The Politics of Suicide: Historical Perspectives on Suicidology before Durkheim. An Introduction

During the Enlightenment, suicide, or the act of self-killing, was turned into an activity for scientific analysis. Suicide became a moral affliction that was to be attended to not just by the police, but also by physicians and, subsequently, mental health care professionals. In 1897, Emile Durkheim published the first and now classic case study of sociology, Le Suicide, in which he set out to establish the existence of social facts verifiable through objective scientific means. Brancaccio et al seek to address aspects of suicidology as yet unexplored and far more ambiguous and elusive than traditional approaches have tended to appreciate.