Year: 2001 Source: Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior, v.31, no.1, (Spring 2001), p.113-114 SIEC No: 20010529

In this letter to the editor, the authors question the precedence of terminology used by Durkheim for two categories of suicide usually attributed to him. They discuss the seredipitous discovery of a categorization of suicide by George Savage, published in a dictionary in 1892, five years before Durkheim’s “Le Suicide”. It seems unlikely Savage would have been aware of Durkheim’s theories at the time of his contribution to the dictionary. The authors argue there is persuavive evidence that Savage deserves scientific precedence in the typology of egotistical & altruistic suicides. (7 refs.)