Death, Psychological Perspectives

A variety of aspects of death impact daily life, influencing attitudes and feelings about death. Death deals with the meanings humans attach to it, their responses and reactions to loss, and the developmental aspects of death, that is, how death's salience varies across the life span. Indeed, humans are unique in that we anticipate death (our own as well as deaths of others), reflect upon how to live life, and consider how and when death will descend upon us. Embedded in a culture that is sometimes described as death denying, it is important to acknowledge feelings about death and dying, as these are influenced by both personal experiences and cultural aspects. Such experiences also impact those aspects of death to which humans are exposed.

The Meaning of Death

Both age-related and individual differences in awareness of death contribute to the meaning assigned to it. Variations in such meanings either enhance or suppress attention to death-related experiences, which may vary with age or with historical events that shape the nature of death itself and one's response to it.

For most individuals, death is the ultimate loss in our lives, whereas for others, death may mean punishment for one's sins. Death may also be seen as a transition between one form of existence and another. Indeed, there are as many idiosyncratic [Page 287]meanings persons assign to death as there are people, though the tendency to personalize death is commonplace among children and older adults.

Responses to Death

Feelings about death, influenced by the meaning attributed to it, often determine the quality of life one has to live. In this context, one response to death or dying is termed overcoming. Overcomers see death as the enemy, as external in nature, or as a personal failure. Others show a participatory response to death, wherein death is internal, an opportunity to be reunited with a loved one, and is a natural consequence of having lived. Indeed, as people age and/or approach death, they become more participatory.

What life and death mean likely influences how persons respond to death. Although fear and anxiety are not the only responses to death, these have received considerable attention over the past decades. Whereas some might fear the losses accompanying death, others may fear the loss of control over their everyday lives. Recognizing such fears can enhance the quality of one's life, while ignoring them may lead to self-deception. In this respect, there are many manifestations of the need to deny, manipulate, distort, or camouflage death so that it is a less difficult threat with which to cope.

Many attempts to cope with death reflect the perception of death as something to be avoided, and recent historical shifts in our response to another's death and dying, the removal of death from our presence via a brief funeral, and the medicalization of death are both individual and cultural manifestations of this death denial. Indeed, assertions that an awareness of one's mortality initiates a midlife crisis, that persons first respond to the news of their own imminent death by denying its reality, as well as debates about the validity of near-death experiences have all normalized the construct of death denial among social scientists.

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