Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

[rikzilla]

I have just finished reading her memoir titled: The Wheel of Life. She tells a compelling story, and has lived a very interesting and full life. Her book "On Death and Dying" led to an international revolution in hospice care, and seems to have spawned a new "ology" called Thanatology which is described as:
than·a·tol·o·gy ( P ) Pronunciation Key (thn-tl-j)
n.
The study of death and dying, especially in their psychological and social aspects.
Link (http://www.themystica.com/mystica/articles/t/thanatology.html)

This lady became like a living saint, and obviously the work she did to promote hospice care was meaningful, world-changing stuff. However, sometime soon after she wrote On Death and Dying, she began to veer off into woo-wooism. She became infatuated with a "channeler" (Jay Barham),..which ended up destroying her marriage. In the end she saw through this charlatan, but only to a point. She continued to believe that she could speak to spirits on her own.

This book was as fascinating as it was disturbing. There is no doubt that Dr. Kübler-Ross is a good and highly intelligent person. But I came away with the feeling that she is the most highly functioning delusional person I've ever heard of.

I searched the forum and the commentary here on JREF for any discussion of Kübler-Ross, or her work and found nothing. I was wondering if anyone else has read her works, and if so, what they think of her contributions to society, and her penchant for woo-wooism.

The more I read about this lady in books and the internet, the more I both admire her amazing contributions and pity her obvious credulity. She was supposedly the first to research the near death experience (NDE), and says in her book that over 20,000 individuals were interviewed and told remarkably similar stories long before her work was ever published. I have to wonder though, how to seperate the wheat from the chaff as far as her research is concerned. Is there really something to the NDE phenomenon? Or was it just a case of confirmation bias?

If anyone else has read her work I'd love to hear your take on it.

Thanks,
-z

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

I don't much about Kübler-Ross. I suspect others here might.

I don't understand why a commonality in the description of people's near-death experiences are taken as indication of anything paranormal. Everyone describes driving a car similarly, too. Are they driving their way to heaven?

~~ Paul

[rikzilla]

I'm surprised no one here has any comment on the good Dr. She was the first medical professional to document deathbed visions and near-death experiences. She did 20,000 interviews with people who were either dying, or had experienced NDE's during resusitation. All accounts had similar elements, and this before any information had been published. So it's not really in the same category as alien abduction stories...or is it??

-z

[Upchurch]

Originally posted by rikzilla
All accounts had similar elements, and this before any information had been published. So it's not really in the same category as alien abduction stories...or is it?? I know next to nothing about neuroscience, but I would think it would be a different category from alien abduction stories. There are a wide set of cicumstances that lead to abduction accounts, many of which are now influenced by popular culture. Near death experiences are triggered naturally by a very specific series of events in the brain. I seem to remember someone pointing out that those same experiences can be triggered artificially as well.

The point being, I don't think it's surprising that there are similar elements to reported NDE's. They're probably as similar as one person's brain is similar to the next person's brain.

[TruthSeeker]

Sorry not to have commented on this sooner but I just saw it.

As you say, Dr. Kubler-Ross was one of the very first to systematically study the process of dying. She interviewed hundreds of patients at the end of life and was able to use this information to develop her theory of the stages of dying. Although the theory has been criticized (mainly for ignoring the importance of anxiety and for the suggestion that people prgress through the stages in sequence (although careful reading of her work tends to dispute this)) and more sophisticated theories have been developed, her work remains foundational.

As you outline, she became quite the woo woo. I understand this more and more as I work in end of life care. There is so much death every day, that it really does create a longing for life to continue. It gives one hope that all the suffering is not in vain. It is very bleak to imagine that it all ends and there is no purpose to any of it. Woo-wooism offers hope and allows one to cope. I can imagine that "hearing" a dead patient thank you would be immensely rewarding.

I am not familiar with her NDE work. I'll look into it. Off hand, I can say that there are commonalities for many patients in the last few hours...speaking to the deceased, seeing lights, tunnels, ...again, it is easy for me to imagine that someone looking for hope would be more inclined to thinking of these experiences as a sign of the afterlife rather than symptoms of a nervous system shutting down. But this is outside my area of expertise.

[epepke]

Originally posted by rikzilla
I'm surprised no one here has any comment on the good Dr.

Well, since there's a vacuum...

I remember a few years ago reading an article that said that on her deathbed, she expressed a lot of distaste for her earlier opinions with respect to god.

When I was in college, I wrote an essay analyzing Kafka's The Metamorphosis in terms of Kubler-Ross. Don't laugh. This is the sort of thing that people do in college.

And yesterday, I saw All That Jazz, in which Kubler-Ross' idea are a central metaphor. It really is an excellent movie.

[Hexxenhammer]

Originally posted by rikzilla
She did 20,000 interviews with people who were either dying, or had experienced NDE's during resusitation. All accounts had similar elements, and this before any information had been published. So it's not really in the same category as alien abduction stories...or is it??

-z I don't know anything about the lady, but it seems to me that it IS the same as alien abductions. Insofar as the reason for the convergence of similar elements in accounts is attributable to physiology as opposed to something paranormal happening. It seems she jumped to the conclusion that NDE's must represent life after death instead of a common physical symptom of nearly dying. Like sleep paralysis has been shown to be a common physical cause of someone thinking they've been abducted by aliens.

[epepke]

Originally posted by Hexxenhammer
I don't know anything about the lady, but it seems to me that it IS the same as alien abductions. Insofar as the reason for the convergence of similar elements in accounts is attributable to physiology as opposed to something paranormal happening.

She's most famous for a taxonomy the stages of coming to grips with dying. I can never remember the order, but they're something like denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.

I don't remember anything particular about NDE's with respect to her. As far as I'm concerned, Susan Blackmore is better at that kind of thing.

[Hexxenhammer]

Originally posted by epepke
She's most famous for a taxonomy the stages of coming to grips with dying. I can never remember the order, but they're something like denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.Didn't Homer go through these when he thought he was dying? Lisa was telling him the stages:
Lisa: The first stage is denial.
Homer:Pfft! I'm not dying.
Lisa: Then anger.
Homer: AAAARRRRGGGGHHH!
Lisa: Next is bargaining.
Homer: Lisa, you've gotta get me outta this. I'll make it worth your while.
Lisa: Depression.
Homer: Oh why me! Sob sob...
Lisa: And finally acceptance.
Homer: Oh well, we all gotta go sometime.

[TruthSeeker]

Originally posted by Hexxenhammer
Didn't Homer go through these when he thought he was dying? Lisa was telling him the stages:
Lisa: The first stage is denial.
Homer:Pfft! I'm not dying.
Lisa: Then anger.
Homer: AAAARRRRGGGGHHH!
Lisa: Next is bargaining.
Homer: Lisa, you've gotta get me outta this. I'll make it worth your while.
Lisa: Depression.
Homer: Oh why me! Sob sob...
Lisa: And finally acceptance.
Homer: Oh well, we all gotta go sometime.


A testament to the wide reach of her work. I think the Simpson's did a similar sequence with her stages when Marge and Homer split up with Bart going through the stages.

[Ladewig]

She has her own site (http://www.elisabethkublerross.com/).

As has been mentioned, in the late 1960's her experience of talking to thousands of dying patients and learning how how they were ill-treated, she wrote what was considered a revolutionary book on the subject. The sad part is that in 1995, she had a stroke and was diagnosed as having only a small chance of surviving. During her recovery she learned first hand that there are hospitals that are no different now than they were in the 1960's and that still treat terminal and possibly terminal patients with less dignity and honesty than they deserve.