Confronting Death: Values, Institutions, and Human Mortality / Edition 1

by David Wendell Moller

Overview

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 death and 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 social apparatuses 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 how professional 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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780195042962
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	01/25/1996
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	8.19(w) x 5.50(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Indiana University

Table of Contents

1 DYING AND HISTORICAL CONTEXT. Traditional Patterns of Death and Dying2 THE MODERN ORGANIZATION OF DEATH. The Medicalization of Dying, The Caretaker's Role, Staff Patients and Patterns of Dying3 THE DYING PATIENT: A CREATION OF THE MODERN ORGANIZATION OF DEATH. American Folk-hero of "Death and Dying" and Bricklayer of Stages for the Dying Patient, Trajectories of Dying, Suffering in the face of Dying, Elizabeth Kubler-Ross4 FUNERALS AS SOCIAL FACTS. The Funeral as a Social Rite5 GRIEF AND INDIVIDUALISM: THE DECLINE OF RITUAL AND THE EMERGENCE OF THE THERAPEUTIC MODEL. Grief as Social Concept, Grief as a Disease, Widowhood6 ON DYING DEATH AND CHILDREN. Children's Perceptions of Death, Parental Bereavement7 THE DEATH OF HUMANS BY HUMANS. Part One: Suicide8 THE DEATH OF HUMANS BY HUMANS. Part 2: The Holocaust and The Technology of Genocide9 EASING DEATH'S STING. A Conclusion