Confronting Death Values, Institutions, and Human Mortality

by Moller, David Wendell

• ISBN13: 9780195042962
• ISBN10: 0195042964
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1996-01-25
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

In this masterfully written text, Moller powerfully critiques how modern technology and bureaucracy, along with professionalization, have come to dehumanize the experience of death for both the dying and their survivors. Beginning with an historical overview of traditional patterns of deathand dying, Moller examines the technological advances of the medical profession and the effects, both social and individual, that modern medicine has had on our perception of death, including pain and suffering, the expanding gap between clinical and spiritual death, and how our traditional socialapparatuses help us to respond to death and dying. Chapters on funerals, grief, suicide, the death of children, the holocaust, and a critique of therapeutic models illustrate how doctors have come to control the process of dying, how professional funeral directors dominate funerals, and howprofessional therapists channel the grief of survivors. Invaluable for psychology, nursing, and religion courses in death and dying, this text offers a penetrating synthesis of the complex personal and social issues surrounding our mortality.

Table of Contents

Dying and Historical Context	3	(24)
Traditional Patterns of Death and Dying	4	(9)
The Tame Death	4	(3)
The Death of the Self	7	(3)
Remote and Imminent Death	10	(2)
The Death of the Other	12	(1)
Across the Ocean: Death and the American Puritan	13	(2)
The Disappearance of Death	15	(7)
Summary	22	(2)
The Modern Organization of Death	24	(22)
The Medicalization of Dying	25	(4)
The Caretaker's Role: Interactions with the Dying	29	(5)
Awareness Contexts: Staff, Patients, and Patterns of Dying	34	(5)
The Hospice Alternative	39	(5)
A Concluding Statement	44	(2)
The Dying Patient: A Creation of the Modern Organization of Death	46	(33)
Elisabeth Kubler-Ross: Folk Heroine of Death and Dying and Bricklayer of Stages for the Dying Patient	47	(15)
Trajectories of Dying	62	(6)
Suffering in the Face of Dying	68	(9)
The Dying Patient: A Conclusion	77	(2)
Funerals as Social Facts	79	(27)
A Historical Overview	79	(4)
A Portrait of the Modern Funeral	83	(3)
The Funeral as a Social Rite	86	(10)
Criticisms of the Funeral	96	(5)
The American Funeral: A Final Reflection	101	(5)
Grief and Individualism: The Decline of Ritual and the Emergence of the Therapeutic Model	106	(29)
Grief as a Social Concept	108	(2)
The Sociopsychological Factors of Grief	110	(14)
Grief as a Disease: Bereavement and the Broken Heart	124	(6)
Widowhood: More Than a Feminist Issue	130	(4)
The Denial of Grief: A Summary	134	(1)
On Dying, Death, and Children	135	(35)
Children's Perceptions of Death	136	(7)
Too Young to Die: The Tragedy of the Seriously III and Dying Child	143	(7)
Romanticizing the Tragedy or the Growth of the Therapeutic Model	150	(7)
Parental Bereavement: Attempts to Cope in the Face of the Unthinkable	157	(6)
Parental Postdeath Bereavement and Therapeutic Response	163	(4)
In Summary	167	(3)
The Death of Humans by Humans, Part One: Violent Deaths of Suicide	170	(36)
Killing Oneself	171	(10)
Perceptions and Contexts of Suicide: Individuals and Individualism	181	(8)
Psychosocial and Sociological Issues	189	(3)
Explanation for Suicide: A Psychosocial Collage	192	(8)
The Aftermath of Suicide	200	(5)
A Conclusion: Suicidology as the Study of Life	205	(1)
The Death of Humans by Humans, Part Two: The Holocaust and the Technology of Genocide	206	(30)
Isolation of the Jewish Citizenry	208	(8)
Anus Mundi: Anus of the World	216	(7)
Science, Technology, and Mechanized Death	223	(9)
An Interpretive Summary: Implications for the Fate of the Earth	232	(4)
Easing Death's Sting: A Conclusion	236	(13)
Notes	249	(18)
Bibliography	267	(30)
Credits	297	(2)
Index	299