In recent years, there has been a growing number of empirical studies of relations between environmental factors and mental illness. Such work is confronted by large theoretical problems. Not the least of these is how to conceptualize social and cultural sources of psychological stress. Although existing theory in sociology offers no readymade solution, it does contain some major guideposts. Perhaps the single most important source of these is Emile Durkheim's study of suicide. For in this study, Durkheim locates diverse social conditions or states as major sources of stress for individuals exposed to them.

The most dazzling of Durkheim's conceptions in his descriptions of these social conditions is that of anomie. It is so provocative, in fact, that there has been a tendency to overlook the conditions labeled by the companion-concepts of egoism and altruism; and the footnoted stepchild, fatalism, has been all but ignored. It may well be that failure to utilize the concepts Durkheim set forth in relation to anomie is in part responsible for the contradictory or divergent conceptions advanced in current approaches which acknowledge his work as their mainspring.

Yet it is not only preoccupation with anomie which has led to neglect of the other three concepts. There is a more general problem to be faced, one which inheres in Durkheim's descriptions of all four types. Recall some of his remarks about egoism, altruism, anomie, and fatalism:

Egoism is said by Durkheim [in Suicide] to be a state of society "in which the individual ego asserts itself to excess in the face of the social ego and at its expense.…" This state is one marked by "excessive individualism." It is characteristic, for example, of intellectuals and of Protestant societies.

Altruism, on the other hand, is a "state of impersonality in the social unit." Here "the individual has no interests of his own." He is rather "trained to renunciation and unquestioned abnegation.…" Duty and honor are of paramount importance. Ego is "blended with something not itself… the goal of conduct is exterior to itself, that is, in one of the groups in which it participates." Military societies and some "primitive" societies afford examples of this state.

Anomie, in contrast with both egoism and altruism, is a state of "de-regulation" and "declassification." "All the advantages of social influence are lost … moral education has to be recommenced." Appetites increase, passions are unleashed, there is suffering, competition, "a race for an unattainable goal." This state is found in industrial sectors of modern society, but it is not restricted to them.

Fatalism, finally, is a state in which there is "excessive regulation" such that "futures [are] pitilessly blocked and passions violently choked by oppressive discipline." The case of slavery provides an example.

These are vivid descriptions which embody illustrations of original insights of first importance. They are often, however, ambiguous in themselves, sometimes indistinct, and infused with value judgments about what is "good" and "bad."

As [Paul F. Lazarsfeld and Allen H. Barton in "Qualitative Measurement in the Social Sciences: Classification, Typologies, and Indices," in Daniel Lerner and Harold D. Lasswell, editors, The Policy Sciences, 1951.] have pointed out, any typological system such as Durkheim's involves a reduction of various dimensions in the interest of summarizing what, to the conceptualizer, are the salient features of each type. Often the reader is left to reconstruct for himself the dimensions of the types from the summary descriptions of their salient features. To the extent that the impressions of these features are sharp and clear and devoid of moralizing value judgments, the process is not difficult. To the extent that some of their vividness is due less to objective description and more to the value terms in which they are phrased, the task is complicated. If the types are blurred and ambiguous, they have something of the quality of Rorschach's inkblots and hence serve, inevitably, as objects of the projections of the persons attempting the reconstruction.

The problem of this paper is to try to establish, conceptually, the systematic dimensions of the four types—egoism, altruism, anomie, and fatalism—as states of the most important norms in social aggregates of two or more individuals. Given the scope of Durkheim's work, which places his formulation of these states in the context of a number of assumptions about the nature of human personality and motivation, this is not an easy task to delimit. Given the ambiguities in Durkheim's descriptions, the analysis is confronted by serious obstacles. The paper is therefore an essay in conceptual analysis.

Society is viewed by Durkheim as controlling individuals primarily through the "moral power" of the social environment. Such moral power is invested in what Durkheim variously refers to as the "moral consciousness of societies," their "moral structure," their "moral constitution," or, more concretely, "the common ideas, beliefs, customs and tendencies" of societies. "Externalized" in part in legal codes embodying swift sanctions for his behavior, outnumbering him in the form of "public opinion," and preceding him as traditions in which he himself is socialized, this moral power bears down on the individual who is seen as a "spark" in the "collective current." Certain states of this "moral constitution" or "moral structure" approximate "pure types" which, in the extreme, constitute social conditions predisposing individuals to suicide. Durkheim singled out four such types: egoism, altruism, anomie, and fatalism.

Contemporary sociological terms have replaced such phrases as "moral consciousness of society" and provide a less cumbersome and loaded vocabulary for the analysis of Durkheim's work. [Robert K. Merton in Social Theory and Social Structure, 1957], for example, refers to anomie as "a property of the social and cultural structure." The term "social norm" has come to summarize many of the ideas conveyed by the "common ideas, beliefs, customs and tendencies" of society's "moral constitution." Thus, the types may be understood as describing certain "normative situations" [as explained by Robin M. Williams, Jr., in American Society, 1950] or, since one type has been characterized as "normlessness," certain "norm-states" of the cultural and social structure of social aggregates.

As Inkeles notes [in "Personality and Social Structure," in Robert K. Merton, Leonard Broom, and Leonard S. Cottrell, Jr., editors, Sociology Today, 1959] Durkheim makes a number of assumptions about the nature of personality, and these are invoked as intervening variables between the norm-states and suicide rates. The line between an assumption about a norm-state and an assumption about the nature of personality as related to such a state is not always easy to draw. For example, when Durkheim characterizes the norm-state of egoism as consisting of "excessive individualism," it is not readily apparent that the use of the adjective "excessive" is related to his assumption that it is human nature for the individual to need a goal larger than himself. Similarly, Durkheim's use of terms like "greed" and "the dreams of fevered imaginations" and "lost in an infinity of desires" to describe the "unleashed passions" of anomie are more understandable, though not more persuasive, in the light of his assumption that "the more one has, the more one wants" is a basic characteristic of human personality.

In contrast to "hypercivilization," which is said to breed egoism and anomie and to produce a "refined" and "excessively delicate nervous system" which easily gives way to depression, the "crude, rough culture implicit in the excessive altruism of primitive man" is held to promote a "lack of sensitivity which favors renunciatior." This assumption and those cited above appear to consist more of moralistic interpretations or rationalizations about "human nature" than fruitful (and much needed) attempts to introduce psychological theory into the formulation. As this moralizing about "the nature of human nature" influences Durkheim's descriptions of the normstates at many points, it serves for the most part as an obstacle to the analysis of these states.

Durkheim also speaks of "derivatives" of the norm-states which take the form of more prevalent responses to such states than that of suicide. Thus egoism is said to be accompanied by collective "currents of depression and disillusionment," and by "incurable weariness and sad depression." Altruism, in contrast, is described as being associated with "active renunciation," and "passionate exultation or courageous resolution." The companions of anomie, in turn, are "weariness," "disillusionment, disturbance, agitation and discontent," "anger," "irritated disgust with life,". "exasperated infatuation," and "exasperated weariness." In these last examples we have, it seems, the rather primitive ancestors in Durkheim's work of what has come to be called [by Merton] "subjective anomie;" or better, individual "anomia"—when the focus is on the reactions of the individual summed across his group memberships; Srole's anomie scale is an example of such a focus. When the frame of reference is situational, centering upon the relation of the individual to the norm-state of a particular group, it is possible to see in these types of "derivatives" the forerunners of contemporary treatments of the problem of conformity and deviance; thus Durkheim's distinction between the responses to anomie and egoism resembles somewhat the active-passive dimension in the typology of deviance developed by Parsons and held to be essentially the same as that advanced by Merton. In the present context, these "derivatives" of the norm-states constitute another distinction which must be made if the states themselves are to prove susceptible to systematic analysis.

The focus of this paper, then, is on the norm-states themselves as distinct from their relation to ideas about basic human nature, situational reactions to them, or their personality correlates. The paper makes two debatable assumptions: that it is possible to develop a conception of norm from contemporary theory applicable to Durkheim's formulations; that the meaningful differentiations in the norm-states of egoism, altruism, anomie, and fatalism can profitably be discovered in the terms of this conception of social norms.

In an investigation of current work employing the term "social norm," [in Ragnar Rommetveit, Social Norms and Roles, 1955] finds three different usages: as "shared frame of reference," as "uniformity of behavior," and as "social pressure" or "role obligation." The three usages are not, of course, mutually exclusive. In the field of sociology, however, the "uniformity" and "social pressure" usages have been emphasized rather than the perceptual approach of the "frame of reference" usage, which has been more the concern of psychologists in what Rommetveit terms "the Sherif tradition."

When the term "social norm" is used in the "uniformity of behavior" sense, it is little more than a descriptive tool, another way of saying that sociology is concerned with regularities of social relationships. Any regularity (or structure) of social behavior, in this usage, is normative, and the emphasis is on end products of processes which are not analyzed in this variety of the concept.

Of considerably more power as an analytic concept, and closer to Durkheim's meaning, is social norm viewed as "social pressure." Attempts to systematize this usage, however, appear in several varieties of guises, designated here as, first, terminological guises, second, guises of operational definition, and, finally, guises of the connotations of the idea of stability—even "integration"—in group processes.

Consider the terminological guises. In the work of Parsons and Shils [editors of Toward a General Theory of Action, 1951] the social pressure emphasis is advanced in the term "value-orientation" which connotes the "normative ideas" or "regulatory symbols" of the culture. A similar conception is contained in Williams' formulation of "cultural norm" which "refers to a specific prescription of the course that action should (is supposed to) follow in a given situation." Merton's term is "normative values" which, as part of the "cultural structure," govern "behavior which is common to members of a designated society or group." Perhaps the most succinct formulation is that of Nadel who speaks of behavior [in his, The Theory of Social Structure, 1957] as being normative "in the sense that the shared attributes exhibited by individuals are understood to fellow from the rules [in other guises, the value-orientations, cultural norms, or normative values] of the society or to involve them in some way."

The "social pressure" usage is also implicit in operational definitions of social norms. Nadel outlines three interconnected methods which, he holds, are used in any investigation of social norms. They involve, first, determining the frequency and regularity of behavior; second, eliciting assertions (or what Williams calls "testimony") concerning appropriate conduct; and third, investigating sanctions which [according to Nadel] "forestall or follow deviant behavior." The "social pressure" emphasis in the idea of social norm is unmistakable in this last reliance on sanctions that are called forth to maintain adherence to the cultural rule.

But the observation of sanctions employed to reward conforming and to punish deviant behavior provides only limited clues to the nature of the social pressures that function to maintain adherence to cultural rules. A less restricted lead is contained in discussions of the idea of "stability" of social systems. Parsons and Shils, for example, state: "A stable system of action requires above all the internalization of value-orientations to a degree which will sufficiently integrate the goals of the person with the goals of the collectivity." Thus, as Parsons had noted earlier in terms more similar to those used by Durkheim:

A weakening of control through moral authority tends to call forth… a substitution of unpleasant, external consequences to supply a motive of obedience in place of the internal moral sense of duty … There can be no doubt that both [types of constraint' play their part in the actual functioning of social norms. [The Structure of Social Action, 1949]

These various ideas may be incorporated into a more complete definition of social norm than is usually found, as follows: A social norm is a rule which, over a period of time, proves binding on the overt behavior of each individual in an aggregate of two or more individuals. It is marked by the following characteristics: (1) Being a rule, it has content known to at least one member of the social aggregate.(2) Being a binding rule, it regulates the behavior of any given individual in the social aggregate by virtue of (a) his having internalized the rule; (b) external sanctions in support of the rule applied to him by one or more other individuals in the social aggregate; (c) external sanctions in support of the rule applied to him by an authority outside the social aggregate; or any combination of these circumstances.

This definition suggests the following questions about the dimensions of any types of norm-states: Do norms exist? What is their content? What is the source of their power to regulate—is it primarily through internalized or external sanctions? If external, are the sanctions administered primarily from a source of authority within or outside the social aggregate?

Durkheim describes the norm-states as "pure" types in the sense that, in most empirical situations, elements of them are combined to form composite varieties. The pervasiveness and relative importance of the elements of any one of the types in a given social aggregate is thus a matter of degree. In discussing the characteristics of the types in their pure or ideal form, Durkheim maintained that egoism and altruism are opposites, as are anomie and fatalism. The present examination considers these normstates as pure types, the elements of which are pervasive and all-important in the social aggregate. The assumption here is that each type can be differentiated from every other in terms of its polar oppositeness to each of the other types on at least one major dimension. What, then, are the dimensions of these polar classifications?

Parsons takes us part of the way, as he interprets Durkheim's major distinctions between altruism and egoism, on the one hand, and both of these and anomie, on the other. One of these distinctions refers to the content of the norms characterizing the states of altruism and egoism: in the case of altruism, the norms dictate a collectivistic orientation, which demands subordination of the little-valued individual to highly-valued group goals; in the case of egoism, the rules dictate an individualistic orientation, which stresses the initiative, responsibility, and dignity of the individual. Parsons' second major distinction refers to the absence of norms in the state of anomie: in contrast to both altruism and egoism, anomie is marked by the absence of common social rules which are binding on individuals in the social aggregate. In this sense, then, normative regulation characterizing the norm-states of both egoism and altruism is opposed to "deregulation," or the "normlessness" of the state of anomie. Thus we have the first two dimensions of Durkheim's types: one is the presence versus the absence of social norms, distinguishing both altruism and egoism from anomie; the other is the collectivistic versus the individualistic content of norms, which distinguishes altruism from egoism, [following Parsons, Lazarsfeld and Barton have summarized these distinctions].

Anomie is characterized by Durkheim as a state of "deregulation" in the social aggregate. Fatalism, in contrast, is said to be a condition of the social aggregate in which there is "excessive regulation" and "oppressive discipline." The state of fatalism, then, provides common rules and these are binding on the overt behavior of the individuals in the social aggregate. Thus, by our definition, the norms of fatalism place this state as opposite (in this respect) to the normlessness of anomie. But how is fatalism differentiated from egoism and altruism, which are also characterized by the existence of norms?

To differentiate fatalism from either altruism or egoism on the basis of the content of norms is not useful. Content, in fact, appears quite irrelevant when we recall Durkheim's examples of social aggregates in which fatalism is most likely to prevail—the situations of prisoners and slaves. The conception of social norm developed here suggests inquiry into the source of regulatory power for norms in the state of fatalism, in contrast with egoism and altruism.

In the terms of this concept of norm, comparison of the slave society of fatalism, on the one hand, and Durkheim's egoistic-intellectual and altruistic-military societies, on the other, is instructive. In the case of fatalism, it would seem that the effective regulatory power of common rules is anchored in an authority external to the social aggregate as a whole and to each individual in it—vested, for example, in the "captor." In contrast (if differentiation is sought in terms of oppositeness), egoism and altruism, as pure types, must be norm-states in which the regulatory power of common rules is not only located within the social aggregate but internalized in each individual. Is there evidence in Durkheim's work to support this differentiation?

Durkheim speaks of the "moral consciousness" or "moral power" which distinguishes both egoistic and altruistic societies from anomic ones. Moral consciousness, he holds, is "external" to the component individuals of the society. If this statement is accepted at face value, there appears indeed to be no basis in his work for distinguishing internalized from external regulation. A closer reading indicates, however, that Durkheim is using the term "external" in a very special, even metaphysical, sense to present his view of the individual as but "a spark" in the "collective current." That Durkheim means something quite different from the "moral consciousness" of egoism and altruism by the "deregulation" or normlessness of anomie is clear enough. A hint that he also intends to distinguish the latter from the regulation involved in fatalism is contained in his discussion of the nature of moral obligation: "What actually matters in fact is not only that the regulation should exist, but that it should be accepted by the conscience. Otherwise, since this regulation no longer has moral authority and continues only through the force of inertia, it can no longer play any useful role. It chafes without accomplishing much." The interpretation of this passage depends to a considerable extent on whether the word conscience refers to a metaphysical "collective conscience" or to the conscience of each individual in the social aggregate. At the very least, it may be argued, the statement underlines a distinction between a coercive kind of regulation and one that has acceptance; at most, it implies internalization of the rule as a defining characteristic of whether or not it carries "moral obligation" for the individual.

Parsons, in analyzing this problem, sees Durkheim coming to distinguish between two varieties of normative control: "These two classes of normative control are distinguished [by] the mode of relation of the actor to them. By contrast with the morally neutral attitude associated with the sanction concept of constraint and with norms of 'efficiency' generally, emerges the attitude of moral obligation, of a specific respect toward the rule." Parsons, after noting that for Durkheim the basis of this "attitude of respect" toward a norm is simply a fact, adds the following interpretation: "insofar as the actor maintains an attitude of moral obligation toward it, the norm to which his action is oriented is no longer exterior.… It becomes, in the Freudian term, 'introjected'.…"

According to this interpretation, there is implicit in Durkheim's types a distinction (made explicit in the present conception of social norm) between two main sources of normative regulation: one stemming from rules which have been internalized by individuals in the social aggregate, the other from rules applied from a source of external authority. On the basis of this distinction, it seems reasonable to locate the third dimension of Durkheim's types—a dimension clearly revealed by examination of fatalism in contrast to the other three types—in the power of rules that regulate overt behavior of individuals in a social aggregate where norms exist.

Thus the four types can be differentiated, each from every other, in terms of oppositeness on at least one of three major dimensions: the existence of norms, their content, and their effective source of regulatory power. Both egoism and altruism are characterized by the existence of effective, internalized rules, but the content of the rules is individualistic in the first case and collectivistic in the second. Fatalism stands in strong contrast to egoism and altruism, for its effective source of normative power is an authority external to the social aggregate; nevertheless, all three types involve rules which are binding on the overt behavior of individuals. Anomie, however, appears to be a type apart, as it is marked by the absence of norms altogether.

But must the "absence of norms" be manifested in the "deregulation" that Durkheim associates with the state of anomie? What about the situation in which rules exist, to be sure, but call for inconsistent or contradictory behavior, without a superordinate rule to reconcile the conflict? As Williams has stated, this condition is evidenced "when two or more … standards enjoin actions that cannot, both or all, be carried out by the same person in the same situation."

Other authors have been concerned about the possibility of more than one type of normlessness. Merton, for example, following a distinction made by Sebastian De Grazia, writes:

Simple anomie refers to the state of confusion in a group or society which is subject to conflict between value systems …; acute anomie, to the deterioration and, at the extreme, the disintegration of value systems.… This has the merit of ear-making the often stated but sometimes neglected fact that, like other conditions of society, anomie varies in degree and perhaps in kind.

Consider, however, that as a state in a social aggregate, the anarchistic clash of social rules is probably always a transitional phenomenon. For some individuals, perhaps in coalition or through access to outside authority, in the long run, can make rules which are binding on their own behavior, as well as the conduct of others. Only under certain conditions is it likely that the competing rules themselves will all "disintegrate."

Given these considerations, it may be argued that "normlessness," in the sense of unreconciled conflict among rules, is indeed a difference in degree and also, in a manner, in kind. But the difference is not necessarily between "simple" and "acute" anomie. Rather, it is a difference between a transitional state of anarchistic conflict in the rules and its resolution. The resolution itself assumes a form in which the characteristics of any one of the four ideal types—altruism, egoism, fatalism, or (acute) anomie—may be dominant.

In varying degrees of intermediacy between the transitional state and the four types are the empirical realities of norm-states in most existing social aggregates at any given point in time. The concept of social norm employed in this paper may be of use in the analysis of the wider environmental conditions affecting such aggregates, the processes of conformity and deviance which indicate tendencies toward one or another of the polar types, and the effects of the latter on individuals.

Little can be said here about the wider environmental conditions. Durkheim notes the effects of various crises on social aggregates—war, for example, leading to an increase in altruism, economic boom or disaster contributing to anomie. The precise relation of such crises to the norm-states is far from clear. It is suggested, however, that environmental changes of this order should be assessed in terms of their impact on the sources of regulatory power of the existing rules.

Moreover, understanding of the processes of conformity and deviance in social aggregates, requires analysis of the relations between internalized and external sources of regulatory power of the rules affecting the behavior of individuals. At present, there exists no theory of social motivation which attempts to predict modes of conformity and deviance on the basis of the relative strength of the individual's internalized rules, of the rules which he and other members of the group experience as external pressures, and of the rules external to him but stemming from other in the social aggregate. Yet such theory would seem essential if fruitful links are to be made with Freud's relevant concepts of id, superego, and objective anxiety. Similarly, theoretical development along these lines is needed in order to bring together the sociological study of normative behavior and the growing clinical and experimental investigation of stress and the direction of anger in relation to mental disorder.

Bruce P. Dohrenwend, "Egoism, Altruism, Anomie, and Fatalism: A Conceptual Analysis of Durkheim's Types," in American Sociological Review, Vol 24, No. 4, August, 1959, pp. 466-73.