Citation

Hoffmann S. Historical social research 2009; 34(4): 188-203.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2009)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

"Suicidal tendencies in everyday-life discourse: Popular interpretations of suicide in the 20th century". Starting with gender specific suicide rates, this essay analyzes popular interpretations of suicide in the 20th century in german-speaking countries. Under the term suicidal tendencies, all thoughts, notices, attempts and committed suicides are summarized. In a first step it will be shown that suicide was for both men and women a topic of autobiographical writing. They used the German term "Selbstmord" in a neutral way without judging the deed morally. After this the insignificance of religion for populare interpretations of suicide will be demonstrated. The next chapter analyzes the scope of popular explications of suicidal tendencies. Focusing on "Social relations" popular explanations resembled psychoanalytic ones. That was not the case for pathologizing medico-psychiatric explanations, that did not enter everyday-life discourse. Instead, these explanations followed a polythetic and polysemic logic that will be analyzed in the third step with a methodologically extended discourse analysis. Finally, genderspecific explanations will be presented. Popular interpretations endowed meaning for the surviving to comprehend the suicide as legitimated means to cope with life and crisis management. The essay is based on 155 unpublished, so called popular autobiographies from Germany (without GDR), Austria and Switzerland. They were analyzed qualitatively and quantitatively.

Language: de

Keywords

Suicide; Everyday-life discourse; Popular autobiographical writing