Confronting Death: Values, Institutions, And Human Mortality

Confronting Death: Values, Institutions, And Human Mortality

Product DescriptionIn 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.ReviewAdvance Praise for Confronting Death:"This book breaks new ground. It is an encyclopaedic, thoughtful, well-crafted analysis of the American way of death, and should be regarded as a landmark in the future."--Vern Bengtson, Director, Social Sciences Division, Andrus Gerontology Center at the University of SouthernCalifornia"This book is a rich source of information and offers thoughtful reflection which can serve as a valuable text for a course exploring death and dying."--Maureen Muldoon, University of WindsorAbout the AuthorDavid Wendell Moller is at Indiana University.