ABSTRACT
Modern Japanese manifest forms of alienation that are more adapt to result in suicide than in the forms of religious conversion that are alternative to suicide for Christians in the West. This chapter explores in a psychoanalytic approach, complementary to Emile Durkheim more directly sociological one emphasizing social cohesion, there can be continuing conditions of what is termed "early narcissism," creating vulnerability to suicide. A prevalent form of "egoistic"social attenuation related to suicide is that found in aged individuals – either those who have suffered the loss of a mate of long standing or those coping with the increasing infirmity or the pain of failing health. Durkheim's exploration of the conditions under which anomic suicide occurs progressed into one of his major contributions to sociological theory. A culturally prevalent socialization pattern makes Japanese particularly prone to the logic of inflicting one's suffering or death on others as an autoplastic form of control or aggression.
