Identify and describe the four types of suicide that Emile Durkheim delineated. Include in your description the particular way in which people who commit each type of suicide are connected to their society.
There is a need to consider death by suicide as stigmatizing due to the conceptions of suicide, especially as social phenomena. Durkheim describes four different kinds of suicide: egoistic, altruistic, anomic, and fatalistic. Egoistic suicide and altruistic suicide are dependent on social integration. According to Durkheim, egoistic occurs because society allows the individual to escape it, being insufficiently aggregated in some parts or even on the whole. Altruistic occurs because society holds the person in too strict instruction (212).
In the case of egoistic suicide, the individual experiences a lack of social integration, preventing them from being connected to the resources that would presumably prevent suicide. Altruistic suicide stems from what Durkheim describes as over-integration into society.
Altruistic suicide can be in one of many different forms, such as the suicide of those who are close to dying or have reached a certain age. For example, ladies who kill themselves when they lose their spouse and suicides of supporters or workers following the death of their pioneer.
However, anomic suicide and the less discussed fatalistic suicide emphasize the influence of social regulation on suicide. Anomic suicide occurs when people have a lack of commitment to group norms in such a way that they are unsatisfied with life. Society, in this case, is under-regulated, and this affects the connection and commitment individuals have with the society.
Commitment to group norms that are excessively active such as over-commitment, may demonstrate fatalistic suicide. Durkheim delineates that it is a side deriving from extreme regulation, that of individuals with prospects barbarously blocked and interests violently stifled by oppressive discipline.
Durkheim’s suicidal behavior can be categorized into social integration and social regulation. Social integration refers to people voluntarily attaching themselves to a group or society of which they are members. Social regulation refers to a group or society coercively regulating the behavior of its members by means of constraints or control measures. Therefore, socially integrated individuals rare those who have been socialized to the norms and values of their particular society.
These individuals enjoy being part of that particular society so much that they will follow all the regulations, and that is set out by the society they belong to. Publically regulated individuals are those who are not socialized according to society. These socially controlled persons are subjected to social control measures. This is because the individuals do not want to follow the laws, rules, and regulations that are set out by the society that they belong to.
Too little social integration causes egoistic suicide. Anomic suicide develops from too little social control. Altruistic suicide comes about when there is too much social integration. Fatalistic suicide originates from too much social scrutiny.
People who experience little social integration, as well as those experiencing too much integration, are more likely to commit suicide than those with moderate integration. Similarly, persons experiencing too little social regulation, as well as those subjected to much social control, are more expected to commit suicide than those subjected to moderate social regulation.
State your position and support your answer to the following: Did Charles Darwin’s childhood bereavement experience enhance or hinder his later life and work?
Kastenbaum (2012) has hypothesized that Charles Darwin’s later life and work are attributed to his childhood bereavement. First, his mother deceased when he was a little, and it is odd that he can hardly remember anything about her except her death-bed, her black velvet gown, and her curiously constructed work-table. He recalls his father calling him, going into her room, his father greeted him, and crying afterward. Interestingly, Darwin had a much more detailed remembrance of a soldier’s burial ceremony that he attended a few past weeks.
Secondly, Kastenbaum (2012) argues that some of Darwin’s main scientific interests may have been closely identified in mind with his mother. According to Kastenbaum (2012), Darwin’s bereavement as a child might have an impact on the evolution of natural selection. A significant area of Darwin’s intellectual work may be rooted directly in the death of his mother. Darwin used his experience in understanding about the nature of grief itself as a universal human experience.
Although it may not be argued that his grief motivated or formed the theory of natural selection, his grief was incorporated into the worldview that underlies the theory of natural selection. The grief narrative Darwin constructed after the death of his mother can be understood best through the lens of his theory.
Lastly, Kastenbaum (2012) points out some unusual behaviors of Darwin’s is suggestive of a boy preoccupied with a lost mother. During his elderly age, Darwin studies worms. Near his death, Charles Darwin returns to creatures, worms that interested him as a young boy. While fishing, he enjoyed the feeling of sacrificing worms to his cause.
However, Kastenbaum (2012) fails to notice that Darwin’s older sisters, who assumed responsibility for his care, did not talk about their mother. It would have been nearly difficult for a child to construct a narrative of his mother’s death in an environment where neither the death nor thoughts and feelings people had about the death could be discussed. If his grief were somatized, as Kastenbaum (2012, p 325) argues, it would not have been available to his conscious mind.
Darwin, who thought keenly about whatever he observed, never seemed to have given much attention grief after the death of his mother. In fact, it is only after the death of his daughter Annie, that Darwin understood grief much as do most scholars. Initially, before death, his daughter, Darwin, thought of grief as a temporary condition that time usually heals. Darwin assumed that the response to death could best be assumed in the framework of attachment between the bereaved and the deceased.
Randal Keynes, Darwin’s great-grandson, illustrates that Darwin’s grief for the death of Annie was a factor in the world view embodied in his theory of natural selection. Therefore, a case is made that although Darwin’s bereavement as a child might not have impacted his evolution theory through natural selection, his grief over the death of his favorite daughter, Annie, did.
Bereaved parents do not get over their children’s death easily because they do not stop loving them. However, this does not eliminate the notion that they remain the same as they were in the first few years after the death. As Darwin writes to newly bereaved parents thirteen years after the death of Annie,” your grief has made me dimness a few tears over out poor darling, but believe me that these tears have lost that unspeakable bitterness of former days” (Francis Darwin, 1887, p.39).
As the years pass, death takes its place within their life course-birth of subsequent children, failures, and success of their work-life, divorce, grandchildren, and then other changes that bring old age. The death of also takes its place in the growth that the death of a child can occasion, as Calhoun and Tedeschi (2004, p.2) put it “continuing personal distress and growth often coexist.”
Therefore, this evidence proves that Charles Darwin’s childhood experience did not hinder or enhance his later life and work; rather, it is the death of his beloved daughter, Annie.
What are Eric Lindemann’s symptoms of acute grief? Given these symptoms, what would you recommend as a way to help people who experience acute grief?
When dealing with a prolonged terminal illness or death, Erich Lindemann’s symptoms of acute grief can contribute to the current understanding of the characteristic of normal grief by identifying deviant forms of it.
Consequently, Lindermann refers to such features of acute grief as ‘somatic distress’ happening in waves enduring from 20 minutes to an hour on end. Lindemann also identifies ‘striking features’ of grief as, for instance, ‘sighing respirations’ and ‘universal’ reports of physical weakness and weariness. Complications with ‘digestive symptoms’ are acknowledged. This includes ‘delay’ or the suspension of grief.
Erich Lindemann has described six components of acute grief. First, intense somatic distress, happening in phases from time of twenty minutes to about one hour, stifling and murmuring, an unfilled feeling in the abdomen, weakness, tenseness, and mental torment. Lindermann recognized that since visits may bring on those disturbing physical impacts, removal from friends, families, and others is basic. Second, obsession with contemplations of the deceased.
Third, guilt considerations driving survivors to blame themselves for having abused or ignored the dead. Fourth, aggravation and resentment being directed at themselves, the deceased, relatives, specialists, the world, or God. Fifth, restlessness, tumult, heedless, and absence of inspiration accompanied by the abandonment of the survivor’s usual habit patterns. Ultimately, recognizable proof marvels stimulating the reception of attributes, manifestations of the deceased, which can incidentally achieve neurotic extents.
Given Erich Lindemann’s description, it appears that the first stage of grief is usually shocked that begins upon learning of the loss. This is an entirely rational and appropriate response designed to protect the bereaved from the psychological damage that immediate awareness of all the implications of the news.
Shock manifests itself in many ways but usually is characterized by feelings f being mentally numb and insulated from reality so that concepts and emotions and even time are experienced as though secondhand. This condition lasts for minutes or several hours. The continuation of this state of some instances means that it is in this state that the bereaved often attend to many of the practical arrangements for the loss.
The shock and denial stage is described dominatingly by disbelief and numbness. The memorial service, friends, gathering, and mourners, help the survivor acknowledge the loss in an encouraging situation. Seeing the body is empowering as a further method of overcoming denial. The bereaved undergoes different searching behaviors like pining, yearning, and dissent assumes control as the detachment turns to strings of separation.
Finally, during restitution and reorganization, the deprived perceives the degree of loss and acknowledges grieving has been fulfilled. Attention moves to live from the deceased. The sign of restoration is the survivors’ distinguishment. They can turn to work, resume old cores, obtain new ones, experience delight, and look for companionship and love.
Delineate the main points of Freud’s grief-work theory. How can these be applied to any loss? Give one example.
According to Freud, grief involves a redefinition of self, aspirations, goals, and relationships following a loss. It is the liberation from the servitude to the deceased, and correction of nature in which the deceased is missing; and the arrangement of the new relationship. Fraud’s grief theory describes a series of phases through which bereaved individual experiences grief reactions and in time reach recovery.
During the first phase, the bereaved person accepts the reality of loss and adapts to the loss. The bereaved persons experience a period of numbness and shock, exhibit outbursts of extremely intense distress or anger. During this phase, they are incapable of grasping the full impact of the death. This is seen as a protective defense mechanism to blunt the emotions of the bereft.
The bereaved individual then enters the second stage, consisting of searching and yearning for the deceased to return. This phase is difficult and time-consuming since it encompasses both mental and emotive reception of loss. Further denial would result in the bereaved individual trapped in this grieving stage. It also results in a misrepresentation of the realities of loss or a complete misconception. This phase includes crying, anxiety, anger, self-approach, confusion, and loss of security.
The grief reaction in the third stage consists of despair and disorganization, as bereaved must learn them to bear life without the loved one. During this stage, it is critical to work with the pain of grieving as opposed to stifling it since it may show in different dimension-either enthusiastic or physical as in psychosomatic conditions or maladaptive conduct.
Society could hamper this stage by demoralizing the grieving process through the subtle method of characterizing grief as unhealthy or morbid. Evasion or concealment could bring about complicated grieving.
Believed individuals who complete these stages then enter the fourth phase, where they begin, to a lesser or greater degree, the procedure of reorganization and recovery. This step relies on a substantial degree on the kind of the relationship and the roles the deceased fulfills. The deceased adjusts for the survivor, adapts new abilities and extra loss. Resultantly, it may prompt a further lowered self-esteem and relapse to emotions of helplessness. It may similarly prompt a change in conviction framework as the deceased tries to define a loss.
The inability to finish this undertaking could prompt not adjusting to the loss by learned helpless, withdrawal, and not developing skills the deceased needs to adapt. The final stage is to relocate the deceased emotionally and continue living. This phase is complicated by the bereaved resistance to letting go of the attachment.
This phase does not suggest mechanically withdrawing all enthusiastic interest in the deceased or abandoning them; rather, it can be seen as repositioning or developing another association with the deceased that leaves space for new relationship and development. This period of grieving could be impeded by holding on to the past connection instead of framing new ones.
The outcome of this may be getting stuck at the point of occurrence of the loss while the bereaved are unable to define a new relationship. The successful movement through these stages of grief is essential to avoid the untoward effects of separation-induced depressive symptoms.
References
Calhoun, L.G. and Tedeschi, R.G. (2004). Posttraumatic growth: Conceptual Foundation and empirical evidence. Psychological Inquiry, 15(1), 1-18.
Darwin, F.(Ed.). (1887). The life and letters of Charles Darwin, including an autobiographical chapter. Vol. 1. London: John Murray. Web.
Kastenbaum, R.J. (2012). Death, Society, and human experience, 11th Ed. New York: Pearson