Elisabeth Kudbler-Ross On The Fear Of Death Summary

In Elisabeth Kubler-Ross’ essay, “On the Fear of Death,” she claims that the more science advances, the more people fear and deny death, and she includes various kinds of evidence to enhance her opinions on death. She describes the changes made in society and how they affect people. She starts with how science has changed the time of death for most people, then moves on to how our unconscious mind deals with death and how types of people deal with death. She finally compares a death in an older society to a death in the modern society. Kubler-Ross begins her essay with describing how science has changed the demographics of death. In the past, most families had at least one death in infancy or childhood, so people experienced death several …show more content…
She explains that it goes back to the unconscious mind. Death is not possible in regards to ourselves. The unconscious mind cannot comprehend an end to it’s own existence, and if it does end, it cannot be by any natural causes. The unconscious perceives death as a bad thing because it can only connect death to an outside source, it can only understand death if it is cause by an exterior and malicious force. This malicious force must be feared because anything that causes harm is bad or evil. The unconscious mind also cannot distinguish between a wish and a deed, like wanting someone to die temporarily and then that person actually dying. This is especially prevalent in a child, since a child lacks the cognitive functions to separate fantasy from reality. A child may also expect the deceased to come back, because children are incapable of realizing permanence. In an older person, an adult, there is guilt and the person who makes the wish will feel horribly about it, causing them to associate those bad feelings with death. This leads them to fear their own death and be more aware of it, but Kubler-Ross writes that they will not be consciously aware of it. People also feel grief and shame, along with guilt, when someone dies. These feelings are not very different from feeling anger, yet a person would feel ashamed if they showed anger for a deceased person, so they often hide it. …show more content…
She compares the death of a man living in her town as a child to the death of a man in modern society. The man in her town fell out of a tree and asked to die in his own home, where he calmly said his farewells and prepared everything for his death. He died after saying goodbye and died comfortably, with his children knowing he loved them. The man in modern times is rushed to a noisy hospital where he is poked and prodded, and is generally uncomfortable. Rather than getting to say goodbye to everyone he loves, he is forced into treatments he may or may not want. He is also monitored and kept an arms length away from anyone he might want to speak to before dying. Unlike the death in a small town, this man dies alone and separated from everyone, in an unfamiliar place. Kubler-Ross then goes on to ask, “Is the reason for this increasingly mechanical, depersonalized approach ... our own way to cope with and repress the anxieties that a terminally or critically ill patient evokes in us?” (165). While modern science may be effective in extending some people’s lives, Kubler-Ross questions if the suffering at the end of their lives is worth the extended length of their lives. Her essay examines if people fear death more as science extends their lives, and she determines that it does not matter. What does matter is that