Suicide: The Psychosocial Dimension

The relationships among culture, character, and suicide is explored and the varying psychodynamic ways in which the suicidal individual in differing cultures and subcultures conceives of, uses and absorbs death are illustrated.

Abstract

This paper explores the relationships among culture, character, and suicide. It draws on the author's research in Scandinavia and his studies of suicide among United States urban blacks and college students. The differences in motivation and significance of suicide in Sweden and Denmark are illustrated. The United States is an amalgam of subcultures which must be studied separately to identify the psychosocial determinants of behavior. The varying rates and motivations of suicide in different cultures and subcultures, the differences between men and women, between young and old, differences in ways of coping with love and loss, life and death make clear that suicide is part of a culture's possibilities. The varying psychodynamic ways in which the suicidal individual in differing cultures and subcultures conceives of, uses and absorbs death also has much to tell us about how we live.