Download Suicide ( Social Study) PDF book by Ruth Shonle Cavan (1937)

Ruth Shonle Cavan was an American sociologist based at the University of Chicago. She specialized in deviance and criminology and was a leader of the Chicago school of sociologyThe subject for this study was chosen because of an interest in human nature in the midst of perplexities and because of curiosity as to why people, even when perplexed, commit suicide A preliminary exploratory jaunt to published material on suicide revealed a few general treatises by Euro-pean writers, many monographs by French and German psychiatrists and physicians, and almost nothing by English, and particularly by American, writers It showed further a tendency to treat suicide statistically, neglect of life-histories, which are perhaps not so exact as statistics, but which give vastly more insight into, and understanding of, human nature, and an emphasis on cases showing some mental abnormalityThe normal person who committed suicide was overlooked, as though the popular prejudice were indeed true that suicide is ipso facto proof of abnormality A further survey of material revealed numerous sources of data, many of which had scarcely been touched by previous writers Collecting these data meant searching through hundreds of books on dusty library shelves in the hope of garnering a sentence here, a paragraph there, not of itself valuable but exceedingly revealing when compared with other statementsMuch of the historical and ethnological material was thus gathered piecemeal, although the studies by Westermarck and Lecky aided materially and are referred to freely and frequently in chapters u and iv This historical and ethnological approach gave a perspective to the whole problem difficult to obtain in any other way. Suicide appeared in its relation to other customs, to attitudes PREFACE viii toward life and religion, to political and social changes There was made possible, not a mere chronicling of facts, but an analysis of suicide as a social phenomenonIntroduction »PART I SUICIDE AND SOCIAL DISORGANIZATIONI Suicide Trends 3What IS suicide? 3The increasing rate SWhy study suicide? . . 9n Europe Why Suicide Is No Longer Sineux ... 12The Grecian decline and the use of suicide cults. 12Rome, a repetition of the Grecian situation ... 16Christianity as prophylaxis to suicide .... 18Medieval philosophy unfavorable to suicide .... 20The renaissance and the revival of suicide... 22III Europe and the United States Some Contemporary Factors .... -25The twentieth-century heritage 25Is climate a factor? ... 25The fallacy of the racial-temperament theory ... 26Does religion prevent suicide?. -37Suicide and the urban trend 45The dominance of social factors 54IV Suicide in Preliterate and Oriental Groups. 56Preliterate people non-suicidal ..... 56Suicide from personal motives 6Institutionalized suicide. 69Social factors making institutionalized suicide possible 74V Suicide in America’s Second City A Study of UrbanConditions ... . . -77Chicago, a “normal” city 77