Death & Dying: Midterm 1

What are some Terminologies in Death and Dying Research?

• Thanatologist refers to someone who studies death, dying and bereavement.

  • Thanatologist = Relating to Thanatos (Death)

• Thanatology refers to the scientific study of death, dying and bereavement.

• Death refers to the cessation (or end) of life.

  • Dying is an event; dying is a process.

Thanatos refers to Sigmund Freud’s term for the death instinct.

What is Bereavement?

Bereavement refers to the state an individual is left in, because of experiencing a loss, usually but not always, from losing someone through death.

Who are the Pioneers in the Field of Death and Dying?

Herman Feifel

• Founder of modern death psychology.

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

• Swiss-American Psychiatrist.

• Ground-breaking research with dying people.

  • She would communicate with people who were terminally ill/dying, regarding dying and its effect on said people and their families.

What is Formal (or planned) Death Education?

Programs of planned and organized instruction involving death-related topics.

What is Informal (or unplanned) Death Education?

Death-related education emerging from people’s everyday experiences and exchanges outside programs of organized instruction.

What are Teachable Moments in Death & Dying Research?

Unanticipated life events that offer important occasions for developing educational insight and lessons, as well as for personal growth.

• The death of family pet.

• A fellow student’s sudden death in an automobile accident.

• A terrorist attack, natural disaster, and celebrity deaths.

Death Café’s

• Aims to increase awareness of death with a view to helping people make the most of their (finite) lives.

Why do people learn about death and dying?

• Personal reasons.

• Career goals.

• Curiosity.

• Preparing for future events.

What are the Four Central Dimensions of Death Education?

1. Cognitive: refers to information (facts) and theories about dealth-related experiences and issues.

2. Affective: refers to feelings, emotions, and attidues about death, dying and bereavement.

3. Behavioural: refers to how people interact with the dying and/or bereaved.

4. Valuational: refers to the basic values governing people’s lives.

Define Death Anxiety.

Death Anxiety, also known as the Fear of Death, or Thanatophobia.

• Refers to a feeling of dread, apprehension or anxiety when one thinks of the process of dying or what happens after death.

What are the lead causes for people to feel anxious about death & dying?

• Unknown nature of what, if anything, lies beyond this life.

• Indiscriminate nature of death.

• Inevitability of death.

• Traumatic experience of death.

• Pain and suffering that may be part of the dying process.

• Loss of control/loss one’s independence.

• Dying alone without any family or friend around.

• Fear of non-existence/non-being

• Worry of what will become of our loved ones.

• Death is not well understood.

• Religious teachings.

• Pandemics

• Media images of death are often terrifying and unrealistic.

What are the 4 different subscales of Collett-Lester Fear of Death Scale (V3.0)

1. Your own death.

2. Your own dying.

3. The death of others.

4. The dying of others.

What is the relationship between death anxiety and gender?

Females report higher levels of death anxiety than males.

• CL Fear of Death Scale

  • Males: M=89.9 (SD=19.1)

  • Females: M-97.4 (SD=17.5)

What is the relationship between death anxiety and age?

Young adults (mid-20s) tend to report the highest levels of death anxiety.

• Another peak in death anxiety in middle age (40 to 60) when most people are coping with the death of a parent.

  • More pronounced in women than in men.

• Almost no death anxiety at the end of life.

  • Adults 65 years or older.

What is the relationship between death anxiety and religion?

People who are uncertain about their religious views tend to report higher levels of death anxiety.

What is the relationship between death anxiety and self-esteem?

Individuals low in self-esteem report higher levels of death anxiety than those high in self-esteem.

What is the Ancient Perspective of Death and Dying?

Adam and Eve

• Garden of Eden, a place with no pain, no sickness, no death.

• Eve ate an apple from the forbidden tree and convinced Adam to eat one too.

• God expelled them from the Garden of Eden and into a world in which they would receive the punishment of pain, sickness and the loss of immortality.

• Death was seen as a punishment.

Who is Sir James Frazer (1854-1941)

Sir James Frazer is a british anthropologist, folklorist, and classical scholar.

• Collected death origin stories.

What are the Four Major Categories of Death Origin Stories?

1. The Story of the Two Messengers.

2. The Story of the Waxing and Waning Moon.

3. The Story of the Serpent and his Cast Skin.

4. The Story of the Banana

What is the story of the two messengers?

• God sends two animal messengers to humankind (e.g., a chameleon and a lizard)

• The chameleon carries God’s message that human beings will NOT die (immortality)

• The lizard carries God’s message that human beings will die.

• The chameleon was slow and dawdled.

• The lizard was faster and got there first with the message that human beings will die.

What is the story of the waxing and waning moon?

• Because the moon regularly seems to disappear and then return, primitive people believed that they should (or might) similarly return from death.

• Human beings lost the ability to return from the dead.

• Hindu belief in reincarnation.

• A soul reincarnates again and again on earth, entering many bodies, and passing through many births, deaths, and re-births until it becomes perfect and reunites or becomes one with its source.

What is the story of the serpent and his cast skin?

• Primitive people believed that creatures that periodically shed their skins (e.g., snakes) were immortal

• A Melanesian spirit sent a messenger to tell people to shed their skins in renewal and that way, they will be protected, and their life will be constantly renewed.

• The same messenger was also directed to tell serpents to shed their skins and die.

• The messenger messed up, and reversed the messages, sealing humankind’s fate, serpents would live forever, and people would die.

What is the story of the banana?

• People would ask the creator in the sky for something other than what they have been given.

• Death was a punishment, for their demands.

  • Their lives would replicate that of a banana’s instead of the stone like the creator had initially given them.

How did the Ancient Egyptians (c.2500BC/BCE) perceive death?

They believed in an afterlife.

• Spent a considerable amount of time and money preparing for their death.

• The Land of the Two Fields (Thought to resemble their living world)

• Soul split in two parts after death, the Ba (personality) and Ka (life force)

• Death was not an end, but a transition to another world.

How did the Ancient Greeks (1000 BC/BCE) perceive death?

They regarded death as a passage into an afterlife, but their afterlife was not always pleasant.

• Hades, the Greek Underworld, or Land of the Dead

  • Cross the river Styx on a ferry driven by Charon.

  • River Styx divided the land of the living and the land of the dead.

  • Coins placed under the tongue to pay Charon to bring them to the other side of the bank.

• Tartarus, a bleak and miserable place for sinners.

  • Place of punishment for bad souls (Eternal torment)

• Asphodel, a place for ordinary souls

  • A neutral place.

  • There seemed to be no reward or punishment, just an overwhelming dullness.

• Elysium, an eternal paradise.

  • Brought to drink the waters of the river Lethe.

  • A place reserved for the heroes and the Gods

How did the Advent of Christianity (1st Century AD/CE) perceive death?

Afterlife is determined by an individual’s deeds and beliefs while living.

• Those who believed in Christ and had lived good lives would receive eternal life in Heaven after they die.

• Those who rejected Christ would go to a place of pain and suffering (Hell)

Who is Philippe Aries (1914-1984)?

• French social historian.

• Research included observations of burial practices, works of art, works of literature, and so on.

What are the 5 Historical periods of Western attidues towards death.

1. Tame (or Tamed) Death (Early Middle Ages; 500-1000 AD/CE)

2. Death of the self (or one’s own death) (Late Middle Ages: 1100-1300 AD/CE)

3. Remote and Imminent Death (or thy death) (Renaissance; 1300-1600 AD/CE)

4. Death of the Other (1700-1900 AD/CE)

5. Invisible Death (Aka. Death denied, Forbidden Death) (1900 Onwards.)

What is Tame (or tamed) death (Early Middle Ages; 500-1000 AD/CE)?

Death was regarded as a natural part of life.

• The dying person usually knew their death was imminent.

• The dying person accepted death calmly and willingly.

• Death was a public (or community) event.

• The dying person was surrounded by his or her family.

• Members of the community would come and go freely.

• Death was a very familiar event.

• Death was merely “sleep” until the second coming of Jesus.

What is Death of the Self (or one’s own death) (Late Middle Ages; 1100-1300 AD/CE)?

People become more aware of themselves as unique and distinct individuals.

• Individuals experienced great anxiety about what happens after death.

• Death was seen as leading to either reward or punishment in the afterlife.

• The hour of one’s death became the most important hour of life, because that is when the fate of one’s soul was determined.

• The dead were rewarded in Heaven or punished in Hell.

• The “Ars Moreindi” (or “Art of Dying”) was written as a “guide” to death and dying.

What is the Remote and Imminent Death (or Thy Death) (Renaissance; 1300-1600 AD/CE)?

One’s attitude towards death was highly ambivalent.

• Death was viewed as a natural and familiar event, but because death was dangerous and frightening, great effort was made to keep it at a distance.

• Emphasis shifts from the dying person’s behaviour at the moment of his or her death to the good and bad deeds of one’s lifetime.

• Mourning customs are more strictly defined.

• Death is both inviting and repelling, beautiful and frightening.

• Taphophobia (fear of being buried alive) develops.

  • Just ring the bell if you’re not dead.

What is the Death of the Other (1700-1900 AD/CE)?

Focus was on relationships broken by death (focus on the survivors)

• Death was seen as an intolerable separation from the one who died.

• Mourning became more emotionally expressive from the one who died.

• Mourning became more emotionally expressive and dramatic.

• Mourners “lost control” (e.g., wailing in tears)

• Death means reunion with deceased loved ones.

• Seances became popular events.

What is the Invisible Death (aka death denied, forbidden death) (1900 onwards)?

Death is regarded as a failure of medical science.

• Death becomes the “elephant in the room”.

• Death was medicalized and banished from the home (i.e., removed from public sight)

• Death is offensive, distasteful, and should occur in private.

• The whole process of death and burial has been put into the hands of medical and funeral staff.

• People fear dying alone in a hospital hooked up to a bunch of machines and tubes, and being “cared for” by impersonal medical staff.