Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

Explains the attitudes of the dying toward themselves and others and presents a humane approach to relieving the psychological suffering of the terminally ill and their families

On Death and Dying

Rose Donovan

Watching a peaceful death of a human being reminds us of a falling star; one of a million lights in the vast sky that flares up for a brief moment only to disappear into the endless night forever.

When the patient asks to be visited only by a few more friends, then by his children and finally only by his wife, it should be understood that that is the way of separating himself gradually. It is often misinterpreted by the immediate family as a rejection, and we have met several husbands and wives who have reacted dramatically to this normal and healthy detachment. I think we can be of greatest service to them if we help them understand that only patients who have worked through their dying are able to detach themselves slowly and peacefully in this manner. It should be a source of comfort and solace to them and not one of grief and resentment. 

It took me a while to get through this one for obvious reasons. I kind of got through most of the sections as I was going through them, although I am still in the middle of this process and reading of the whole process is beginning to help. Grief is not a straight line but rather a series of knots that I find myself having to untie again and again; I am moving through it and I have no idea where I'm going but I'm going there.

Simon Elliott Stegall

In 1965, Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross started a seminar on the topic of death and dying. The location was the hospital in which Dr. Kubler-Ross worked as a psychiatrist, and the purpose of the seminar was to facilitate open discussion between medical staff, students, and the terminally ill patients of the hospital regarding the business of dying. The 200+ interviews with dying patients that she conducted over the subsequent years gave birth to this book, a collection of her observations and meditations on what it is like to face death.

The aspect of this book that took me off guard was its specificity; the title was generic enough that I thought the topic would be death and dying in general. In fact, Dr. Kubler-Ross only addresses death and dying with the terminally ill (limiting herself to her experience), excluding for the most part as a topic death that comes suddenly, and the death of children (presumably because children were not part of her interviews, which is understandable). I also hadn’t realized that the book was written for the primary benefit of the medical community, where Kubler-Ross’ research was drawn. Nevertheless, to speak of death in a specific circumstance is to speak of it in general, so in this sense Of Death and Dying is a useful and thought-provoking synecdoche.

The interviews Kubler-Ross shares are fascinating. I can’t imagine how she selected them out of her pool of 200+, but they were very illustrative of her main points, which I think I can sum up as:

-	All humans, except maybe those closest to it, fear death, in part because we can’t comprehend it happening to us. This fear leads to all sorts of abuses, both in medical practice and the outside world, stemming from our attempts to unnaturally prolong life or deny the existence of death. Kubler-Ross says: “Maybe instead of cryo-societies we should develop societies for dealing with the questions of death and dying, to encourage a dialogue on this topic and help people to live less fearfully until they die.” Is cryogenics a thing anymore? I’m not sure, but we certainly have a multitude of similar institutions in our modern world devoted to denying and avoiding the topic of death.
-	What the sick and dying need most is not the wonders of modern medicine, but the simple salve of human empathy and kindness. Sometimes is better that the dying patient is treated like a human and given a peaceful exit from this life than treated as a mere number to be artificially prolonged.
-	Most people, including medical staff and hospital chaplains, have not spent much time thinking about their own death. This deprives such people of the empathy that is necessary for working with dying patients, and (to apply this to the non-medical world) limits us in our ability to find a place for death in the framework of our lives. Thus, Kubler-Ross encourages the reader to face death in their own life, be that through meditation or actual experience.

Kubler-Ross is relatively silent on the subject of religion. She seems to consider it a form of denial and yet readily admits that her patients with strong faith were the most peaceful when the end came.

An excellent book. We should all meditate on death and its eventuality, and Kubler-Ross’s brief medical treatise is a helpful doorway to learning how to memento mori, that is, remember death.

Cassidy Nolan

Stefan Ladstätter-Thaa

Dr Seth Jones

Philipp

Denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. The five stages of grief, first formulated in this hugely influential work forty years ago, are now part of our common understanding of bereavement. The five stages were first identified by Elisabeth KÃ¼bler-Ross in her work with dying patients at the University of Chicago and were considered phases that all or most people went through, when faced with the prospect of their own death. They are now often accepted as a response to any major life change. However, in spite of these terms being in general use, the subject of death is still surrounded by conventional attitudes and reticence that offer only fragile comfort because they evade the real issues. This groundbreaking book is still relevant â€“ giving a voice to dying people and exploring what impending death means to them, often in their own words. People speak about their experience of dying, their relief in expressing their fear and anger and being able to move forward to a state of acceptance and peace. Ideal for all those with an interest in bereavement or the five stages of grief, this book contains a new extended introduction from Professor Allan Kellehear. This additional chapter re-examines On Death and Dyinglooking at how it has influenced contemporary thought and practice.

On Death and Dying

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