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Altruistic suicide: precedence in usage

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Robert D. Goldney
Robert D. Goldney*
Affiliation:
FRCPsych The Adelaide Clinic, 33 ParkTerrace, Gilberton, South Australia, Australia 5081
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Psychiatric Bulletin , Volume 27 , Issue 3 , March 2003 , pp. 115
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This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 2003

Sir: Dr Spencer's correspondence ‘The Suicide Bomber — Is it a psychiatric phenomenon?’ (Psychiatric Bulletin, November 2002, 26, 346) perpetuates the belief that Durkheim was the first to use the term altruistic suicide. Altruistic suicide was described by George Savage as ‘To save others from suffering. To benefit others’, in his chapter on suicide and insanity in Tuke's Dictionary of Psychological Medicine in 1892. Further-more, the notion of suicide as self sacrifice was also described by Mercier in his book Sanity and Insanity in 1890.

Whilst the concept of altruistic suicide is usually attributed to Durkheim, the evidence is persuasive that Savage deserves scientific precedence in the use of this term. This has been discussed further in Pre-Durkheim Suicidology: The 1892 Reviews of Tuke and Savage (Reference Goldney and SchioldannGoldney and Schioldann, 2002).

References

Goldney, R. D., Schioldann, J. A. (2002) Pre-Durkheim Suicidology:The 1892 Reviews of Tuke and Savage. Adelaide, Adelaide Academic Press.Google Scholar
Mercier, C. (1890) Sanity and Insanity. London, Walter Scott.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tuke, D. H. (1892) A Dictionary of Psychological Medicine. London, J. & A. Churchill.Google Scholar
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