Abstract
?Suicidal tendencies in everyday-life discourse: Popular interpreta 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 rela tions popular explanations resembled psychoanalytic ones. That was not the case for pathologizing medico-psychiatric explanations, that did not enter eve ryday-life discourse. Instead, these explanations followed a polythetic and po lys?mie logic that will be analyzed in the third step with a methodologically extended discourse analysis. Finally, genderspecific explanations will be pre sented. Popular interpretations endowed meaning for the surviving to compre hend 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 The essay is based on 155 unpublished, so called popular autobiographies from Germany (without GDR), Austria and Switzerland.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 quali tatively and quantitatively.
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