Death Of Self Research Articles

Influence of social interactions, professional supports and fear of death on adults' preferences for life-sustaining treatments and palliative care.

To explore the significance of culture, professional support in the community, social interactions and intrapersonal determinants of adults' preferences for life-sustaining treatments and palliative care. A cross-sectional design with a Social Ecological Model was used. Between 1 October 2012 and 31 December 2012, 474 adults aged ≥20 years living in a city of Southern Taiwan completed the survey. Data were analysed using hierarchical multiple regression. The life-sustaining measures model was significant with 15.3% (p < 0.0001) of the variance in the Modified Emmanuel Medical Directives being explained by variables of death of self and healthcare services' support. The palliative care model was significant with 18% (p < 0.0001) of the variance in the Modified Hospice Attitude Scale being explained by variables of palliative care knowledge, death of self and social interactions. However, cultural value adherence did not predict adults' preferences for life-sustaining measures and community resources support did not predict palliative care preference. Findings enhance our understanding of the significance of different societal levels on adults' preferences for end-of-life care. Palliative care knowledge, fear of death, healthcare services' support and social interactions are essential factors that need to be taken into consideration when it comes to discussion about life-sustaining treatments and palliative care.

Death and Grief in Love Letters

In the love letters of 14 couples every couple communicated about issues of death and grief, which suggests that death and grief may often have a place in the development of couple relationships. For some, writing about the possible death of self or other seemed connected to the emotional intensity and importance of their mutual love. For some the shared intimacy made the lover a key person with whom to share information, feelings and thought about recent deaths. For some, communications about death and grief seemed steps toward shared approaches to meaning making and expressing feelings regarding death and grief.

PROVERA KONSTRUKT VALIDNOSTI SRPSKE ADAPTACIJE REVIDIRANE COLLETT-LESTER SKALE STRAHA OD SMRTI

The aim of this study was to validate the Serbian adaptation of the Collett-Lester Fear of Death Scale–Revised (CLFODS-R). On a sample comprised of 263 participants (66% females), aged between 18 and 65 years, along with CLFODS-R, Big Five Plus Two-70 and PANAS were applied. Results support originally proposed factor structure of the scale, with differentiation of four dimensions: fear of death of self, fear of dying of self, fear of death of others, and fear of dying of others. All four dimensions significantly correlate with negative affect and neuroticism, while correlations with positive affect and extraversion are not significant, supporting the validity of the scale. Furthermore, females show higher scores on all dimensions, while older and participants with experience of the death of a close person show a lower fear of death in some of its aspects. The results suggested that the Serbian adaptation of CLFODS-R is a valid and reliable measure, and that it may find application in further examinations of fear of death.

Changes and Stability in Marital Status: Evidence from Canadian Income Tax Returns

We use a 20 percent longitudinal sample of Canadian personal income tax returns to explore patterns and changes in marital status, with a focus on cohort behaviour. We define five different cohorts, each with a different starting age in 1995, and follow each over a 20-year data period. We consider and compare the changes in cohort patterns, giving special attention to the stability of married and common law unions, and for that purpose distinguishing unions with the same partner from those with a different one. Comparisons of cohort patterns show a shift toward an increased proportion reporting themselves as single or living in a common law union and a decreased proportion reporting married. The proportion married to the same partner declines and the proportion married to a new partner increases, implying some reduction in marriage stability. Common law unions, more common at younger ages, appear unstable but much of the apparent instability is removed when common law unions that would transition to married unions with the same partner are taken into account; common law as a premarital first stage appears to be increasingly common. At older ages the death of a partner is the major terminating factor at the end of a marriage, most prominently among males: widowhood (death of a partner) accounts for a much larger fraction of marriage terminations for women, death of self a much larger fraction for men, reflecting differences in life expectancy and the younger age at marriage of women, on average.

I am surrounded by death: death as a defining psychic issue within a relational psychoanalytic engagement and the impact of the therapist's relationship with death.

Taking inspiration from Frommer, this paper is part of a shift towards incorporating death as a defining psychic issue. With a sense that I am surrounded by death, the author presents two brief vignettes of clinical cases to illustrate the impact of the therapist’s relationship with death on the therapeutic process. Each case shows a different level of engagement with the client when the focus is on death-talk, and reflects, on the one hand, the therapist’s ability and readiness to work with death as an object of analysis, and on the other hand, the therapist’s lack of processing of experiences of death of others, and the resultant failure to successfully work with death in analysis. The one case is arguably more successful therapeutically than the other, and highlights some issues that come into play in the light of the therapist’s relationship with death. These issues are: i) the importance of the therapist’s development with regards to processing experiences of death and dying cannot be underestimated when working with death as an object of scrutiny; ii) empathy remains core to the process and getting in touch with how the client experiences the death of the other. Without recognition, however, no (grief) work can begin. The therapist needs to psychologically recognise the other to be able to connect to, and empathize with, the clients process; iii) the impact of the death of the other often transforms into the work of the impact of the death of self; iv) if clients have a sense that the therapist knows what they are speaking about because the therapist has done some of the work of making meaning of death, clients may feel more confident in working with death as an object of analysis.

From a death of self to a rebirth of community: Yolande Mukagasana’s ‘Connective’ testimonies in response to the 1994 genocide in Rwanda

Abstract Originally a nurse, Yolande Mukagasana became a survivor, author and playwright following the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. La Mort ne veut pas de moi (Mukagasana and May 1997) and N’aie pas peur de savoir (Mukagasana and May 1999), her two autobiographical accounts written with Patrick May, articulate a breakdown in her physical, mental and emotional faculties, an inability to distinguish between self and other, and a death of self. Mukagasana gives an oral version of her testimony in Rwanda ’94. In this theatrical production, she conveys unspeakable elements of her experience – including a death of self – in a non-verbal manner, wherein her body language and position acquire their meaning in relation to others onstage. In Les Blessures du silence (Mukagasana and Kazinierakis 2001), Mukagasana’s experiences are also revealed and situated in relation to others through her interviews with ninety survivors and perpetrators in Rwanda. Overall, Mukagasana’s testimonies are interdependent, collaborative and dialogic. She employs other people’s voices and bodies to articulate her own experiences, and often communicates meaning through her position in relation to others. These ‘connective’ testimonies allow Mukagasana to compensate for a death of self and continue narrating even when she cannot speak in the first-person; they also allow her to rebuild social bonds and re-integrate into community.

Bad Piano

Bad Piano Marianne Boruch (bio) The Anderson Center, Red Wing, Minnesota The piano can’t at the moment, sorry.Room high-ceilinged and perfectlyout of old wood made new by sanding. Like turtles doze in waterunder a slab on bricks, their concrete troughbeneath heat lamps allbarn winter. Just wait. A pond outside,real light to come. Lots of music that way, the old snapperprehistorically, preternaturallycranky at the heart of it. But one timea turkey got into its head to walk freshly pouredcement in there, to leave tracksonce I was,every claw starred into the stuff heavierand heavier. Put thatin the final riff for a grave-glorioussecond movement. If ever violin and cello orviola and dark anything joinedin holy matrimony, the sound would be soBrahms again, the bad piano’soh yes under their [End Page 132] “sexual interlude,” a phrase my soon-to-retireexcruciatingly odd professor as ifwith the most delicate tweezersloved fixing to what a playwright let loose onvery unhappy people, skimpy clothes,shades drawn, sweltering midsummer, the stage I kept picturing,biking to class so ago mid-November, mostlysnow wilding sideways—iridescent! The piano is badfor a reason. Played to deathit might complain like any other creatureafter a hard day being human. [End Page 133] Marianne Boruch Marianne Boruch ’s work includes nine collections of poetry—including, most recently, Eventually One Dreams the Real Thing; Cadaver, Speak; The Book of Hours (Copper Canyon)—and three books of essays on poetry, including the forthcoming The Little Death of Self: Nine Essays toward Poetry. Her collection The Book of Hours received the Kingsley-Tufts Poetry Award in 2013, and the recent Eventually One Dreams the Real Thing was selected by the New Yorker as a “Most Loved Book” of 2016. Her poems and essays have appeared in such places as the New Yorker, the Nation, the New York Review of Books, Poetry London, FIELD, Iowa Review, the Georgia Review, the London Review of Books, the Yale Review, APR, Poetry, and have been thrice anthologized in The Best American Poetry, and elsewhere. Her awards include four Pushcart Prizes, two fellowships from the nea, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Glick Award for Indiana Writers, and residencies at the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, and elsewhere. Copyright © 2017 University of Nebraska Press

The self that remains: a symbolic analysis of the psychological death of the self in Alzheimer's disease

ABSTRACTIn Alzheimer's disease, we witness a psychologicaldeath of the selfbefore physical death. The unraveling of the self that occurs in Alzheimer's disease is a classic underworld journey, through which the deceased undergo a dismantling of memory and temporal identity to become shades of the Underworld. Through stories of family members living with dementia in a loved one, Alzheimer's disease reveals a descent into an irrational, symbolic, and timeless otherworld. This unique dying process provides insight into a degeneration and death of self and identity that is always occurring in the undergrowth of individuation. Individuation, as explicated through Greek eschatology, has two aspects: a general, phylogeneticHomericprocess, and an ontogeneticOrphicprocess characterized by intentional participation in one's own evolution of consciousness. Analyses of an archetypal death, a symbolic birth, and the self that remains as temporal identity is deconstructed through dementia conclude the article.

Scripts for Modern Dying: The Death before Death We Have Invented, the Death before Death We Fear and Some Take Too Literally, and the Death before Death Christians Believe in

Modern scripts for dying in hospice or by euthanasia are inapplicable to the dwindling of long old age, often experienced as social ‘death before death’. The article critiques the rhetoric of ‘death before death’ used of Alzheimer’s patients, and draws attention to an alternative valuation of death of self in the Christian tradition.

DEATH ANXIETY AND EMPATHY AMONG MALE AND FEMALE MEDICAL STUDENTS

Background. Research reveals that death anxiety affects physicians’ quality of work when he/she faces a patient suffering from a fatal disease (Field &amp; Howells, 1988, Thiemann, Quince, Benson, Wood, &amp; Barclay, 2015), while empathy leads to medical decision making and a better patient’s healing process (Lor, Truong, Ip, &amp; Barnett, 2015; Chen, Kiersma, Yehle, &amp; Plake, 2015). The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between death anxiety and empathy by gender among students of the medicine program in the Lithuanian University of Health Sciences. Methods. The study involved 233 students of the medical program from the Faculty of Medicine in the Lithuanian University of Health Sciences. The sample consisted of 167 women (71.1%) and 56 men (24%), 10 participants have not specified their gender (4.9%). A questionnaire designed for the study consisted of demographic questions, Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI) (Davis, 1980) and Revised Collet-Lester Fear of Death and Dying Scale (Lester, 1990). Results. Medical students that show higher than others anxiety about death of self 1 , dying of self 2 , death of others 3 and dying of others 4 also show greater personal distress (r = .211 1 ; r = .217 2 ; r = .248 3 ; r = .219 4 ), empathetic concern (r = .205 1 ; r = .241 2 ; r = .246 3 ; r = .136 4 ), emotional (r = .27 1 ; r = .294 2 ; r = .319 3 ; r = .236 4 ) and overall r = .237 1 ; r = .262 2 ; r = .254 3 ; r = .227 4 ) empathy and also had better fantasy (r = .149 1 ; r = .173 2 ; r = .149 3 ; r = .184 4 ) than others. Weak correlation in men sample was between death anxiety subscales and empathetic concern (r = .532 1 ; r = .279 2 ; r = .3 3 ; r = .306 4 ), emotional (r = .48 1 ; r = .364 2 ; r = .373 3 ; r = .458 4 ) and overall (r = .369 1 ; r = .399 2 ; r = .32 3 ; r = .453 4 ) empathy. Very weak correlation in women sample was found between emotional empathy and death of self (r = .164), dying of self (r = .188) and death of others (r = .206) anxiety. Personal distress subscale in women sample was associated with death of self (r = .186) and death of others (r = .179) anxiety. Conclusion. It was found that medical students showing greater personal distress, empathetic concern, fantasy, emotional and overall empathy have a stronger sense of death anxiety. Correlations between death anxiety and empathy found in men sample were specified as weak, meanwhile correlations found in women sample were specified as very weak.

SELF-CONSTRUAL AND THE FEAR OF DEATH.

Orehek, Sasota, Kruglanski, Dechesne, and Ridgeway (2014 ) reported that priming students with self-construals (reading paragraphs focusing on the self vs others) increased their general fear of death. The Collett-Lester Fear of Death Scale measures the fear of death of the self separately from the fear of death of others, and so it was predicted that priming students with self-construals would affect only the fear of death of self. Using a sample of 64 female and 27 male undergraduate students (M age = 20.5 yr., SD = 1.6), an attempt was made to replicate Orehek's finding, having the students read the same paragraphs used by Orehek, et al. prior to completing the fear of death scale. Scores on the Collett-Lester scale for the fears of death of self, dying of self, death of others, and dying of others were not affected by self-construal priming, thereby not replicating the effect of self-construing on the fear of death nor the present hypothesis.

Death anxiety in females with and without exposure to death and dying: differential dimensions

Exposure to traumatic events like death and dying is anxiety provoking. High anxiety can contribute to psychological breakdown of the individual. A study was conducted to examine the impact of exposure to death and dying on different dimensions of fear of death. Data was obtained from 100 females who were professionally exposed to death/dying and their 100 matched controls that were not exposed to death/ dying in the last two years, using a background questionnaire and Collett-Lester’s fear of death scale. All subjects exhibited varying degrees of death anxiety from low to high. Females who were professionally exposed to death/dying reported to have significantly higher fear of death, and fear of dying of self as compared to their counterparts who were not exposed to death/dying in last two years (t= 1.65, p < .05, t= 2.74, p < .01, respectively). While comparing the fear of death of self with fear of death of others; and fear of dying of self with fear of dying of others, the females in both the groups were more fearful about the death and dying of others as compared to self. In the group exposed to death, the fear of death of self/ fear of death of others exhibited significant differences with the scores being more for others as compared to self (t = 6.87, p < .01). The relationship of socio-demographic variables (age and religious background) with death anxiety has also been explored in this study. One dimension of death anxiety i.e. fear of death of others was found to be negatively and significantly correlated with age in group-I (professionally exposed to death/ dying) as well as in group-II (not exposed to death/dying in last 2 years). The two main religious groups in this study i.e. Hindus and Sikhs were compared on all the dimensions of death anxiety and no significant difference was observed. The implications of the findings are discussed in the paper.

A Comparison Study on Attitude Toward Death and Meaning of Death of Nursing Students and Non-Nursing Major Students in Korea

The study was to investigate the attitude toward death and meaning of death of nursing students and non-nursing major students. This study was used a descriptive comparative designed. Data were collected universities in J city in from June. 1 to June. 30 in 2014. After receiving the agreement, 150 nursing students and 117 non-nursing major students were recruited. They were asked to fill in a self-reported questionnaire about the attitude toward death and meaning of death. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, t-test, ANOVA and pearson correlation. This study compared the other major university student study the results of the meaning of death than nursing students is much lower, but no significant differences in the attitude toward death. There was a significant correlation between the a death anxiety (death of others & dying of self) and meanings of death (negative) in nursing student and the other major university student. On the other hand, there was a significant negative correlation between the a death anxiety (death of self & dying of others) and meanings of death (positive) in the other major university student. The finding of the study provide the basis for expanding education related to death for the other major university student. A training course may help nursing student develop their view on the meaning of death, which in turn would enhance their performance in caring dying patients.

Death Anxiety and Education: A Comparison Among Undergraduate and Graduate Students

The present study investigated the association between level of education and self-reported levels of anxiety regarding death of self and others among undergraduate students (n = 149) and graduate students (n = 92). Participants completed the Multidimensional Fear of Death Scale (MFODS) and the Revised Death Anxiety Scale (RDAS). Although undergraduate and graduate students did not differ on Fear of Being Destroyed, graduate students reported lower levels of death anxiety on all remaining measures. Suggestions for future research and implications are discussed.

The ‘unfinished’ subject: Pedagogy and performance in the company of copies, robots, mutants and cyborgs

ABSTRACTThe posthuman perspective, which suggests that the boundaries of the human being are undergoing constant revision, has grown as a paradigm for analysis of the connection between technology and the body in contemporary performance practice. This article explores the potential of a ‘posthuman pedagogy’ and its relation to practices of multimedia performance. It suggests an approach to learning that considers specific manifestations of the posthuman being within pedagogical process, encourages students to examine their own existence within a ‘posthuman condition’, and positions the learner as part of a network of material and mediatized components. Various manifestations of ‘posthuman bodies’ within performance are identified such as the ‘copying’ of the body, robotic or cyborg bodies, and ‘mutating’ bodies. To explain the position of the human body within a posthuman world, it is asserted that the posthuman does not involve the ‘death of self, nor the death of the liberal humanist subject, but the re-conception of the self as ‘unfinished’. Finally, posthumanism is framed as a perspective on education that shifts the direction of learning from the traditional doctrine of internalizing knowledge, to a model of experience and practice that connects the student with the material world, and is particularly relevant to drama and theatre studies.

간호학생의 죽음에 대한 태도

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate the attitude toward death in Korean nursing students. Method: The sample consisted of 365 baccalaureate nursing students. The questionnaires included questions on sociodemographics and death-related characteristics of the participants, and the Fear of Death and Dying Scale (FODS) to measure the attitude toward death. Result: The mean of the FODS score was 2.63 out of 4, so the participants had a slightly negative attitude toward death. There were statistically significant differences between gender, religion, religion activity, perceived health status, experience of parents` death, experience of friend`s death, and overall FODS score. Among the four subscales of overall FODS, the score of the fear of death of self was significantly higher in the participants who experienced clinical practice and who experienced patient`s death in the intensive care unit compared to the emergency room. Conclusion: Based on the study results, educational programs to change the attitude toward death are required before clinical practice. Programs need to consider nursing students` gender and religion, and give opportunity to share experiences and feelings about death of family or friend. In addition, using standardized patients and simulators is advised in the need for simulation training.

Mortality Anxiety as a Function of Intrinsic Religiosity and Perceived Purpose in Life

Fear of dying and death may be universal, but individuals differ in their emotional reactions to dying and death. The present study included a sample of 133 Chinese university students who were Christians. The authors tested a mediation model which posited that intrinsic religiosity, but not extrinsic religiosity, lowered anxiety toward the dying and death of self and someone close through fostering perceived purpose in life. Structural Equation Modeling results supported a partial mediating role of purpose in life. Moreover, participants were more anxious toward the dying and death of someone close than those of themselves. Discussion focuses on the protective role of intrinsic religiosity on dying and death anxiety.

Spanish Adaptation of the Collett-Lester Fear of Death Scale

The Collett-Lester Fear of Death Scale (CL-FODS) consists of 4 subscales: Death of Self, Dying of Self, Death of Others, and Dying of Others. The aim of this study was to develop a Spanish version of the CL-FODS and to explore its psychometric properties. The revised version of the scale was translated into Spanish from English. Then, the back translation technique was carried out. A sample of 281 Spanish nursing students and professionals responded to the Spanish CL-FODS, along with 2 instruments assessing death anxiety and general anxiety. Good internal consistency and satisfactory test–retest reliability of the 4 subscales of the Spanish CL-FODS were achieved. Its correlations with death anxiety were higher than that with general anxiety, supporting its discriminant validity. The principal component analysis forced to 4 components provided a distribution of loadings that is more coherent with the theoretical formulation of the 4 components than those obtained in previous studies. These results justify the use of the CL-FODS in Spanish-speaking health care professionals for the purpose of assessing attitudes toward death and dying in self and others.

As It Was in the Beginning: Death and Re-membrance and the Christian Intuition

The author argues that the psyche crafts an affective metaphor for death out of the separation drama of infancy. Emergence of self from the mother–infant dyad can accomplish cohesion of fragmentary unconscious mentation strong enough, following Winnicott, to make possible a belief in God. Through developmental synergy between female and male elements, a sense of participation in an eternal principle of being can be achieved, sustaining the ego against anxieties over disintegration, and death as its analog. Myths of the child god illuminate the equation of fragmentation with death of self. Christianity expresses how the cohered self can transcend fragmentation.

THE FACTORIAL STRUCTURE OF THE ARABIC VERSION OF THE REVISED COLLETT–LESTER FEAR OF DEATH SCALE

A sample of 209 volunteer Kuwaiti undergraduates responded to an Arabic version of the Revised Collett–Lester Fear of Death Scale with 4 subscales: Death of Self, Dying of Self, Death of Others, and Dying of Others. Reliabilities of the 4 subscales and of the grand total score ranged from 0.75 to 0.92, which is considered adequate. A 4-factor solution was congruent with the allocation of items to 2 subscales (i.e. Dying of Self and Death of Others), whereas the theorized factor structure of the other 2 subscales were only partially supported by empirical analyses. The intercorrelations between the 4 total subscale scores yielded a general factor of death and dying, denoting good factorial validity of the scale.