Thanatology

The Oxford English Dictionary defines thanatology as “the scientific study of death, its causes and phenomena.” Also (U.S. origin), “the study of the effects of approaching death and of the needs of the terminally ill and their families.” The word thanatology first appeared in 1842 in a British medical lexicon. By the mid-1970s, thanatology was recognized as a special area of study, and Lawrence Stone referred to thanatology in a 1977 book review of Growing Old in America as a special branch of learning exemplified by historians of death, like Philippe Aries and Michel Vovelle, who have promoted the topic.

Background for the Concept: A Multidisciplinary Approach

A pioneer within this special branch of learning was Herman Feifel, whose books created an opening for scholarly discussions and reflections on topics such as death anxiety, terminal illness, hospice and palliative care, and the impact of death on survivors. Another pioneer was Elisabeth KüblerRoss, whose work with terminally ill people in a Chicago hospital led her to advocate that these patients be seen as human beings deserving dignity. Kübler-Ross created a framework called stages of dying for understanding emotional responses of the terminally ill. Although empirical research has not confirmed Kübler-Ross's stages of dying and clinicians have expressed deep skepticism of the applicability of her ideas, the popularity of her views has not diminished.

While Feifel and Kübler-Ross were pioneers in the psychological aspects of thanatology, other pioneers have shaped our contemporary experiences and understanding of death, dying, and bereavement. In the sociological arena, important contributions were made during the 1960s by psychiatrist Edwin Shneidman, whose work increased the awareness of the complexity of suicide, while Barney Glaser's and Anselm Strauss's qualitative research into responses to death within hospitals gave us new concepts, such as modes of awareness of dying and dying trajectories. In the mid-1960s, sociologist Robert Fulton examined the linkages between death and identity. Then, in the early [Page 949]1970s, Ernest Becker wrote his influential book, The Denial of Death. And in the first years of the 21st century, the Center for the Advancement of Health convened an interdisciplinary group of thanatology scholars who produced a lengthy article that examined research on bereavement and grief and an article examining efforts to bridge the gap separating thanatology practitioners and researchers.

Education about thanatology burgeoned in the 1970s and continued thereafter, leading to two historical interpretations in 1977 and 1986, a 2004 analysis of 30 years of death education in the schools, and a 2007 examination of the state of thanatological education. In 1970, Robert Kastenbaum founded the journal Omega. Other peer-reviewed journals followed: Death Studies (originally Death Education) in 1977, Journal of Palliative Care in 1985, Illness, Crisis, and Loss in 1991, and Mortality in 1996. Since the 1970s, colleges and universities established courses on death, dying, and bereavement, textbooks on these topics were published, and far-right ideologues initiated a backlash against death education.

Hospice and Palliative Care

Perhaps the most profound influence upon thanatology in the 20th century was the growth of the hospice movement and of palliative medicine. Two figures prominent in this medical advance were Cicely Saunders, the founder of the modern hospice movement, and Balfour Mount, a Canadian physician who championed the practice of palliative medicine with people whose terminal illness was beyond treatment. In consort with Kübler-Ross's dogged perseverance on treating dying patients as persons, their insistence that the dying individual is a living human person who deserves respect and dignity has become the credo in thanatology.

...