Emile Durkheim's concept of anomie (Le Suicide [Suicide], Paris, 1967) has been incorrectly interpreted by several sociologists. It is argued that the interpretation of "anomie"as "normlessness" results in a distortion of Durkheim's explanatory theory of anomic suicide. Not normlessness as such, but normlessness in a specific regard, is the cause of anomic suicide. Strictly speaking, anomie refers to the absence of norms that keep so-called individual desires under restraint. These desires arise, according to Durkheim, in an individual when he reflects on the world in which he lives. By themselves, these desires are limitless; only society is able to put an upper limit to them. When such restraint is absent, the individual will endure feelings of frustration, which may be followed by suicide. Such a situation is called anomie by Durkheim; the suicides invoked here are the anomic ones. A special situation of norm certainty (eg, as in commercial life with its directives of rationality) is shown to provoke suicides of the anomic kind. This would be impossible if one equated anomie with normlessness. AA.
