Approaches to death and dying

Beliefs about death and dying vary greatly up a person’s culture, religion, social awareness, and transpersonal belief systems. Many people in western society feel threatened by the awareness of death and often cling to cultural values (without deeply investigating the values) in an effort to find an authentic meaning and significance to their eventual death and the importance of their life (Ryan & Deci, 2004). Death used to occurs in a person’s home or a close family member’s house but, due to the advances in medicine and life sustaining procedures that can only be managed in a hospital, most deaths now occur in an unfamiliar and sterile environment (Coppola, 2002). Psychologically this can result in feeling an even greater anxiety or threat surrounding death for the terminally ill patient rather than presenting an environment that facilitates a transpersonal investigation about the meaning of death and a spiritual awareness of the transformation to a different state of being. Sadly, this is not available or discussed in the hospital environment even with the inclusion of chaplains (Coppola, 2002).

Although many people who followed classic psychologists such as Freud had, for the most part, dismissed the incorporation of death into psychological research (although acknowledging it in biological research), Grof (2000, p. 220) has been able to demonstrate an alternative way to understand and investigate the experience of death and dying by researching traditional cultures. Grof (2000, p. 225) noted that traditional cultures have books of the dead, rites of passage (that may or may not include Western traditions such as applying make-up to the deceased), shamanic methods, spiritual practices, and stories surrounding mysteries of death and rebirth.

Grof (2000, p. 228) found that many traditional cultures practice and experiment with holotropic states so that when they find themselves experiencing death they are better prepared to manage the different realms and inner territories of the psyche. The ignorance, educational suppression, and misinterpretation of holotropic states by Western cultures is considered to be one of the greatest failures of Western society with regard to preparing individuals for the experience of death (Grof, 2000, p. 229). However, there are many reports from people in Western cultures who state they have had spiritual emergencies such as near death experiences. These individuals report that they see their deceased relatives, spirits, alternate universes, or supernatural beings; however, these experiences are often dismissed by the biomedical community as synapses firing irregularly or the presence of hospital lights (Grof, 2000, p. 165).

Western cultures have systematically removed the rituals that were prevalent in what was considered to be more primitive societies such as specific rites of mourning, the participation in the transfer from the land of the living to the land of the dead, or food and clothing rituals that represent the loss of the loved one but also represent the cycle of death and rebirth (O’Gorman, 1998). However, holistic psychology has brought back interest in the incorporation of death and dying concepts, education, and rituals to modern health and healing perspectives, often with the incorporation of traditional cultures into current religious and health practices (O’Gorman, 1998).

Coppola, K. M. (2002). How is death and dying addressed in introductory psychology textbooks? Death Studies, 26(8), 689-99.

Grof, S. (2000). Psychology of the future: Lessons from modern consciousness research. Albany, NY: SUNY Press.

O’Gorman, S. M. (1998). Death and dying in contemporary society: An evaluation of current attitudes and the rituals associated with death and dying and their relevance to recent understandings of health and healing. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 27(6), 1127-1135.

Ryan, R. M. & Deci, E. L. (2004). Avoiding death or engaging life as accounts of meaning and culture: Comment on pyszczynski el al. Psychological Bulletin, 130(3), 473-477.

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