Understanding a Suicide Versus Understanding Suicide
David Lester
Research and theory in suicidology are concerned with understanding suicide and, most of time, do a pretty good job of this. Durkheim’s (1897) classification of four types of suicides (or cultures and subcultures) has been cited extensively and applied to many situations, such as suicide terrorists who have been classified as altruistic by many commentators, perhaps erroneously (Lester, 2021). Joiner’s (2005) Interpersonal Theory of Suicide (IPTS), although criticized, is the most studied theory in the 21st century and typically receives empirical support.
A researcher might take a sample of individuals, say college students, and give them a measure of suicidal ideation, thwarted belongingness, perceived burdensomeness and the acquired capability for self-harm, and find the positive correlations as predicted by the theory. It looks like we may have contributed to an understanding of suicide.
But……
First of all, social science is not a science. Chemicals dissolve, explode, combine, etc. Objects on earth obey gravity. Even light waves obey gravity - hence we can see stars that are behind objects such as the moon. Physics and chemistry are sciences. Psychology and sociology are not sciences. Every result has a probability of being correct and also of being wrong. So social facts are not the same as physical science facts. Newton did not say, if I let go of this apple, I am 95% certain that it will drop.
Second, research in suicidology, like research into other psychological and sociological topics, is a game. Look at how many useless articles have appeared in 2020 and 2021 on covid-19. Researchers saw an opportunity for a quick article, enhance their resumé and improve their chances for tenure and promotion. Do we really need competing fear of covid-19 scales, let alone one? Only the researchers developing vaccines (chemists and biologists) performed useful work. The same is true of most suicide research. Let me get a sample, administer several tests of risk factor for suicide, and publish the results. Another paper, but no contribution to even understanding suicide.
Third, there is a difference between research and real life. Lester and Gunn (2021) studied the lives of 72 famous suicides, famous enough to have biographies written about them. The research found that perceived burdensomeness was not common in the motivations for their suicides. It was found in only 15.3% of the cases. However, there were cases which conformed to Joiner’s theory, Jerzy Kosinski for example. Does the IPTS explain Kosiński’s suicide? Read his biography, or my essay based on the biography, and you will see that his life was far more complex than three psychological constructs.
Recently, I have been working on a new book on Katie’s Diary (Lester, 2004). Because I could not get volunteers to write a chapter applying the IPTS to Katie, I wrote the chapter. It was possible to find passages in Katie’s diary that supported all of the constructs proposed by the IPTS: thwarted belongingness, perceived burdensomeness and the acquired capability for self-harm. However, on reading the other chapters submitted for the new book, I realized how the IPTS did not account for Katie’s suicide. Yes, those three constructs were present, but I still wondered why she choose suicide.
The other chapters, written more from a phenomenological point of view, made her suicide much more understandable. Katie’s mind and social surround were so much more complex than three simple constructs. In the first book on Katie, one contributor explored the role of God in Katie’s life and death, another her irrational thinking, and another the voices in her mind that communicated with her. In the current book in preparation, contributors discuss Katie’s life and suicide from the perspectives of Gestalt psychology, transactional analysis, and meaning-making (the establishment of an internal order of the world which gives a feeling of predictability and control). As I read and edited those chapters, I felt that I had a much better understanding of why Katie choose to die by suicide. I even developed the feeling that her suicide was inevitable, a feeling I did not get from my chapter on the IPTS.
Therefore, we are skilled in playing the game of research apparently oriented toward understanding suicide. But individual suicides are too complex to be understandable based solely on that research.
References
Durkheim, E.
(1897). Le suicide. Paris, France: Felix Alcan.
Joiner, T. E. (2005). Why people die by suicide. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press.
Lester, D. (2004).
Katie’s diary. New York: Brunner-Routledge.
Lester, D. (2021).
Suicide terrorists and terrorism. Hauppauge, NY: Nova.
Lester, D., & Gunn, J. F. (in press).
Perspectives
on a Young Woman's Suicide: A Study of a Diary
