Alffe and hsiw have touched on something profound about Durkheim's suicide analysis.

In order to be meaningful, a typology must meet 2 conditions:

(1) Its categories must be exhaustive. That means, they include all cases. Alffe notes the impulse category, which doesn't fit into Durkheim's typology.

(2) Its categories must be mutually exclusive. Aristotle, for example, groups governments by who is running things, the "one, the few, or the many." That is an either-or sort of grouping, i.e., "many" cannot be "one." As hsiw observes, Durkheim's categories do not exclude one another; a concrete case may be two or more of what he describes.

You see why the typology's explanatory power is weak.

Well, on both accounts, Durkheim's typology leaves much to be desired. I view it as a point of departure, not an end. He was a real pioneer, with all the faults that pioneers have.

Tom