Confronting Death: Values, Institutions, and Human Mortality
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In this masterfully written text, Moller powerfully critiques how modern technology and bureaucracy, along with professionalization, have come to dehumanize the experience of death for both the dying and their survivors. Beginning with an historical overview of traditional patterns of death and dying, Moller examines the technological advances of the medical profession and the effects, both social and individual, that modern medicine has had on our perception of death, including pain and suffering, the expanding gap between clinical and spiritual death, and how our traditional social apparatuses help us to respond to death and dying. Chapters on funerals, grief, suicide, the death of children, the holocaust, and a critique of therapeutic models illustrate how doctors have come to control the process of dying, how professional funeral directors dominate funerals, and how professional therapists channel the grief of survivors. Invaluable for psychology, nursing, and religion courses in death and dying, this text offers a penetrating synthesis of the complex personal and social issues surrounding our mortality.
1Dying and Historical Context32The Modern Organization of Death243The Dying Patient: A Creation of the Modern Organization of Death464Funerals as Social Facts795Grief and Individualism: The Decline of Ritual and the Emergence of the Therapeutic Model1066On Dying, Death, and Children1357The Death of Humans by Humans, Part One: Violent Deaths of Suicide1708The Death of Humans by Humans, Part Two: The Holocaust and the Technology of Genocide2069Easing Death's Sting: A Conclusion236Notes249Bibliography267Credits297Index299
