Death and dying

This article presents a general view of the topic of grief by defining the common terminology, discussing the nature and types of losses, listing the variety of grief reactions, and describing the factors that determine the severity of bereavement. This article also addresses the question of morbidity and mortality of grief, throws a light on the emerging topic of traumatic grief where elements of trauma and a devastating loss are both present, and finally reviews the steps toward healing and grief resolution. Throughout the article, a special emphasis is given to the communal, spiritual, and cultural aspects of mourning and, toward the end, a few suggestions are offered to the caregivers who are involved in grief and bereavement counseling.

First I would like to describe a dream I had a few years ago. I am sitting in the meditation center and I hear and see Swami Muktananda speaking to someone behind a screen. The sound is of two old men speaking about death. The voice of the other old person behind the screen sounded so familiar but I could not place the voice in those moments. Swami Muktananda is saying that in the mind and through the mind alone death is impossible; the abyss can not be crossed by mind alone. Then the other voice behind the screen describes how thin the veil is between this earth realm and the realm beyond death…the deathless realm. And both are laughing about how close, how unimaginably close, the two dimensions are. When I woke up I naturally was happy to have such dream. Later in the morning I began seeing clients. Around noon I received a phone call telling me that Lama Kungsang Dechin Lingpa had died during the night. It was his voice that was behind the screen.

1 Dedicated to my grandfather 'Everything dies. I want to die when you do. Do not let him enchant me, do not let him make me immortal.' -The Last Unicorn, Peter S Beagle 2 Abstract The aim of my thesis will be to defend the role the deaths of others play in our understanding of death. Whilst philosophers such as Heidegger and Epicurus have paid considerable attention to the nature of death and the relationship we have towards it, I feel what has been neglected is our relationship to the deaths of others. My aim is to show that, contrary to Heidegger, the deaths of other people are important, and the relationship we have with the deceased and their death affects the grieving process.

Programa da 19.ª edição da Formação de Psicoterapeutas Clássicos de Xamanismo Transcultural (Estudos Antropológicos Teórico-Práticos) que se realizará através de teleaulas e de telepráticas (por videoconferência, portanto, ao vivo, mas online) entre os dias 14 de junho e 16 de novembro de 2025.

Neste curso os formandos colaboram (facultativamente) num estudo científico (quase-experimental) sobre a efetividade psicoterapêutica de um compósito de práticas xamânicas transculturais, praticando-as (entre os formandos e com voluntários) com supervisão.

Trata-se de um curso pioneiro, onde, pela primeira vez se aplicam métodos mistos de investigação científica, no sentido de aferir: as práticas xamânicas funcionam mesmo?

O nosso estudo preliminar deu uma resposta afirmativa. Mas, será que com a ampliação da amostra (de formandos e de voluntários), se mantêm os resultados sobre a efetividade do xamanismo?

Conforme Krippner (2002) os investigadores têm dissertado (em estudos sobre o xamanismo) com um teor predominantemente pejorativo (talvez até projetivo). Com o nosso estudo, sugerimos um novo olhar sobre o xamanismo: uma psicoterapia clássica, que pode ser estruturada e testada cientificamente conforme ocorre com outras psicoterapias.

Assim, mais do que teórico, este é um curso prático onde se aprende, fazendo. Mas, fazendo de uma forma cientificamente estruturada, ajustando as práticas xamânicas milenares às demandas e às realidades contemporâneas das sociedades ditas «modernas».

Este é um curso para pessoas com uma mentalidade integrativa, não-sectária e com interesse ontológico. Porque o «ser humano» é mais que apenas o «humano». O «ser» faz parte do «ser humano». E é no estudo do «ser» que (da nossa perspetiva) se encontra o «ouro» que complementa e torna inteiro o estudo sobre o Ser Humano.

Physics has long been considered the most fundamental and basic of all sciences because it represents human attempts to explain the common reality of our physical existence. No other science deals with our physical reality in either this or any similar manner. However, there are still questions about our existence that fall outside of the scope of physics, so physics cannot be said to offer a complete explanation of our total being. The most important of these questions have been anything to do with death itself.  In the scientific search for objectivity, life has been deemed separate from non-living matter in the discourses and theories of physics, so physicists would have had no reason to explain the death of living beings. Yet recent questions regarding the essential role of consciousness in physics have raised the level of theoretical inquiry to the point that scientists in the physics community can no longer ignore life and death. Furthermore, the recent discovery (or rediscovery) of ‘near death experiences’ (NDEs) has raised serious questions regarding the common reality that we experience, which essentially challenges the physics of consciousness for an explanation. The universality of the experiences is the best evidence for their validation as real events describing a portion of our physical being and this universality has allowed scientists to determine the common properties of the experiences. When accepted as real events, the NDEs imply that our normal conceptions of physical reality are both lacking and inadequate, so it is the duty of those who study physical reality, the physicists, to account for this new extension of our reality.

In Being and Time, Martin Heidegger intro- duces a unique interpretation of death as a kind of world- collapse or breakdown of meaning that strips away our ability to understand and make sense of who we are. This is an ‘ontological death’ in the sense that we cannot be anything because the intelligible world that we draw on to fashion our identities and sustain our sense of self has lost all significance. On this account, death is not only an event that we can physiologically live through; it can happen numerous times throughout the finite span of our lives. This paper draws on Arthur Frank’s (At the will of the body: reflections on illness. Houghton, Boston, 1991) narrative of critical illness to concretize the experience of ‘ontological death’ and illuminate the unique challenges it poses for health care professionals. I turn to Heidegger’s conception of ‘resoluteness’ (Entschlossenheit) to address these chal- lenges, arguing for the need of health care professionals to help establish a discursive context whereby the critically ill can begin to meaningfully express and interpret their experience of self-loss in a way that acknowledges the structural vulnerability of their own identities and is flex- ible enough to let go of those that have lost their sig- nificance or viability.
Keywords Heidegger 􏰀 Death 􏰀 Anxiety 􏰀 Illness 􏰀 Medicine 􏰀 Narrative 􏰀 Existentialism 􏰀 Authenticity 􏰀 Resoluteness

Burial options in Western societies are increasing in diversity. Yet, in Iceland, burial culture remains monopolized by the National Church and specialists such as funeral services. Alternative burial practices, as for example natural burials, are entirely absent. The reasons are the consequences of several aspects as will be shown in the following essay by exploring a range of written material from Iceland as well as from other Western societies for comparative purposes. Iceland´s society is demographically rapidly changing and as response to that it is important to open and clarify the current legal framework concerning burial matters. This can be done by increasing awareness through public discourse and loosing the ties between the law and the church in this area.

At present, science cannot accept and therefore rejects the notion of an afterlife because it does not have the conceptual tools or vocabulary to accept the survival of consciousness. The possibility of an afterlife was relegated by science to religion during the
Scientific Revolution, so the scientific tools to develop a theory of the afterlife as well as the nature and meaning of life, mind and consciousness were never developed. However, the scientific field of physics deals with the physical reality that we all experience, so if we experience physical phenomena that deal with the afterlife it would be the scientific duty of physicists to expand their models of physical reality to include the possibility of an afterlife. Under the present paradigms that seem to rule physics, no matter how much evidence is found to support the possibility of an afterlife and no matter how convincing that evidence might be, science cannot accept such a reality unless it changes the fundamental concepts of reality upon which it is based and that would entail a new and complete scientific revolution.

C.G. Jung’s work has had a noticeable impact on conceptions about death and the dying experience, as well as on the therapeutic work methods that deal with anxiety, depression or terminal illnesses. This article analyses the reception of C.G. Jung’s work in the United States during
the time period 1960-80. It examines ways in which Jung’s concepts were discussed and applied by psy practitioners who worked in fields related to death and dying studies (thanatology, palliative care, suicide and near-death
studies). Following an examination of Jung’s ‘Americanisation’ in the 1950s and the reception of his commentaries on death, discussed in relation to the reception of The Tibetan Book of the Dead, I will analyse
four examples: 1) a psychiatric interpretation of Jung’s account of a near-death experience and its comparison with William James’ mystical states of consciousness; 2) psychedelic therapies conducted with LSD, in which ‘symbolic dying processes’ are provoked; 3) suicide studies done on suicide survivors; 4) parapsychological investigation of near-death experience. The examples show that Jung’s work was pivotal, allowing psychologists to link it to concepts and approaches to terminal illness and positive or transpersonal psychology. Within the period under consideration, Jung’s reception has to be read and understood in relation to the more general reception of James’ work, in particular his psychology of religion.

Focusing solely on the near-death cognizance of the dying, rather than the material perspective of the living, reveals a new understanding of death. Its significance to psychology, philosophy, and religion is huge for what emerges is a long overlooked phenomenon: a nonsupernatural, relativistic, and timelessly eternal consciousness, which can be a natural afterlife. Ironically, the validity of the theory of a natural eternal consciousness (NEC) assumes the loss of all materially based consciousness with death—more specifically, the permanent loss of time perception. The theory claims, and the article deduces from empirical knowledge, that by imperceptibly entering the timelessness before death, one’s last conscious moment, whatever the type, becomes by default—psychologically, from one’s perspective—a forever present moment. To help explain and validate the theory, the article presents thought experiments and a formal model of all of life’s moments and all transitions between periods of time perception and those of timelessness. An open-minded reading should reveal that the NEC does not threaten faith in a god or a heaven.

Everyone seems to have some innate idea that there is an afterlife. Developing a mental picture of the afterlife seems quite natural to us and seems be as old as humankind, more than likely predating even the earliest development of religions. However, religions have taken the initiative in dictating our most commonly held views of the afterlife over the past few thousand years even though there is no hard and fast rule stating that only religions have the right to develop views of the afterlife to the exclusion of all other forms of human knowledge. In fact, a concept of the afterlife is more fundamental to religions as a whole than belief in a Supreme Being, God or gods. Some of religion’s grasp on concepts of the afterlife have recently slipped as moviemakers have taken the initiative in representing how we picture the afterlife. On the other hand, science has been conspicuously absent from this whole process even though science has developed more and more complex paradigms about life, mind and consciousness, just those concepts which would seem important with regard to any possible afterlife. The very silence of science on this issue is simply deafening. However, the present lack of scientific worldviews that include some form of an afterlife will soon change as science takes a greater interest in the concept of consciousness and develops working theories to explain consciousness. Only then will science begin to consider the possibility that consciousness, at the very least, could survive death of the body and brain and only then will science consider the possibility that the afterlife is another part of our physical reality requiring explanation.

There is no death.  There is entrance into fuller life .  There is freedom from the handicaps of the fleshly vehicle.  The rending process so much dreaded does not exist, except in the cases of violent and sudden death, and then the only true disagreeables are an instant and overwhelming sense of imminent peril and destruction and something closely approaching an electric shock.  No more.

En Grèce moderne, le culte des morts se manifeste dans les fêtes rituelles funéraires, les rites et cérémonies commémoratives (comme le troisième et neuvième jour après la mort, et les trois premiers anniversaires), et les fêtes calendaires, les psychosabbata (c'est-à-dire psychosabbato, psychē=âme, sabbato=samedi), ou « Samedis des âmes », pendant le Carnaval et le Carême et avant la récolte du grain. Pendant les cérémonies, les gens vont dans les cimetières pour déposer des offrandes alimentaires, surtout le kolyva, sur les tombes. On croit aussi que les morts visitent leurs maisons pendant le Carême ou la semaine Pascale, dans quelques endroits jusqu' à la récolte du grain. Comme on trouve de pareils phénomènes dans l'ancienne Grèce, je vais comparer les fêtes et rites des morts en Grèce, contemporaine et ancienne, et ainsi faire une comparaison dans la longue durée. 1 LE CULTE DES MORTS EN GRECE CONTEMPORAINE ET ANCIENNE Dans la région culturelle grecque, le culte des morts combine, aujourd'hui comme autrefois, le culte célébrant les membres défunts morts de la famille et les grandes personnes, hommes et femmes, en déposant des offrandes et en faisant des prières sur leurs tombes. Le culte des personnes récemment décédées et des héros (Hes. Op. 654f. ; Paus. 1.36,3) ou héroïnes (Paus. 1.43,4 f., 8.35,8) des anciens, attestent un culte des morts.

CARDAN E&V, Death and Medicine, 2016

This book consists of 21 chapters dealing with the entire series of important peri-mortem issues; it is neither a handbook nor a simple lecture, but a compendium of general medical knowledge on death.
Beyond a couple of short introductory chapters examining the various ways of dying and their semiotics, a good part of the text considers a range of pathologies in terms of their causal relationship to death. The first of these takes a detailed look at medical conditions of interest to intensive care units, including cardiac arrest and resuscitation, chemical pneumonia, malignant hyperthermia, drowning, and electrocution. Smoking, alcoholism, and irradiation disease come next, whereas the remaining pathologic entities are ‘allocated’ a place according to how and when they fatally interfere with the course of life.
As medicine today is no longer rigidly opposed to death, the book addresses the role modern medicine can play, on one hand, in generating organs for transplantation, and on the other hand, in engaging in society’s approach to euthanasia and – when useful – developing strategies to ease the process of dying. It is here that Dr J. Kevorkian’s contribution and Dignitas Clinic from Zürich are considered.
In addition to medical issues proper, the text also approaches several historical aspects of death, such as mummification, pandemics, the Crusades, the use of cadaveric blood, and the death penalty in its many notorious versions, including crucifixion and the guillotine.
A few short chapters are devoted to a number of postmortem matters, including autopsy, forensics, classic preservation and cryonics, cremation, and spontaneous decomposition, as well as the use of cadavers for teaching purposes, with Prof. von Hagens’ achievements. Since embalming is not currently addressed in medical materials, it is also discussed, along with – in the interest of thoroughness – contemporary taxidermy.
Finally, ethical concerns and a possible correlation between near-death experiences and paranormal phenomena are also given their due attention.
The 397-page text, supported by a list of 317 references and a thematic index, is firmly grounded in scientific and academic rigour. Its essayistic narration, some personal reflections in response to a selection of aphorisms, as well as several art reproductions, combine to strike a tone that is both accessible and memorable.
Efforts have been made by the publisher to offer a book that is easily readable. With a friendly graphic, and a robust physical structure, the volume remains open throughout, both figuratively and in the proper sense of the word.

In this paper, we shall examine how possession is understood in Assam, India. We are aware that the larger northeastern frontier of India retained indigenous practices, religious festivals, and beliefs in a plethora of exotic goddesses, rituals, which have continued unabated through modern times. This has resulted in cross-pollination between the Vedic or traditional Brahmanical or orthodox Hindu practices and the indigenous practices, which in turn has yielded a hybrid world of Śākta Tantra rituals and practices. In this paper, I examine how possession is understood in Assam, India. We are aware that the larger northeastern frontier of India retained indigenous practices, religious festivals, beliefs in a plethora of exotic goddesses, and rituals, which have continued into the present. This has resulted in cross-pollination between traditional Brahmanical or orthodox Hindu practices and indigenous practices, which in turn has yielded a hybrid world of Śākta Tantra rituals and practices. This article is based predominantly on fieldwork conducted over four years and secondary texts. During these years, I documented many sessions of " speaking to the dead " in the Tiwa Tribe. The Tiwa are a culturally rich tribal community in Assam, India. The Tiwa's intersection with mainstream Hindu religion, Śākta Tantra, is rather complex. I first will present a case study of a Mother Tantric who frequently co-creates communication between the living and the departed. Further, I will discuss how Mother Tantrics are seen as community leaders, akin to the religious authority of Brahmins in the Hindu funerary space. Then, I will draw similarities between the rituals performed by the Tiwas to the Deodhani festival in Kāmākhyā, an important ŚāktaTantra pīṭha, to highlight the fusion of mainstream Śākta Tantra with the indigenous practices and to show how aboriginal practices also borrow from conventional Hindu rituals. The interviews were conducted in Assamese and a dialect the Tiwas speak from the Tibeto-Burman language family. I used a translator for the interviews in the Tiwa language.

In this project I explore the realities of grief through personal experiences and artistic practice. My research considers how remaining objects and memories of the deceased are interconnected and can be re-imagined as artworks to deepen commemoration. It also explores an acceptance of the inevitability of one’s own death, and considers impacts on loved ones still living. The result of this project is a moving image work and a collection of sculptures. I also propose the use of artificial grottoes as spaces that invite viewers to contemplate loss of life and confront their own mortality.

Contextual research draws on the work of contemporary artists dealing with death. The video works of Sophie Calle and Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook are particularly discussed in relation to my moving image work, 1 million years. When recounting the death of my brother-in-law, I consider an installation work by Tracy Emin and reflect on a photographic series by Anne Noble. Sculptural works by Mike Kelley and Callum Morton are examined in relation to artificial grottoes as devotional spaces. My art practice has also been informed by Martin Heidegger’s philosophical notion of Dasein as a way of accepting all the possibilities in life, including death.

Progressive discourse regarding death, including alternative funeral rites and ways of dying, is still in its infancy in Western societies. However, talking about death is increasingly becoming less taboo. Over the course of this project, a methodological opportunity for information sharing at Death Café events has been invaluable. While questioning societal concerns with death, this project acknowledges that the conversation currently rests in a transitional space anticipating further development. My final series of works, together with this exegesis, contributes to this conversation on death and memorial through the medium of visual art.

A specialized type of ministry to dying individuals and their families, relatives, and friends. The caring pastor is a symbol of faith and an active spiritual life. Around the death experience, personal presence and tangible care are much appreciated and welcomed by all communities and cultures. Death is a universal experience yet a sobering time for all people involved.  Pastors represent assurance, comfort, and hope in a time of great transition, uncertainty, and need.

This chapter is concerned with the human rights of the deceased victims of mass atrocity. It addresses these rights in the context of forensic anthropological work to establish the individual and collective identities of the victims. This work became historically and politically significant in the later decades of the twentieth century in the context of attempts to determine the numbers, identities, and cause of death of victims of state crimes and violent conflict, return their bodies to family members, and contribute evidence to legal trials for crimes such as crimes against humanity, genocide, torture, and enforced disappearance. Key amongst these efforts were attempts to recover and establish the identities of the dead who were subjected to torture and enforced disappearance in Argentina in the mid-1980s, and ongoing efforts to return human remains to families of the dead in the former-Yugoslavia following the wars of the 1990s. Our moral obligations to the dead in these contexts beg a profound and comprehensive ethical approach. With this in mind, this chapter addresses two key questions: do these dead have human rights? And if so, which specific rights do they have? This chapter puts forward some provisional lines of enquiry and argumentation for consideration. It provides resources and evidencehistorical, legal, and forensic-in support of such rights, and makes several suggestions regarding which rights might be developed with respect to the dead.

In the official discourse, as well as in the discourse offered by the Church death is considered, at first, a spiritual phenomenon and represents the originary schism, the division of man from Life, from God as a direct consequence of disobedience. The physical death este the (derived) effect of the spiritual death and presumes the separation of the soul from the body, the first phase of the recursion to the Font of Life. That is why, the dissolution of the body represents, in the patristic tradition, "the benevolnce of God towards an, so that the evil can not remain without death".

Funerary rites have long been considered a sign of human uniqueness. However, recent research has established that attention to the death of conspecifics seems to be present, at different stages of development, at many other species and with particular emphasis on the eusocial and prosocial ones. In this work I try to adopt the perspective of Evolutionary Thanatology as well as the most recent theories in the Cognitive Sciences of Religion, studying Neanderthalian burials, with the aim of identifying the origins of mortuary behavior and the differentiation in this area between human and non-human animals. We conclude by hypothesizing coevolution between technical skills (toolmaking) and funerary rites (deadmaking), thus laying the foundations for future research.

Este trabalho se propõe a analisar as representações visuais do fiel à beira da morte em um gênero de livro que surgiu no século XV e que pretendia preparar o cristão para o transitus da vida terrena para a eterna. A Ars Moriendi (Arte de Morrer) era uma espécie de guia de conduta destinado a leigos, e que mostrava práticas, orações e atitudes que o moribundo e seus familiares deveriam adotar para ajudá-lo no momento da morte. A partir da leitura e reflexão deste livro, os cristãos eram exortados a abandonarem as tentações dos sete pecados e a praticarem as setes virtudes.
Com efeito, os textos e as imagens da Ars Moriendi sugeriam como o próprio moribundo deveria se conduzir. Esta prática coincide com o momento de introspecção religiosa dos laicos. Desde o século XIII, com as ordens mendicantes e com o desenvolvimento e fortalecimento da devoção laica e privada, o fiel combinava a recitação de orações com a apreciação de imagens privadas e portáteis e, possivelmente, leituras e meditação silenciosa. Estimulados pelas Igrejas, sobretudo pelas ordens mendicantes, as imagens materiais deveriam auxiliar o fiel a se identificar e a se comover com os temas retratados.
Neste trabalho será utilizada a versão latina da Ars Moriendi de c. 1450, possivelmente, umas das primeiras confeccionadas e impressas na cidade de Colônia, Alemanha. Este livro contém um ciclo onze de xilogravuras que descrevem o drama do fiel antes do seu juízo individual. No programa iconográfico, o moribundo é atormentado por demônios enquanto anjos representam a possibilidade de salvação. A Trindade e a intercessão da Virgem Maria e dos santos são cruciais para o salvamento do fiel. As iconografias deste gênero literário são: 1) A tentação diabólica contra a fé e  2) A boa inspiração do anjo pela fé;  3) A tentação diabólica pelo desespero e 4) A boa inspiração do anjo contra o desespero; 5) A tentação diabólica pela impaciência e 6) A boa inspiração do anjo pela paciência; 7) A tentação diabólica pela vanglória 8) A boa inspiração do anjo contra a vanglória;  9) A tentação diabólica pela avareza e 10) A boa inspiração do anjo contra a avareza; 11) O Triunfo sobre a tentação e a boa morte.
O recorte temático desta pesquisa se justifica porque a preocupação com a boa morte e com o destino das almas após o momento do trespasse eram uma das grandes preocupações medievais, pois o além é o lugar onde se realiza a justiça divina ordenando assim, a percepção do mundo. Neste sentido, o ciclo iconográfico presente na Ars Moriendi permite ao historiador refletir sobre as funções das imagens cristãs que abordam o tema do bem morrer no século XV.

Healing as a concept, has multifarious manifestations and can be applied to a broad range of modalities and situations and, within each one, subjective interpretations often dictate its meaning. The concept of healing is almost impossible to encapsulate in one descriptor as healing can occur on even the most subtle and unobservable levels and when
least or not expected. The original meaning of the word healing comes from the old-English term haelen, meaning ‘wholeness’ and refers to the process of moving toward a desired wholeness or achievement of cohesion (Firth et al: 2015). If we accept the premise that the
original meaning of the word healing is inextricably linked to wholeness then it makes sense to determine what wholeness represents and investigate all the elements which contribute to wholeness otherwise we do not know in totality how healing applies.

The most common way of dealing with the fear of death is denying death. Such denial can take two and only two forms: strategy 1 denies the finality of death; strategy 2 denies the reality of the dying subject. Most religions opt for strategy 1, but Buddhism seems to be an example of the 2nd. All variants of strategy 1 fail, however, and a closer look at the main Buddhist argument reveals that Buddhism in fact does not follow strategy 2. Moreover, there is no other theory that does, and neither can there be. This means that there is no tenable theory that denies death. There may be no universally psychologically acceptable alternative, however, which would mean that if denying death is incoherent, this is an unavoidable incoherence.

The article attempts to put the undervalued cultural phenomenon of offering comfort by means of persuasive speech acts (‘arguments’) on the research agenda of the human¬ities. The article proceeds in four steps. First, it defines ‘argumentative consolation’. Second, it argues that there has been a broad overlap of ancient philosophical and Christian modes of argumentative consolation. Third, it would be misguided to attribute today’s uneasiness with argumentative consolation to a process of ‘secularization’; the uneasiness stems from a radicalized intensification of life that is played out against the possibility of consolation in the face of death. Fourth, the ensuing emphasis on the notions of desires, plans and projects to measure the completeness of a life is self-defeating. The article argues the continued relevance of pre-modern argumentative consolation that identified virtue as the key factor in the completeness of a biography.

The contemporary juridico-political and bioethical debate over physician assisted dying has emerged as one of the most divisive of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Commonly strained through Western conceptions of individual rights and near ubiquitous calls for the respect an abstractly defined human dignity, popular discourse on assisted dying tends to promote universal understandings of both human beings as well as ethical, legal, moral action. This thesis, however, holds these debates in abeyance preferring rather to explore the ways in which the possibility of an assisted death creates a more meaningful dying space for many Canadian advocates. And though I cannot answer for everyone, for many of the 24 individuals I spent months interviewing, “hanging out” with and generally following around to various meetings/training sessions, the assisted death is not some nihilistic response to the suffering of our materially bounded/feeling bodies, but a contemporary recurrence of a deeply spiritual, relational and artful dying.

The literature on death expectation in ill old age is mostly medical. A social science standpoint (especially quantitative) is practically absent. However, whether families, social and healthcare services can anticipate, support and prepare for the deaths of ill old adults is not reducible to the biomedical paradigm. Yet it is critical for end of life care (EOLC) policy. This study's aim is to investigate relatives' perception of death as unexpected in relation to both disease-related and care-related factors. Using the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing End-of-life Interviews Wave 6 this paper draws on probit regression analysis of unexpected (vs. expected) death in ill adults aged 50+. Findings are interpreted considering the containment of sudden death and the trajectories of dying in ill old age. The latter display overall visible decline preceding death. On this basis, EOLC literature and policy evidence death's uncertain timing as much as death's certain emergence in the horizon of expectation. Therefore, unexpected death in ill old age was interpreted as a failure to acknowledge dying, rather than the impossibility of discerning its approach. Very old age, dementia diagnoses and supported care environments were found to shape unexpected death.

The aim of this study is to explore identity change in medical students over their first year of medical training, particularly in relation to their experience of human dissection. Each of our four participants completed two repertory grids at the end of term one and, again, towards the end of term three. One grid tapped their identity construction, and the other, their experience of human dissection. Our participants were optimistic about becoming similar to a doctor they admired and, towards the end of term three, began to develop a stable identity as a medical student. Their identity constructs involved three common themes: dedication, competence, and responsibility. However, the data also revealed negative reactions to the demands of training, such as feeling driven and stressed. Three major themes were apparent in their experience of human dissection: involvement, emotional coping, and ability. Our participants’ dedication to their studies was reflected in their appreciation of the need to become involved actively in the process of dissection but some experienced an erosion of their self-confidence and perceived some of their colleagues to have lost much of their enthusiasm for learning. Emotional coping could be an additional challenge within this context and their reaction tended to reflect distancing processes previously identified in the literature. In all, we see a development of a vulnerable sense of professionalism alongside a frustration of losing out potentially on wider aspects of personal development due to the high work demands.

Background: In most Anglophone nations, policy and law increasingly foster an autonomy-based model, raising issues for large numbers of people who fail to fit the paradigm, and indicating problems in translating practical and theoretical understandings of 'good death' to policy. Three exemplar populations are frail older people, people with dementia and people with severe traumatic brain injury. We hypothesise that these groups face some overlapping challenges in securing good end-of-life care linked to their limited agency. To better understand these challenges, we conducted a scoping review and thematic synthesis.
Methods: To capture a range of literature, we followed established scoping review methods. We then used thematic synthesis to describe the broad themes emerging from this literature.
Results: Initial searches generated 22,375 references, and screening yielded 49, highly heterogeneous, studies that met inclusion criteria, encompassing 12 countries and a variety of settings. The thematic synthesis identified three themes: the first concerned the processes of end-of-life decision-making, highlighting the ambiguity of the dominant shared decision-making process, wherein decisions are determined by families or doctors, sometimes explicitly marginalising the antecedent decisions of patients. Despite this marginalisation, however, the patient does play a role both as a social presence and as an active agent, by whose actions the decisions of those with authority are influenced. The second theme examined the tension between predominant notions of a good death as ‘natural’ and the drive to medicalise death through the lens of the experiences and actions of those faced with the actuality of death. The final theme considered the concept of antecedent end-of-life decision-making (in all its forms), its influence on policy and decision-making, and some caveats that arise from the studies.
Conclusions: Together these three themes indicate a number of directions for future research, which are likely to be applicable to other conditions that result in reduced agency. Above all, this review emphasises the need for new concepts and fresh approaches to end of life decision-making that address the needs of the growing population of frail older people, people with dementia and those with severe traumatic brain injury.

Der erste Tod ist der Tod des Anderen. Menschsein heißt deshalb immer auch trauern.

Meine Dissertation zeigt Verbindungslinien zwischen drei Feldern auf, die zunächst weit voneinander entfernt zu liegen scheinen: psychologisch-psychiatrische Diskussionen um Trauer und psychische Gesundheit, Ethiken der Trauer, die die poststrukturalistische Philosophie und die Dekonstruktion entwerfen, sowie fototheoretische und fotokünstlerische Positionen, die einen Umgang mit Verlust suchen. An den jeweiligen Bildern guter Trauer entscheidet sich, ob Trauer als gemeinschaftsstiftend oder subversiv, als das Verhältnis zum verlorenen Anderen trennend oder bewahrend, als Erinnerung ermöglichend oder unterlaufend verstanden wird.

A new body of scholarship on death and loss has emerged as a sub-field within social and cultural geography. This work has done much to draw geographers’ attention to questions of death, dying and remembrance and likewise to bring a spatial
perspective to interdisciplinary death studies. Whilst deathscapes have been framed within geographical work as incorporating material, embodied and virtual spaces, to
date Anglo-American and European studies have tended to focus on the literal and representational spaces of the end of life, sites of bodily remains and memorialization. With a number of important exceptions, embodied and dynamic experiences of dying, death and survival have been absent within the geographies of death. This special section aims to broaden the scope, and to resist simple dichotomies of life
and death, and to be especially attentive to the embodied and visceral experiences, practices and processes of dying, death and survival. In this introduction, we explore themes of dying/s, death/s and survival/s across varied international, national and cultural contexts, as discussed in the contributing papers and raised by the politics of recent events. This collection offers an expanded and enlivened approach to research, documenting facing death/s, journeys at the end of life, living through, on and with life-limiting illnesses, living with loss and the interconnected spatialities that these experiences and practices evoke for individuals and wider social groups. They open
up new spaces of P/politics and emotions, challenging limited political and medicalized frames. The papers also raise methodological questions and present a challenging
agenda for future research. This special section grew out of sessions we organized for the 2012 RGS-IBG Annual International Conference at the University of Edinburgh.

The subject of truth telling is complex. Truth in itself, is subjective and at its core, a philosophical conundrum. The extent to which truth is subjective can be determined by what an individual’s base reality is and how in touch with their own reality they are.
Aside from this, we have the existence of what we perceive as facts and if a person is intermittently disassociated from their own reality, their ability to relay accurate facts as truth is quite diminished. Then we have the dilemma of what is fact. Most dictionaries describe ‘truth’ as the quality or state of being true: ‘he had to accept the truth of her
inevitable demise’. Therefore, it is that which is true or in accordance with fact or reality. Accordingly, a ‘fact’ is described as a thing that is known or proved to be true. ‘The MRI clearly shows bone metastases’. Therefore, it is information used as evidence or as part of a report.

A memorial cycle of eight poems--four Chinese largely classical seven-word poems and their English versions. I wrote these poems as a tribute and spiritual companion to my younger sister Judy Cheng. A mutual gift from two sisters, I share this with anyone who wishes for solace after a loved one passed away.

The essay analyzes how American psychiatrists transformed death and dying into a matter of clinical concern from the 1950s through the 1980s. Following two examples – 1) the administration of psychotropic agents to patients suffering from terminal illnesses, 2) the epidemiological study of experiences of survivors from nearly-fatal accidents – it examines how a cultural and humanist discussion on the art of dying was introduced into biomedicine and palliative care. By examining key factors that contributed to this science-in-the-making at the hands of psychiatric death experts (including advances in oncology, pain management, end-of-life care, the definition of brain death, mental health politics), it highlights the extent to which a trauma theory, predating the category of PTSD, became relevant in shaping a psychological definition of death and its meaningfulness for both clinical research and therapy in the second half of the twentieth century.

The claim that philosophy is training for death has an astonishing pedigree. In both the East and the West, the oldest philosophical traditions maintain that philosophy’s central function involves coming to terms with mortality. My aim is to sketch two approaches to this question, both of which involve a recognition of one’s insignificance. I will first present a therapeutic reading of the
Socratic/Epicurean tradition, suggesting that the arguments surrounding mortality should be understood as tools for developing certain attitudes rather than simply as tools for ascertaining the truth. I next present some basic traditions of meditation in outline, arguing that they are similar in certain fundamental respects to pursuing the ‘life of reason,’ understood therapeutically. In both cases, we find practical techniques for cultivating awareness of one’s insignificance, as well as a recognition (and acceptance) of one’s mortality.

The purpose of this study was to map the mental schema of death espoused by contemporary Pakistani youth. A convenient sample of 100 undergraduate students was taken and an open-ended questionnaire was used to procure words/phrases that came to the participants‟ minds when they thought of death. From among the response pool of 2000 words, the top 20 in terms of frequency were selected. Multidimensional scaling and cluster analysis were used for the cognitive mapping of the death concept. A two-dimensional map and a cluster structure consisting of three main clusters were thus obtained. Overall, the conceptualization of death in the minds of young men and women in Pakistan was found to be a complex interweaving of modernity and tradition with tradition being the stronger influence. In the death schema discovered, the sub construct of non-corporeal continuation proposed by Speece (1995) is very prominent. Implications for future research are discussed.