• Philosophy
• History
• Psychology/Sociology
• Literature
• General Interest/Miscellaneous

Philosophy: (books) (articles)

• BOOKS:
• Amery, Jean, On Suicide: A Discourse on Voluntary Death, trans. John D. Barlow, Bloomington: Indiana UP (1999)
• Battin, Margaret Pabst, Ethical Issues in Suicide, Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall (1995)
• Camus, Albert, The Myth of Sissyphus and Other Essays, trans. Justin O'Brien, New York: Vintage (1991), translation of Le mythe de Sisyphe (1955)
• Cosculluela, Victor, The Ethics of Suicide, NY: Garland Publishing, Inc. (1995)
• Fairbairn, Gavin J., Contemplating Suicide: The Language and Ethics of Self Harm, London: Routledge (1995)
• Hillman, James, Suicide and the Soul, New York: Harper & Row (1964)
  
• Suicide: Right or Wrong?,Ed. John  Donnelly,NY: Prometheus (1990)
Contents:
1. Seneca , “The Stoic View”
2. St. Thomas Aquinas , “The Catholic View”
3. David Hume , “Reason and Superstition”
4. Immanuel Kant , “Duties Toward the Body in Regard to Life”
5. R.G. Frey , “Did Socrates Commit Suicide?”
6. Joseph Fletcher , “Attitudes Toward Suicide”
7. William E. Tolhurst , “Suicide, Self-Sacrifice, and Coercion”
8. Suzanne Stern-Gillet , “The Rhetoric of Suicide”
9. R.G. Frey, “Suicide and Self-Inflicted Death”
10. Terence M. O’Keeffe , “Suicide and Self-Starvation”
11. Glenn C. Graber , “Mastering the Concept of Suicide”
12. Edwin S. Shneidman , “Preventing Suicide”
13. Thomas S. Szasz , “The Ethics of Suicide” (also in Suicide: The Philosophical Issues)
14. Milton A. Gonsalves , “Theistic and Nontheistic Arguments”
15. Richard B. Brandt , “The Morality and Rationality of Suicide”
16. Philip E. Devine , “On Choosing Death” (also in Suicide: The Philosophical Issues)
17. Joyce Carol Oates , “The Art of Suicide” (also in Suicide: The Philosophical Issues)
• Suicide: The Philosophical Issues, Ed. M. Pabst Battin and David J. Mayo, NY: St. Martin’s (1980)
Contents:
1. A. Alvarez, The Background
2. R.G. Frey, “Did Socrates Commit Suicide?” (also in Suicide: Right or Wrong?)
3. Peter Y. Windt, “The Concept of Suicide”
4. Robert M. Martin, “Suicide and Self-Sacrifice”
5. P.R. Baelz, “Suicide: Some Theological Reflections”
6. Karen Lebacqz and H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr., “Suicide and Covenant”
7. Mary Rose Barrington, “Apologia for Suicide”
8. Colleen D. Clements, “The Ethics of Not-Being: Individual Options for Suicide”
9. Richard B. Brandt, “The Rationality of Suicide”
10. David J. Mayo, “Irrational Suicide”
11. Philip E. Devine, “On Choosing Death” (also in Suicide: Right or Wrong?)
12. Robert M. Martin, “Suicide and False Desires”
13. David Wood, “Suicide as Instrument of Expression”
14. Joyce Carol Oates, “The Art of Suicide” (also in Suicide: Right or Wrong?)
15. M. Pabst Battin, “Manipulated Suicide”
16. Thomas S. Szasz, “The Ethics of Suicide” (also in Suicide: Right or Wrong?)
17. Eliot Slater, “Choosing the Time to Die”
18. Erwin Ringel, “Suicide Prevention and the Value of Human Life”
19. Jerome A. Motto, “The Right to Suicide: A Psychiatrist’s View”
20. Joel Feinberg, “Suicide and the Inalienable Right to Life”
21. Alan L. Sullivan, “A Constitutional Right to Suicide”
22. Leslie Pickering Francis, “Assisting Suicide: A Problem for the Criminal Law”
23. M. Pabst Battin, “Suicide: A Fundamental Human Right?”
24. James Bogen, “Suicide and Virtue”

• ARTICLES & ESSAYS
• Aquinas, Thomas (from the Summa Theologica)
• Daube, David, "The Linguistics of Suicide," Philosophy and Public Affairs, 1:4 (Summer 1972), 387-437
• Harries, Karsten, "Questioning the Question of the Worth of Life," The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 88, No. 11, Eighty-Eighth Annual Meeting American Philosophical Association, Eastern Division (Nov. 1991), 684-690 (Part Two of a Symposium: Is Life Worth Living?)
• Hume, David, "On Suicide" From Essays On Suicide and the Immortality of the Soul, (including "Anti-Suicide," written by an anonymous editor, Letter 114 and Letter 115 from Rousseau's Eloisa)
• Ingersoll, Robert Green, Writings & Interviews on Suicide. (More by & about Ingersoll at The Secular Web, here.)
• Kant, Immanuel, "Duties Toward the Body in Regard to Life" and "Suicide" in Lectures on Ethics, NY: Harper and Row (1963) 147-154
• McDermott, John J., "Why Bother: Is Life Worth Living?" The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 88, No. 11, Eighty-Eighth Annual Meeting American Philosophical Association, Eastern Division (Nov. 1991), 677-683 (Part One of a Symposium: Is Life Worth Living?)
• Schopenhauer, Arthur, "On Suicide"
• Seidler, Michael J., "Kant and the Stoics on Suicide," Journal of the History of Ideas 44:3 (Jul.-Sep. 1983), 429-453
• Seifert, Arndt, "A Theory of Projects: Its Application to Death and Suicide," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 39:2 (Dec. 1978), 208-218
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Suicide (by Michael Cholbi) (2004)
  

History:

• BOOKS:
• Alvarez, A. , The Savage God,  (1971) (an informed yet poetic, personal, and deeply concerned account of suicide in Western culture and literature -- includes a memoir about Sylvia Plath as a preface)
• From Sin to Insanity: Suicide in Early Modern Europe, ed. Jeffrey R. Watt, Cornell UP (2004)
  
• Lieberman, Lisa, Leaving You: The Cultural Meaning of Suicide, Chicago: Ivan R. Dee (2003)
• Minois, Georges, History of Suicide: Voluntary Death in Western Culture, Johns Hopkins University Press (2001)

Psychology/Sociology: (books) (articles)

• BOOKS:
• Colt, George, The Enigma of Suicide, (1991)
• Durkheim, Emile, Suicide, (1897) (not very contemporary, but a seminal text for both the study of suicide and for sociology in general): Read a lengthy summary of Durkheim's text here.
• Essays in Self-Destruction, Ed. Ewin S. Shneidman, New York: Science House (1967)
(Note: This book is more likely to be regarded as an interesting document than a helpful resource. Much of the psychological and scientific methods employed in it are passe, but as a record of these studies in the 1960s, it is an intriguing and voluminous book.)
Selected Contents:
Part I: Literary and Philosophic Essays
     1. Henry A. Murray, "Dead to the World: The Passions of Herman Melville"
     2. M.D. Faber, "Shakespeare's Suicides: Some Historic, Dramatic, and Psychological Reflections"
     3. Jacques Charon, "Death as a Motive of Philosophic Thought"
     4. Gerald Heard, "Buddha and Self-Destruction"
     5. Elsa A. Whaley, "Values and Value Conflict in Self-Destruction: Implications in the Work of C.W. Morris"
     6. Stephen C. Pepper, "Can a Philosophy Make One Philosophical?"
Part II: Sociological and Ethnographic Essays
Part III: Psychological and Psychiatric Essays
     14. James C. Diggory, "The Components of Personal Despair"
     15. Robert E. Litman, "Sigmund Freud on Suicide"
Part IV: Taxonomic and Forensic Essays
• On the Nature of Suicide, Ed. Edwin S. Shneidman, San Fransisco: Jossey-Bass, Inc. (1969)
(Another document of science and psychiatry in the 1960s. The essays in Part II are intriguing at moments, but are fairly obscure attempts to employ a psychological phenomenology.)
Contents:
Edwin S. Shneidman, Prologue: Fifty-Eight Years
Part One--A Symposium on Suicide
     1. Jacques Charon, "Mortality and Death"
     2. Louis I. Dublin, "Suicide Prevention"
     3. Paul Friedman, "An Individual Act"
     4. Robert J. Havighurst, "Suicide and Education"
     5. Karl Menninger, "Expression and Punishment"
     6. Erwin Stengel, "A Matter of Communication"
     7. Lawrence Kubie, "A Complex Process"
     8. Discussion: A Question of Research
Part Two--Suicide and the Will
     9. Leslie H. Farber, "The Phenomenology of Suicide"
     10. Jack D. Douglas, "The Absurd in Suicide"
     11. David Bakan, "Suicide and Immortality"
     12. Sidney M. Jourard, "The Invitation to Die"
• Shneidman, Edwin, The Suicidal Mind, New York: Oxford UP (1996)
• Szasz, Thomas S., Fatal Freedom: The Ethics and Politics of Suicide, Westport: Praeger (1999)

• ARTICLES & ESSAYS
• Clarke, David M., "Autonomy, rationality, and the wish to die," Journal of Medical Ethics 25 (1999) 457-462
• Orbach, Israel, "Suicide and the Suicidal Body," Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior, (Spring 2003) 1-8
• Siegel, Karolynn, "Psychosocial Aspects of Rational Suicide," American Journal of Psychotherapy, Vol. XL No. 3 (July 1986)

Literature:

• BOOKS:
• Artaud, Antonin, Artaud Anthology, (City Lights 1965) (Contains a few wild essays on suicide and determinism from Artaud's pre-official-madness period.)
• Dostoyevsky, Fyodor, The Possessed (also translated as, The Devils)
• Goethe, J.W. von, The Sorrows of Werther
• O'Brien, John, Leaving Las Vegas, (1990)
• Shakespeare, Hamlet (an existential canonical text) (unindexed version)
• Tolstoy, Leo , A Confession (Surveys his struggles to find a meaning in life, recurring thoughts of suicide, and his search for faith)

• SHORT STORIES:

General Interest/Miscellaneous:

• Etkind, Marc, Or Not to Be: A Collection of Suicide Notes, Riverhead Books (1997)
• Seinfelt, Mark, Final Drafts: Suicides of World-Famous Authors, (1999)
• Szasz, Thomas S., "Straight Talk About Suicide"  Ideas on Liberty, 52: 34-35 (September 2002)
• Szasz, Thomas S., "Suicide as a Moral Issue", The Freeman, 49: 41-42 (July 1999)

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