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Egoistic suicide
Egoistic suicide is one of four types of suicides addressed in Emile Durkheim’s landmark book entitledSuicide: A Study of Suicide. Egoistic suicide is best described as a social environment in which the individual is isolated and lacks social connection with others. Social disengagement is prominent. Essentially, the person neither feels a part of a family or group nor has any sense of belongingness. Here, Durkheim believed that the social environment becomes the direct cause of psychological distress and mental disorders that are the catalyst for suicide.

Origins
Of the four types of social environments that propels an individual to commit suicide, egoistic suicide was the first that Durkheim observed when his close friend, Victor Hommay, committed suicide. According to his writing during that time period, Durkheim was emotionally devastated. Thus, his academic devotion and his need to employ the scientific method in writing Suicide was the result of a personal experience with suicide. In the process of defining, studying and understanding egoistic suicide, Durkheim realized that social forces are in a state of balance. He realized that the opposite of egotism is altruism. Later he uncovered data that supported the existence of anomie, a concept he had been working with for decades, but not within the context of research on suicide. From anomie, he developed the theoretical concept of fatalism. His entire theory and the development of altruism, anomie and fatalism emerged from his observation that his close friend, Victor, existed within an egotistic social environment. This egotistic social environment was the cause of Victor's psychological distress that was the catalyst for his suicide.

The employment of egoism suicide
Of all of Durkheim’s suicide concepts (fatalism, anomie, altruism, egoism), egoism is the least controversial and least addressed in the literature as a Durkheimian concept. Unlike the other suicide concepts, egoism is intellectually manageable and can be understood without extensive training in sociology. The literature on suicide is packed with the assessment of egoistic suicide without acknowledging Durkheim or his theory. Egoistic suicide, as a concept, is part of the public domain. There are studies  that acknowledge the linkage between Durkheim’s contribution of egoistic suicide, but these publications are rare and difficult to uncover.