Religious, domestic, and political societies are strongly integrated social groups (Durkheim, 1897/1951) where suicidal prevalence is inversely proportional to integration. Subordination to social ego is reliant on legitimation.
Where individual ego overcomes social ego (i.e., individual-social disintegration; under-integration), it is typed as egoistic suicide due to “excessive individualism.” Egoic suicide is related to thoughts.
So far as they are the admitted masters of their destinies, it is their privilege to end their lives. They, on their part, have no reason to endure life‘s sufferings patiently. For they cling to life more resolutely when belonging to a group they love, so as not to betray interests they put before their own. The bond that unites them with the common cause attaches them to life and the lofty goal they envisage prevents their feeling personal troubles so deeply.
Durkheim, 1951/1897, pp. 209–210
Where the individual subordinates one’s life in exchange for furthering a cause/ideal (i.e., over-integration), it is typed as altruistic suicide.
Where the individuals activities are lacking regulation of appetites and subsequent sufferings, it is typed as anomic suicide due to deficient regulation. Anomic suicide is related to industry/commerce.
… the man who has always pinned all his hopes on the future and lived with his eyes fixed upon it, has nothing in the pat as a comfort against the present‘s afflictions, for the past was nothing to him but a series of hastily experienced stages. What blinded him to himself was his expectation always to find further on the happiness he had so far missed. Now he is stopped in his tracks; from now on nothing remains behind or ahead of him to fix his case upon. Weariness alone, moreover, is enough to bring disillusionment, for he cannot in the end escape the futility of an endless pursuit.
Durkheim, 1951/1897
Convergent Validity
Social ego carries convergence with “super ego” (Freud, 1920), which is responsible for a collective conscience that regulates ego‘s navigation of the world in search of satisfying id’s desires etc.
The “clinging to life” when belonging to a group seems to be confounded with the underlying phenomena of social praise that comes with group belonging, especially when providing to the group that which the group needs, also inclusive of positive social appraisal (e.g., unconditional positive regard, need for belongingness; need for relatedness; Deci & Ryan, 2014; Maslow, 1968; Rogers, 1955; Standal, 1954).
Research Memos
Ego-istic. Inter- -est- -ing, according to Freudian ego to ego-psychology, across a dimension. “I feel good,” is a social attribution, constructed by language, and therefore linguistic relativism in the shared production of language leading to linguistic artifacts of belief and ideological systems that changes expression depending on age-period-cohort situations etc.
The issue of egoistic suicide is that there is a presumption of individual (i.e., “excessive individualism”), yet if the predispositioned or acquired state (e.g., image, refinement, body language) of said individual is not yet legitimated in society, then that means….
[“… because we have to recognize the gays, and the queers, and the entire set of beings that are not yet legitimated… we’d legitimate the whole lot of them…”]
References
Durkheim, É. (1951). Suicide: A study in sociology (J. A. Spaulding & G. Simpson, Trans.). The Free Press. (Original work published 1897)