Self-destruction and religion.

In this paper a brief analysis of the development of the Western world after the second world war is attempted. It is stated that since the start of the sixties, anomie can be perceived in many of the components of its socio-cultural complex, especially in some major areas like the economy and religion, deeply influencing the others. To test the assumption that Durkheim's anomie theory is still valid and offers an adequate frame of reference for research of the underlying phenomena, the outcome of a research on 9.189 completed suicides in the Netherlands during the period 1961--1970 is presented, giving force to the validity and usefulness of this theory.