individual at a symbolic, psychic, and archetypal level.

   Hillman departs from the medical perspective that tends to pathologize suicide and treat it as an illness in need of a cure. In my view, this kind of reading ought to find a wider audience among those involved in the Yellow September campaigns, which are so strongly marked by psychiatric reductionism, especially in our country. Beyond a reading skewed toward psychiatry, readers will find in this book a perspective that recognizes suicide as a legitimate expression of an existential crisis. Hillman argues that suicide can be seen as an attempt to resolve an internal archetypal conflict, a form of expression for a soul that can find no other way out.

   This view offers a powerful and challenging alternative to the conventional understanding of suicide, which tends to center on medical and psychological treatment to “cure” the suicidal person. Hillman suggests that therapists and mental health professionals approach suicide with a willingness to listen deeply and try to understand the symbols and archetypes being enacted in that person’s life.

   Some notes from my reading notebook:

   Suicide as a Desire of the Soul:

   Hillman suggests that suicide can be understood as a claim the soul makes against the body and physical well-being. He sees it as a symbolic expression of the soul’s desire to assert itself and break free from an oppressive or irreparable situation. For Hillman, it can be an attempt to give the soul a form of expression, beyond an act of despair. The soul can assert a claim against the body and our physical well-being, and this is often what suicide represents: the soul making demands of its own. This captures the central idea that suicide can reflect the soul’s deep longing to escape a life it feels it can no longer sustain.

   The Mythic Fantasy Behind Suicide:

   Hillman argues that understanding suicide requires us to understand the mythic fantasies being enacted through it. In his view, we should see suicide as a symbolic plot that reflects the archetypes and images of the collective unconscious, rather than understanding it simply as an individual or pathological failure. He suggests that, as in a myth, suicide can be seen as a kind of rite of passage or an attempt to resolve a deep archetypal conflict that can be resolved in no other way. To understand a suicide, we need to understand what mythic fantasy is being enacted. This is central to his proposal that suicide can be seen as part of a symbolic drama in which the individual is attempting to accomplish something within themselves through a radical act.

   The Symbolism of Suicide:

   Hillman suggests that we understand suicide as a form of symbolic expression of the soul, beyond seeing it as an act of destruction. For him, the soul’s actions cannot all be described as pathological or mistaken. It also manifests itself through actions that can be understood as attempts to resolve deep-seated internal problems. Suicide is accordingly treated as an expression of an existential crisis that calls for symbolic understanding, beyond being classified as a “mistake” or a “failure.”

   Suicide as a Response to Existential Suffering:

   Hillman also sees suicide as a response to existential suffering that cannot be resolved within the constraints of everyday life. According to Hillman, a person who chooses suicide may be trying to escape suffering that exceeds life’s capacity to provide meaning. In this sense, suicide is an attempt to transcend the limits of existence and to escape the suffering of a life that no longer seems bearable.

   Suicide and the Soul was groundbreaking for its time, offering a psychoanalytic perspective that departed from biomedical and pathologizing accounts of suicide. Hillman’s symbolic approach influenced archetypal psychology as well as other fields, including existential philosophy and transactional psychology. His understanding of suicide as a symbolic and archetypal phenomenon proposed a new and deeper way of seeing people who die by suicide, as individuals whose actions can be understood within a wider drama of the human soul rather than as people who have suffered a biological or mental failure.

   Hillman’s work was foundational to humanistic psychology, which, in contrast to traditional psychoanalytic approaches, emphasizes the importance of listening to and understanding the person at a deep, symbolic level. This more holistic approach, which regards the soul and archetypes as fundamental to human behavior, remains relevant to those who study suicide and other forms of extreme behavior.

   Well worth reading: James Hillman’s Suicide and the Soul offers a new lens through which to understand suicide. Beyond pathologizing it or dismissing it as a mistake, Hillman invites us to see it as a profound symbolic manifestation of the soul, a cry for freedom that goes beyond conventional biology and psychology. His work remains essential reading for psychologists, psychiatrists, and philosophers interested in the complexity of the human soul and the depth of existential suffering.

4. Suicídio: Estudos sobre o Desespero Humano (1938), by Karl Menninger

   Karl Menninger (1893-1990) was a highly respected American psychiatrist known for his pioneering work in psychiatry and for founding the Menninger Clinic, an innovative center for psychiatric treatment. Menninger is widely recognized for working to humanize the practice of psychiatry. He was among the first to approach mental illness with empathy in place of the stigma that cast it as a defect of character. He believed that treating mental disorders properly required attending to the whole person: their emotions, interpersonal relationships, and the existential dimensions of their life. His work helped establish psychiatry as a scientific discipline deeply concerned with its ethical responsibilities toward patients.

   Menninger was also among the first to discuss suicide openly in academic work. In Suicídio: Estudos sobre o Desespero Humano, he takes a comprehensive approach to suicide, considering its psychological, social, and emotional aspects and offering a perspective that goes beyond traditional clinical diagnosis and the stigma surrounding it. He stressed the importance of understanding suicide as a multifaceted phenomenon that goes beyond an isolated act of despair, and addressed the need for prevention, intervention, and psychotherapeutic support.

   Published in 1938, Suicídio: Estudos sobre o Desespero Humano proposes an integrated and complex account of suicide that goes beyond purely clinical or diagnostic analysis. Menninger approaches suicide as a response to a range of internal and external forces, encompassing psychological factors along with social and cultural ones. Where many psychologists of his day viewed suicide solely as an individual failure or a pathological reaction, Menninger develops a theory that sees it as a form of aggression directed at oneself, reinterpreting the concept of homicide. He proposes that suicide be understood as “inverted homicide,” in which the aggression and anger ordinarily directed outward turn against the self.

   Menninger divides suicidal impulses into three central categories:

• To kill (anger). The anger a person feels, often repressed or unresolved, is one of the driving forces of suicide. Menninger observes that in many situations, people cannot express this anger adequately and end up internalizing it, turning it against themselves. Suicide would then be an attempt to escape that anger, a way to “punish” oneself.
• To be killed (guilt). Guilt is another central factor in the suicidal impulse. For Menninger, many people who die by suicide do so because they feel they do not deserve to live or cannot bear the burden of guilt, whether on account of past actions or feelings of inadequacy or shame. This guilt often relates to perceived failings in their own character or to a sense of falling short of social or family norms.
• To kill oneself (despair). Despair, understood as a loss of hope and a bleak view of the future, is the last category of suicidal impulse Menninger discusses. When a person feels they have exhausted every option and that change or relief is no longer possible, suicide can appear to be the only escape from unbearable suffering.

   Menninger thus sees suicide as a complex response to a range of internal and external pressures, rather than as a failure or an irrational act. His work offers a searching analysis of the emotional, psychological, and social reasons that lead a person to contemplate suicide and challenges us to approach the subject with the seriousness and empathy it deserves.

   The Importance of Hope in Suicide Prevention:

  One of Menninger’s main conclusions is that “Hope is a necessity for normal life and the principal weapon against the suicidal impulse.” He argues that suicide can be prevented, in part, by restoring hope. When people have a sense of purpose and connection, they are less likely to fall into the despair that often leads to suicide. Menninger emphasizes the need to nurture hope in individuals and in communities as a way to reduce the risks associated with suicide.

  The Crucial Role of Social Support:

  Menninger also points out that “The friends who listen to us are those we turn to. We want to stay within the reach of their presence.” He argues that emotional and social support are among the most effective forms of suicide prevention. Human contact and empathetic listening can give someone going through a crisis a foundation to rely on and help ease their emotional and psychological suffering.

  Suicide as an Expression of Internal Conflict:

  Menninger suggests that suicide is one way a person expresses anger, guilt, and despair, taking these feelings to their extremes. He describes suicide as an attempt to resolve intense and often unresolved internal conflicts that are profoundly affected by family and social relationships. Suicide is thus more than a mental or emotional failure. It is a way of trying to cope with external and internal pressures and reflects a wish to escape prolonged suffering.

  Menninger’s work belongs to a period of change in psychiatry, when psychopathology was often viewed through a dehumanizing and reductionist lens. Menninger promoted more holistic treatment and recognized the importance of patients’ emotional and social circumstances. He believed that the study of suicide had to take into account the emotional, historical, and social factors that contribute to the phenomenon. His approach helped lay the groundwork for understanding suicide as a multidimensional problem. Beyond medical or pharmacological interventions, addressing it requires careful attention to a person’s social and psychological circumstances.

  Although psychology has evolved since Menninger’s time, his ideas about the relationship between anger, guilt, and despair remain relevant, especially for mental health professionals working with patients at risk of suicide. Menninger’s work remains a landmark in psychiatry for its searching and humane view of one of the most complex phenomena in human psychology.

  An invitation to read: Suicídio: Estudos sobre o Desespero Humano is essential reading for mental health professionals, psychologists, psychiatrists, and sociologists who want to understand suicide with technical rigor as well as with humanity and empathy. Menninger analyzes suicide as a complex act that involves a range of interrelated psychological, social, and emotional factors, far beyond a simple pathological deviation. He invites us to rethink suicide, treating it with the respect it deserves as a human phenomenon that calls for understanding, prevention, and social support.

 

5. O Suicídio, Émile Durkheim (1897)

   In the first chapter of Le Suicide, Durkheim sets out his central premise: suicide must be approached as a social phenomenon, beyond its individual, psychological, or pathological dimensions. Contrary to the prevailing view of the time, which saw suicide as a reflection of individual mental problems, Durkheim proposes that it is influenced by structural social factors. He challenges the approach taken by the “alienists,” the psychiatrists of his day, who treated suicide as a mental illness or as an isolated symptom of psychological imbalance. He criticizes the reductionist view that suicide can be explained entirely by psychopathology and emphasizes the fundamental role society plays in shaping suicide rates.

   Durkheim’s critique of the “alienists,” which I consider the most pertinent part of the book today, acknowledges the importance of psychology while calling for a more integrated understanding. I would say that it calls for overcoming a psychiatric reductionism that still besets us.

   Durkheim also discusses the theory of social contagion, now carelessly called the Werther effect. A prominent concept in his time, it suggested that suicide could spread like an epidemic through social influences. Durkheim refutes this idea and argues that suicide does not spread like a contagious disease, but reflects the social conditions in which people live. Social factors such as family structure, religion, laws, and economic arrangements can influence the choices people make, but suicide is not directly “contagious” the way an epidemic is. Durkheim shows that suicide reflects the social and cultural norms governing individual life and is shaped by the relations between individuals and the social structures in which they are embedded. He therefore proposes that suicide reflects social disorganization or dysfunction rather than a process of “social contagion.”

            Egoistic, Altruistic, Anomic, and Fatalistic Suicide

  In his analysis, Durkheim identifies four types of suicide, which he discusses throughout the book:

• Egoistic suicide: This occurs when an individual is isolated, without ties to society or to their community. A lack of social integration is the main cause of this type of suicide. Durkheim associates it with excessively individualistic societies, where social ties are weak or absent.
• Altruistic suicide: Here the individual sacrifices themselves for the good of others or of the collective. This type occurs when a person is excessively integrated into a group and their actions are guided by the collective good, as in military or religious contexts where the needs of the group are placed above those of the individual.
• Anomic suicide: This type results from a lack of clear social norms, especially during periods of major economic crisis, social change, or disorganization. When the social norms that regulate individual behavior become unstable or break down, a person may lose their bearings and die by suicide.
• Fatalistic suicide: This type occurs when people live under extreme repression and control, as in authoritarian regimes or other oppressive circumstances where individual life is severely restricted and controlled. In this case, suicide is seen as a way to escape unbearable suffering.

  Departing from moralizing and reductionist views, Durkheim concludes that suicide is a complex response to social tensions and that its causes are rooted in a lack of balance between social integration and regulation. He argues that suicide rates are higher in societies unable to balance individuality and collective life.

  Durkheim also criticizes moralistic readings of suicide that treat it as a moral failure or an act of despair without considering the social forces that give rise to it. For him, suicide must be understood in the context of social conditions that shape people’s actions, such as religion, the state, and the family structure. Analyzing data on suicide, he proposes a scientific approach that takes social structure and culture into account. Looking beyond individual reasons alone, he analyzes how different societies influence suicide rates and shows that social solidarity and the degree of moral regulation play a decisive role in suicidal behavior.

  Reflections on Social Services and Social Assistance

  In the closing chapters of Le Suicide, Durkheim considers the importance of social services and assistance as forms of intervention to prevent suicide. Although his focus is mainly on structural causes, he recognizes that social assistance can play an important role in reducing suicide rates, especially by strengthening social ties and fostering a balance between individual autonomy and social bonds. He suggests that social policy should seek to integrate individuals into society and create a social safety net that helps prevent isolation and alienation, key factors in egoistic suicide. He emphasizes that strengthening social institutions and building a network of support can soften the effects of economic and social crises and reduce suicide rates during periods of social disorganization.

  Is it worth reading? Yes, slowly and with a reading plan. Durkheim’s work on suicide remains a fundamental contribution to sociology and to scholarship more broadly. His approach, which goes beyond psychopathology, offers a rich and multidimensional understanding of the social causes of suicide. He teaches us to see suicide as a reflection of the social and cultural conditions in which people are immersed, beyond an isolated event in an individual’s life. Durkheim also warns us of the dangers of an excessively moralizing approach and calls on us to examine social structures to understand what shapes individuals’ decisions about life and death. His analysis remains relevant, especially in times of social crisis, when finding a healthy balance between the individual and the collective becomes more urgent. We are still left with the question, which must be approached with due care, of whether Durkheim himself falls into sociological determinism.

 Some editions I recommend in Portuguese:

1. DURKHEIM, Émile. O suicídio. 4. ed. São Paulo: Martins Fontes, 2000.
2. CAMUS, Albert. O Mito de Sísifo. 5. ed. Rio de Janeiro: Record, 2001.
3. AMÉRY, Jean. Hand an sich legen: Diskurs über den Freitod. Stuttgart: Ernst Klett Verlag, 1976. There is no Portuguese translation. Spanish editions are available: AMÉRY, Jean. Levantar la mano sobre uno mismo. Discurso sobre la muerte voluntaria Valencia: Editorial Pre-Textos, 2017 [1976]. Unfortunately, only one book by the author has been published in Brazil, a collection of essays that is well worth reading: AMÉRY, Jean. Além do crime e castigo: tentativas de superação. Tradução Marijane Lisboa. São Paulo: Contraponto, 2013.
4. HILLMAN, James. Suicídio e a alma. São Paulo: Cultrix, 1992.
5. MENNINGER, Karl. Suicídio: estudos sobre o desespero humano. São Paulo: Ibrasa, 1970.