About Attitudes towards Death in the Light of Psychology

Abstract

The article observes death-consciousness of contemporary people. The decrease of the transcendence thematic in culture is a probable de- crease of death thematic. At the same time unfinished grief causes depression and malfunctions. The loss of someone close will always be dramatic, but is the acceptance of our own mortality agreeing with the finality of our own lives? We could outline several criteria as relation- ships with relatives, life's significance, health which are connected with the the principle that one's death and afterlife correspond to the life they have lived. Human experience, by nature, is a whole: subjective and consisting of many aspects. Since this subjectivity and wholeness are perhaps more appreciated in psychology than in any other contemporary stream of thinking, psychology enables us to appreciate remembering one part of the human wholeness experience- the mortality of self. The problems that repressing this particular part of the whole ex- perience may cause can be illustrated with grief. In Grief, Verena Kast describes various phases of grief and analy- ses the problems arising during the mourning process. Unfinished grief causes depression, which often remains a mystery to the mourner. It surfaces in situations that associate more or less di- rectly with the deceased person (death of a stranger, anniversary of death, reaching the same age as that of the deceased, places and actions associated with the deceased). In everyday life, unfinished grief may cause a number of malfunctions. It can lead to the inabil- ity of forming new relations; to inadequate substitute relations in attempt to preserve the deceased; to adapting the lifestyle of the deceased, although it may not fit the mourner; to various psycho- somatic illnesses and, in extreme cases, to suicide (Kast 1998). One remains hanging on to the past. Here Kast postulates that the grief experienced at the loss of a close person and the grief that one falls into at the discovery of his own incurable and fatal illness share the same nature. Kast makes yet another important elaboration: not