Clifton D. Bryant (Editor)-Handbook of Death and Dying (2 Vol. Set)-SAGE Publications (2003)

EDITORIAL BOARD Clifton D. Bryant, Editor in Chief Virginia Tech University Patty M. Bryant, Managing Editor Charles K. Edgley, Associate Editor Oklahoma State University Michael R. Leming, Associate Editor St. Olaf College Dennis L. Peck, Associate Editor University of Alabama Kent L. Sandstrom, Associate Editor University of Northern Iowa Watson F. Rogers II, Assistant Editor Virginia Tech University

Copyright © 2003 by Sage Publications, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. For information: Sage Publications, Inc. 2455 Teller Road Thousand Oaks, California 91320 E-mail: [emailprotected] Sage Publications Ltd. 6 Bonhill Street London EC2A 4PU United Kingdom Sage Publications India Pvt. Ltd. B-42, Panchsheel Enclave Post Box 4109 New Delhi 110 017 India

Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Handbook of death and dying / edited by Clifton D. Bryant. p. cm. A Sage Reference Publication. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-7619-2514-7 1. Death—Social aspects. 2. Thanatology. I. Bryant, Clifton D., 1932HQ1073.H36 2003 306.9—dc222

2003014864 03

Acquiring Editor: Editorial Assistant: Production Editor: Copy Editors: Typesetter: Indexer: Cover Designer:

Rolf A. Janke Sara Tauber Diana E. Axelsen Judy Selhorst (Volume I) Linda Gray (Volume II) C&M Digitals (P) Ltd. Rachel Rice Ravi Balasuriya

CONTENTS

Preface: A Thanatological Odyssey Introduction About the Editors About the Contributors

xv xix xxiii xxvii

VOLUME ONE: THE PRESENCE OF DEATH PART I: DEATH IN CULTURAL CONTEXT

CONFRONTING DEATH The Universal Fear of Death and the Cultural Response

Calvin Conzelus Moore and John B. Williamson Historical Changes in the Meaning of Death in the Western Tradition

William R. Wood and John B. Williamson Dealing With Death: Western Philosophical Strategies

Michael R. Taylor Death Denial: Hiding and Camouflaging Death

Bert Hayslip, Jr. Death, Dying, and the Dead in Popular Culture

Keith F. Durkin The Death Awareness Movement: Description, History, and Analysis

Kenneth J. Doka KEEPING THE DEAD ALIVE The Spiritualist Movement: Bringing the Dead Back Charles F. Emmons

Reincarnation: The Technology of Death

Jane Dillon Hosts and Ghosts: The Dead as Visitors in Cross-Cultural Perspective

Clifton D. Bryant Ghosts: The Dead Among Us

Charles F. Emmons The Malevolent “Undead”: Cross-Cultural Perspectives

Keith P. Jacobi TRANSCENDING DEATH: RELIGIOUS AFTER-DEATH BELIEFS Spirituality

110

John D. Morgan Religion and the Mediation of Death Fear

117

Michael R. Leming Christian Beliefs Concerning Death and Life After Death

126

Donald E. Gowan Near-Death Experiences as Secular Eschatology

137

Tillman Rodabough and Kyle Cole DEATH AND SOCIAL EXCHANGE Life Insurance as Social Exchange Mechanism

148

Dennis L. Peck “Full Military Honors”: Ceremonial Interment as Sacred Compact

159

Timothy W. Wolfe and Clifton D. Bryant Symbolic Immortality and Social Theory: The Relevance of an Underutilized Concept

173

Lee Garth Vigilant and John B. Williamson

PART II: DEATH IN SOCIAL CONTEXT: VARIANTS IN MORALITY AND MEANING

183

THE SOCIAL MODES OF DEATH: THE IMPORT OF CONTEXT AND CIRCUMSTANCE Historical and Epidemiological Trends in Mortality in the United States

185

Vicki L. Lamb Global Mortality Rates: Variations and Their Consequences for the Experience of Dying Clive Seale

198

To Die, by Mistake: Accidental Deaths

211

Lee Garth Vigilant and John B. Williamson Megadeaths: Individual Reactions and Social Responses to Massive Loss of Life

223

Jerome Rosenberg and Dennis L. Peck On the Role and Meaning of Death in Terrorism

236

Lee Garth Vigilant and John B. Williamson Death Attributed to Medical Error

246

Jerry T. McKnight and Pat Norton Homicidal Death

256

Steven A. Egger and Kim A. Egger PRE-PERSONALITY DEATHS Pre-Personality Pregnancy Losses: Miscarriages, Stillbirths, and Abortions

264

Jack P. Carter Sudden Infant Death Syndrome

275

Charles A. Corr and Donna M. Corr DEATH AS SOCIAL ENTITY: THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF DEATH The Evolution of the Legal Definition of Death

284

Tillman Rodabough Death Education

292

Charles A. Corr and Donna M. Corr DEATH AS INTERMISSION: THE CONTINUATION OF IDENTITY The Postself in Social Context

302

Jack Kamerman

PART III: DEATH AND SOCIAL CONTROVERSY

307

SUICIDE Historical Suicide

309

Alan H. Marks Suicide and Suicide Trends in the United States, 1900–1999

319

Dennis L. Peck Suicide Survivors: The Aftermath of Suicide and Suicidal Behavior John L. McIntosh

339

Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Suicide

351

David Lester CAPITAL PUNISHMENT A History of Execution Methods in the United States

357

Trina N. Seitz Capital Punishment in the United States

368

Stephanie Picolo Manzi Military Executions

378

J. Robert Lilly ABORTION The Abortion Issue in the United States

386

Michael C. Kearl THE HIV/AIDS EPIDEMIC Dying of AIDS and Social Stigmatization

397

Robin D. Moremen EUTHANASIA Medical Euthanasia

405

Gail C. Walker Physician-Assisted Death

424

Monika Ardelt

PART IV: PASSING AWAY: DYING AS SOCIAL PROCESS

435

DEATH AS SOCIAL PROCESS: THE APPROACH OF DEATH Death Awareness and Adjustment Across the Life Span

437

Bert Hayslip, Jr., and Robert O. Hansson Dying as Deviance: An Update on the Relationship Between Terminal Patients and Medicine

448

Charles Edgley DEATH AS SOCIAL PROCESS: DYING The Dying Process

457

Graves E. Enck On Coming to Terms With Death and Dying: Neglected Dimensions of Identity Work Kent L. Sandstrom

468

THE INSTITUTIONAL CONTEXT OF DEATH Death in Two Settings: The Acute Care Facility and Hospice

475

Sarah Brabant The History of the Hospice Approach

485

Michael R. Leming Dying in a Total Institution: The Case of Death in Prison

495

Francis D. Glamser and Donald A. Cabana Formal and Informal Caregiving at the End of Life Pamela J. Kovacs and David P. Fauri

502

VOLUME TWO: THE RESPONSE TO DEATH PART V: FUNERALIZATION: THE SOCIAL CEREMONIES OF DEATH

511

BEFORE THE FUNERAL The Death Notification Process: Recommendations for Practice, Training, and Research

513

Alan E. Stewart and Janice Harris Lord The Autopsy

523

James Claude Upshaw Downs A Social History of Embalming

534

Melissa Johnson Williams THE ORGANIZATIONAL RESPONSE TO DEATH Fallen Soldiers: Death and the U.S. Military

544

Morten G. Ender, Paul T. Bartone, and Thomas A. Kolditz Death-Related Work Systems Outside the Funeral Home

556

Watson Rogers II and Clifton D. Bryant FUNERALIZATION IN THE UNITED STATES The American Family and the Processing of Death Prior to the 20th Century

567

Paul David Nygard and Catherine H. Reilly The Evolution of the Funeral Home and the Occupation of Funeral Director

575

Jerome J. Salomone The American Funeral

587

Bert Hayslip, Jr., Kenneth W. Sewell, and Russell B. Riddle Black Funeralization and Culturally Grounded Services

598

James L. Moore III and Clifton D. Bryant On the Economics of Death in the United States

604

Dwayne A. Banks FUNERALIZATION IN CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE The Funeral and the Funeral Industry in the United Kingdom

611

Brian Parsons Practices Surrounding the Dead in French-Speaking Belgium: Rituals in Kitlike Form Florence Vandendorpe

619

The Native American Way of Death

631

Gerry R. Cox The Hindu Way of Death

640

Anantanand Rambachan The Muslim Way of Death

649

Dawood H. Sultan The Japanese Way of Death

656

Hikaru Suzuki The Taoist (Chinese) Way of Death

673

Linda Sun Crowder The Jewish Way of Death

687

Ruben Schindler POSTFUNERALIZATION ACTIVITIES Obituaries

694

Joyce E. Williams Gracing God’s Acres: Some Notes on a Typology of Cemetery Visitation in Western Cultures

703

Joseph E. Boyle Impromptu Memorials to the Dead

712

Jon K. Reid Death and Community Responses: Comfort, Community, and Culture

721

William J. Hauser and AnneMarie Scarisbrick-Hauser Monuments in Motion: Gravemarkers, Cemeteries, and Memorials as Material Form and Context

730

Ann M. Palkovich and Ann Korologos Bazaronne

PART VI: BODY DISPOSITION

741

DISPOSING OF THE DEAD: ELYSIUM AS REAL ESTATE The History of the American Cemetery and Some Reflections on the Meaning of Death

743

Vicky M. MacLean and Joyce E. Williams Pet Burial in the United States David D. Witt

757

DISPOSING OF THE DEAD: OPTIONS AND ALTERNATIVES Cremation

767

Douglas J. Davies Body Recycling

775

Kelly A. Joyce and John B. Williamson The Iceman Cometh: The Cryonics Movement and Frozen Immortality

786

Clifton D. Bryant and William E. Snizek Disposing of the Dead: Minor Modes

792

DeAnn K. Gauthier, Nancy K. Chaudoir, and Rhonda D. Evans DISPOSING OF THE DEAD: OTHER TIMES, OTHER PLACES The Social History of the European Cemetery

801

Harold Mytum Body Disposition in Cross-Cultural Context: Prehistoric and Modern Non-Western Societies

810

Keith P. Jacobi Mummification and Mummies in Ancient Egypt

819

Peter Lacovara and John Baines

PART VII: THANATOLOGICAL AFTERMATH

827

GRIEF AND BEREAVEMENT The Evolution of Mourning and the Bereavement Role in the United States: Middle- and Upper-Class European Americans

829

David E. Balk Social Dimensions of Grief

838

María I. Vera The Experience of Grief and Bereavement

847

Robert A. Neimeyer and Louis A. Gamino Bereavement in Cross-Cultural Perspective

855

Paul C. Rosenblatt THE SOCIAL IMPACT OF SURVIVORHOOD Widowhood and Its Social Implications Felix M. Berardo

862

Children and the Death of a Parent

871

Eric Lichten Parents and the Death of a Child

880

Sangeeta Singg

PART VIII: THE LEGALITIES OF DEATH

889

DEATH IN LEGAL CONTEXT Living Wills and Durable Power of Attorney for Health Care

891

Carolyn Pevey The Death Certificate: Civil Registration, Medical Certification, and Social Issues

899

Dennis L. Peck Coroner and Medical Examiner

909

James Claude Upshaw Downs DEATH, SUCCESSION, AND TESTAMENTORY INHERITANCE The Disposition of Property: Transfers Between the Dead and the Living

917

Robert K. Miller, Jr., Jeffrey P. Rosenfeld, and Stephen J. McNamee The Last Will and Testament: A Neglected Document in Sociological Research

926

Clifton D. Bryant and William E. Snizek THE LEGAL REGULATION OF DEATH-RELATED ACTIVITIES The Legal Regulation of Mortuary Science Education

934

Todd W. Van Beck Cemetery Regulation in the United States

941

Robert M. Fells DEATH AND LEGAL BLAME Death and Legal Blame: Wrongful Death

950

Thomas J. Vesper Negligent Death and Manslaughter

968

Frances P. Bernat THE DEAD AS LEGAL ENTITY “Thanatological Crime”: Some Conceptual Notes on Offenses Against the Dead as a Neglected Form of Deviant Behavior Clifton D. Bryant

974

PART IX: THE CREATIVE IMAGINATION AND THE RESPONSE TO DEATH

987

ART Death in Art

989

Charles E. Walton LITERATURE Cultural Concern With Death in Literature

998

Diana Royer MUSIC “Arise, Ye More Than Dead!” Culture, Music, and Death

1008

Robert Kastenbaum ORGANIC SCULPTURE Dead Zoo Chic: Some Conceptual Notes on Taxidermy in American Social Life

1019

Clifton D. Bryant and Donald J. Shoemaker

PART X: THE FUTURE OF DEATH Death in the Future: Prospects and Prognosis

1027 1029

Clifton D. Bryant, Charles Edgley, Michael R. Leming, Dennis L. Peck, and Kent L. Sandstrom Index

1041

PREFACE: A THANATOLOGICAL ODYSSEY

y early encounters with death, like those of other youngsters in the United States, were sporadic and ephemeral. My first encounter with death occurred 63 years ago, when my beloved dog Scrappy was killed by a truck in front of my home. Scrappy was more than a dog, he was my pal. My grief was painful. The death of my dog and the later demises of other pets over time were traumatic experiences. With the help of playmates, I created a pet cemetery for deceased pets and other dead creatures that we found, and that served to foster notions of confronting death collectively and of ritualistic obligations to the dead. At one point, I considered converting a storage shed next to the pet cemetery into a “chapel” for funeral services. My interest in death had become more than casual. One of my classmates in the third grade was the son of a mortician, and he often brought tombstone catalogs to school. I befriended him, and he let me look at the catalogs. They were imposing, with protective pages of tissue paper between the compelling photogravure pages of tombstone illustrations. I was fascinated by the images of marble and granite markers, and I remember them vividly even today. The occasional deaths and subsequent funerals of family friends and distant relatives introduced me to human death. Early in my primary school years, my grandparents, over the objections of my parents, took me to the funeral of a family friend who had died. My parents were of the death-denial generation; they believed that children should be shielded from death and that the funeral experience would traumatize me. Those in my grandparents’ generation, however, felt that people should confront death and learn to accept it as a natural and inevitable fact of life. I found the funeral experience, including viewing the body, to be informative and insight inspiring rather than traumatic. Like many individuals of my generation, I did not experience death in my immediate family until adulthood. However, while I was in high school the accidental deaths of several schoolmates gave death a very realistic presence for me. Growing up during World War II gave me an even more sobering perspective on death, with the large numbers of

combat deaths sustained by the U.S. armed forces. Family friends and neighbors received telegrams telling them of the deaths of sons or husbands with dreadful frequency. The ultimate tally of dead from the war, on both sides, especially as a result of massive bombing attacks such as those on German cities and the atomic bombing attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, demonstrated megadeath of almost unfathomable proportions. My intellectual interest in death, however, was not piqued until I was in college. Early in my college career, I read Evelyn Waugh’s novel The Loved One, with its dark and biting, satirical but compellingly amusing account of a dog cemetery and a human cemetery. Some years later, I read other popular books on death, such as Leroy Bowman’s The American Funeral (1959) and Jessica Mitford’s The American Way of Death (1963), which proved to be informative, if not entertaining. After college, a tour of duty in the army as a military police officer provided me with training in the investigation of violent death, such as murder, and an assignment as company commander of a military police detachment (making me the de facto chief of police) at Camp Rucker, Alabama, gave me some firsthand exposure to violent deaths from automobile and airplane wrecks as well as suicides. Early in my graduate school training, I encountered an article in a sociological journal that seized my attention. In 1958, William A. Faunce and Robert L. Fulton published an article titled “The Sociology of Death: A Neglected Area in Sociological Research” in the journal Social Forces. Suddenly, I (and some fellow graduate students) realized that death and dying are proper topics for scholarly investigation. One of my professors whom I had told about the article dismissed it as having little in the way of professional promise because the topic was too “doleful.” One of my graduate student friends, however, shortly thereafter undertook to write a master’s thesis on the funeral home as a work system. By the time I had finished my graduate work, my scholarly inclinations led me to study and teach the sociology of work and occupations as a major specialty. But the study of work encompasses the study of death-related work, among other types of vocational endeavors. I ultimately xv

xvi– • –HANDBOOK OF DEATH AND DYING

developed an interest in funerary work, and that interest has persisted for the remainder of my career. In 1968, as a new department head at Western Kentucky University, I inaugurated a new professional journal titled Sociological Symposium. As the name implies, each issue was to be a theme issue. The first issue of the journal was devoted entirely to the study of death and dying. It was very well received. Later in my career, when I came to Virginia Tech University, I had developed a more focused interest in the study of death and dying, and over a period of several years, I authored or coauthored a number of papers and articles on such topics as cryonics, last wills and testaments, taxidermy as a thanatological art form, thanatological crime, and symbolic communication between the living and the dead. As a result of my death-related scholarship, I developed a course called “The Sociology of Death,” which I have now taught for 25 years, invariably to very large classes of 130 to 300 students. The exploration of death and dying has come to occupy a place of significant centrality in my scholarly agenda, and I have addressed various death-related topics—such as military combat death and execution—in some of my books and articles. A number of extended trips to various countries in Southeast Asia (including living in two such countries, the Philippines and Taiwan, on visiting teaching appointments) afforded me opportunities to observe and study death in other cultures. I arrived in Taiwan during Ghost Month, observed funerals and cemetery behavior, and conducted a detailed study of geomancers (feng shui practitioners) who select grave sites for deceased persons. In the late 1970s, I founded the journal Deviant Behavior, for which I served as editor in chief for 13 years. During that time, the journal published many articles that addressed various types of death, including murder, suicide, and execution. As I reached middle age, death began to take its inevitable toll on my family and friends. Within a few short years, I lost my grandfather and grandmother, two maternal uncles, and, in 1979, my father, who died unexpectedly after surgery. Within this general time period my wife lost her grandfather, her father and mother, and her older brother. In recent years, a number of my old friends, dating back to high school, have passed away, as have numerous professional colleagues. Even several of my former students have died. As we age, death ceases to be a stranger and increasingly intrudes in our lives. A few years ago, I served as editor in chief of the fourvolume reference work The Encyclopedia of Criminology and Deviant Behavior. My involvement in the development of that work led me to the belief that a new reference compendium in the area of thanatology would be both timely and useful to scholars. I also felt that, rather than an encyclopedia of short and concise entries, this compendium should take the form of a collection of detailed and comprehensive essays that provide suitably informative contexts for the topics being discussed. This two-volume handbook is the result of that inspiration.

This effort has consumed the better part of 2 years and is the product of a sizable group undertaking. In this regard, a number of individuals have played signal roles, and they must be recognized and acknowledged. Rolf Janke at Sage Publications shared my original vision for the development of this compendium and greatly facilitated the process of review and contractual acceptance of the handbook as a Sage publishing project. Much appreciation goes to Rolf for adding the handbook to the Sage agenda. Sara Tauber, Rolf’s assistant, has been the liaison person at Sage throughout the development of this work and has provided invaluable assistance in handling and processing entry manuscripts, overseeing many of the attendant administrative details, and troubleshooting on various problematic details of the project. Many thanks go to Sara for her efforts. The copy editors for this project, Judy Selhorst and Linda Gray, have done an outstanding job in smoothing out the lumps and bumps in the chapters, as well as polishing and perfecting the narratives presented. The entries reflect their careful attention to detail, and I am most appreciative of their fine efforts. Diana Axelsen has served as the production editor for the handbook and has been its guiding hand as it has moved through the final stages toward publication. She has energetically pushed the project along on schedule and has creatively ensured a finished product that is attractive in design, nicely crafted in format, and impressive in appearance. My gratitude and thanks go to Diana for producing such an excellent set of books. My four associate editors—Charles Edgley, Michael Leming, Dennis Peck, and Kent Sandstrom—all signed on early, when the handbook was barely out of its conceptualization stage, and contributed to the final plan for, and outline of, the work, thereby lending their names and good offices to the effort. Once the project was under development, they served above and beyond the call of duty, reviewing, editing, and guiding the entry manuscripts to perfection, through multiple revisions in some instances. It was challenging and labor-intensive work, but they accomplished the task with professional aplomb, making no complaints or excuses while maintaining a cheerful mien in the face of my ongoing exhortations to accelerate their editing pace. The result is a set of outstanding essays that are interesting, informative, and insightful. I owe these colleagues a commodious supply of gratitude for their splendid effort. My assistant editor, Watson Rogers, did unstinting duty in all sorts of capacities—library researcher, computer technician and consultant, editor, author, and chief cook and bottle washer, to mention but some of his many roles. His contribution to the project was very significant, and I thank him for his tireless and creative efforts. The more than 100 contributing authors are to be especially commended for producing such fine essays in the face of very pressing time constraints. Their work invariably exceeded my expectations and forms a comprehensive body of thanatological knowledge that will serve scholars in the field for years to come.

Preface– • –xvii

A number of individuals provided clerical assistance in the preparation of the handbook. Brenda Husser provided valuable computer and word-processing information and advice. Lou Henderson assisted with the computer processing of manuscripts. Barbara Townley typed some of the manuscripts and helped format some of the graphics that accompanied them. I thank them all for their invaluable services. Diane Hawk expended much time and effort in typing manuscripts, developing graphics, printing out finished entries, and discharging a wide array of clerical responsibilities in connection with the project. I am very much indebted to her for her extraordinarily helpful assistance. Patty Bryant took on a prodigious workload as managing editor and labored mightily, sending and receiving thousands of e-mail messages, typing manuscripts, dealing

with telephone traffic, proofreading, filing, developing lists and outlines, running the “mail room,” handling a vast array of administrative details, and coordinating interaction with more than a hundred contributing authors and associate editors, plus the editorial staff at Sage. She accomplished all of this within the context of a grueling work agenda and a very demanding time schedule, all the while maintaining a cheerful composure and an optimistic and encouraging outlook. In this regard, she very much served as a role model for me on the project. She made an enormous contribution to the handbook, and I am extraordinarily indebted to her and owe her much love and affection in repayment. —Clifton D. Bryant

Preface– • –xvii

INTRODUCTION

eath, historically a topic of major social concern, has in recent decades become a phenomenon of even more relevance. Demographic trends portend a much-increased proportion of aged individuals in the U.S. population and an attendant increase in the number of terminal illnesses and death. Technological innovations such as organ transplants and life-support systems enhance the possibility of significantly extending life expectancy, but they also raise serious sociolegal and ethical questions concerning even the very definition of death itself. The corrosion of traditional religious beliefs and values, and the concomitant eschatological scenarios that they generate, renders more traumatic the prospect of death and the final annihilation of self. Death constitutes crisis for society as well as for individuals and groups. Various patterns of behavior and social processes have been institutionalized as coping and response mechanisms for confronting the crisis of death. Death has social consequences for the larger social enterprise as well as for immediate survivors, and societal perceptions of, and ideological posture toward, death have a major influence on culture and social structure. Death is component to the process of life, in that dying is a social as well as a physiological phenomenon. The particular patterns of death and dying characteristic to a given society engender modal cultural responses, and such institutionalized behavior has familial, economic, educational, religious, and political implications. Historically, death has been essentially a family matter, in that kin of the deceased handled the details of processing the dead and death. Death, human and animal, is a ubiquitous event in farming cultures and is assimilated into the fabric of social life and accepted as a matter of inevitability and the natural order. In the United States, various events of the 19th century, such as the advent of arterial embalming and increasing industrialization and urbanization, however, shifted the handling of death and the dead out of the home and into the commercial sphere. After death became a commercial commodity, intimate familiarity with it tended to fade and, in time, the United States became a death-denying society, to the extent of making death a taboo and, according to some, a “pornographic”

topic, thereby effectively shielding death from public attention. After World War II—and, to some extent, because of the war—death was “rediscovered,” and a new “death awareness” movement surfaced. The public took an interest in death, and books, articles in periodicals, programs on television, and movies all provided material to satisfy public curiosity and dialogue concerning the topic. Best-selling books such as Mitford’s The American Way of Death (1963) fueled disputatious debate about the ceremonies of death, and cases such as that of Karen Ann Quinlan generated discussion concerning the dilemmas that death sometimes precipitates. The expansion and enhancement of the mass media again brought death into the home, in the form of vivid accounts of homicide, disaster, war, plagues, executions, fatal accidents, and the burdens and trials of prolonged death due to chronic disease attendant to terminal illness. Death as a topic could not be denied or contained, and the body of public information about death grew and evolved into scholarly study and research. Death studies beyond medical studies became constituent to a number of academic disciplines, especially the behavioral sciences, such as sociology, anthropology, and psychology. Other applied fields, including social work, counseling, law, family development, and law enforcement, began to take a more expansive view of the social parameters of death. The literature of many disciplinary subfields began increasingly to focus on death studies and expanded accordingly. Because the field of death studies is multidisciplinary and subsumes a variety of specialty interests, the literature in this subdiscipline has developed and proliferated in near exponential fashion. Multiple scholarly journals are devoted to the study of death, and extensive lists of new books are published annually in the different constituent specialty areas. The mass of research and theoretical information available has become almost intellectually unmanageable. Beyond the extensive size of the literature that has been generated in this area, there are also the problems of literature overlap, conflicting findings, theoretical and conceptual ambiguity, fugitive literature, overlooked or neglected paradigms, unsubstantiated hypotheses, methodological incongruity, and exploratory redundancy to the xix

xx– • –HANDBOOK OF DEATH AND DYING

point of unproductivity. The corpus of knowledge in the field of death studies has, in effect, become increasingly unwieldy in terms of its parameters. What is needed at this time is an attempt to aggregate, consolidate, integrate, classify, organize, and better delineate and articulate the details of the information contained in the expansive body of literature that has been generated in this field. This, perhaps, can best be accomplished in the form of a concise but comprehensive compendium of the current state of knowledge in thanatology. In terms of constituent contribution to the body of knowledge in a given field, articles tend to be fragmentary and books are often truncated and ephemeral, whereas reference works offer the advantages of definitive summary, meaningful assessment, and productive synthesis. Reference works offer the further advantage of durability. Some encyclopedic reference works have served as the definitive arbiters in certain disciplines for decades. With the new millennium under way, this would seem to be an opportune and compelling time to stop and take stock of the literature in the field of thanatology, to arrange and synthesize that body of knowledge in a way that will be useful for scholars in the future. A properly developed reference work at this point in time will, in effect, provide direction and momentum to the study of death-related behavior for many years to come. An appropriate understanding of death and its attendant social processes can enable individuals to confront the prospect of death itself and their own mortality, and helps them to integrate the ongoing process of death more adequately into their total life experience. The primary focus of this reference work is to acquaint the user with the social consequences of death and the behavioral mechanisms, both individual and collective, through which death is experienced. It is my hope that this compendium will provide the user with a more sensitive insight into the social parameters of death and the various ways in which our behavior and our social institutions are affected by death and dying. Additionally, I hope that it will afford the user a refined perspective on the major death-related activities, such as funeralization, bereavement, and disposing of the dead. Many vocations address death and dying in one fashion or another. In this regard, this reference work should prove to be valuable, as a sensitizing as well as an educational resource, for prelaw and premedical students; for students who intend to pursue careers as clergy, nurses, or counselors; and for practitioners in the fields of medicine, law, law enforcement, social work, and insurance (to name only a few). Scholars and students in the fields of philosophy, management, family development, theology, psychology, sociology, education, and various heath-related fields should also appreciate the utility of this work. In developing comprehensive reference works, there are two basic strategies. One model of encyclopedia development involves the articulation of 500 to 1,000 basic concepts and intellectual notions, and then the generation of

concise entry essays for each topic. Although this approach results in inclusiveness regarding the parameters of the field and breadth of coverage in terms of the array of topics, it also has disadvantages in that the relatively brief expositions presented often display limited perspectives, and sometimes the collected entries provide a fragmented overview of the field. A second model addresses the task of coverage through the use of a smaller number of entries that take the form of essays that are more comprehensive in context and better integrate sets of individual concepts or topics. Often several basic concepts may be intimately linked or overlapping, and these may be understood most clearly within the framework of a more elaborate context. This purpose can best be served by a handbook such as this one. In the two volumes of this handbook, the contributors address approximately 100 pivotal topics, each of which subsumes and incorporates several more basic concepts and behaviors. The essays generated to discuss these topics direct special attention to the constituent concepts and social patterns within the exploration of the larger topical concern. Each chapter is of journal-article length and addresses its general topic with appropriate detail and elaboration. The advantage of this literary venue is that, compared with reference works that present extensive lists of topics in fragmented fashion, this model of compendium presents various subtopics and concepts in a more contextually elaborate fashion, demonstrating concept linkages and evolution, and provides enough background to ensure understanding. This work is, by intent and design, comprehensive and inclusive in content. Topics range from autopsies to vampires, from capital punishment to suicide, from abortion to physician-assisted death, from cryonics to the spiritualism movement. Major sections of these volumes focus on the cultural context of death (social means of transcending death), the various modes (causes) of death, death and social controversy (abortion, capital punishment, euthanasia, and suicide), dying as social process, funeralization, body disposition, grief and mourning, the legalities of death, and creative responses to death (art, literature, and music). This handbook is multidisciplinary; the contributing authors represent a diverse array of disciplines, including anthropology, psychology, social work, sociology, philosophy, theology, medicine, law, family studies, mortuary science, and history. This work is also cross-cultural; it addresses death-related behavior within a number of different religious contexts (including Christian, Hindu, Jewish, Taoist, and Muslim) and also examines such behavior in different countries and cultures (including Belgian funerals, European cemeteries, ancient Egyptian mummies, Japanese death rituals, Chinese cultural views of death, the Native American way of death, bereavement in different cultures, and body disposition in cross-cultural perspective). Various chapters also examine death-related topics in historical perspective, such as the history of the

Introduction– • –xxi

American cemetery, historical changes in the meaning of death in the Western world, the history of suicide, historical changes in body disposition for members of the military, and the processing of death in the American family prior to the 20th century. The two volumes of this handbook offer 103 definitive essays covering almost every dimension of death-related behavior. Leading scholars and researchers in the field of thanatology have contributed chapters, and all of the authors

represent authoritative expertise in their respective areas of knowledge and practice. The essays included here constitute an insightful and well-informed synthesis of the current state of understanding in the field of death studies. As a definitive exposition, these volumes should help shape, articulate, and direct the development of the corpus of knowledge in this field well into the 21st century. It is my hope that in this regard this handbook will be a signal advancement in the evolution of the social study of death.

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ABOUT THE EDITORS

EDITOR IN CHIEF Clifton D. Bryant, Ph.D., is Professor of Sociology at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech) in Blacksburg, Virginia. He has been a faculty member there since 1972 and served as Department Chair from 1972 to 1982. Prior to coming to Virginia Tech, he held full-time faculty teaching appointments at Western Kentucky University (Department Head 1967–1972), Millsaps College (Department Head 1963–1967), and the University of Georgia (1960–1963). He was Visiting Professor at Mississippi State University (Summer 1985) and at the Pennsylvania State University (Summer 1958). His research appointments include Visiting Scientist at the U.S. Army Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences (Summer 1993), Visiting Research Scholar with the Mississippi Alcohol Safety Education Program (Mississippi State University; Summer 1985), and Visiting Research Scholar with Training and Technology Project operated by the Resource Development Office of Oak Ridge Associated Universities, Inc. (Summer 1987). His foreign teaching appointments include Visiting Fulbright Professor, Department and Graduate Institute of Sociology, National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan, Republic of China (1987–1988), and Visiting Professor in the Department of Sociology/Anthropology, Xavier University, The Ateneo, Cagayan de Oro City, Mindanao, Philippines (1984–1985). He was a participant in the U.S. Department of Education’s 1998 Fulbright-Hays Seminars Abroad Program in the People’s Republic of China (Summer 1998) and was also a participant in the U.S. Department of Education’s 1993 Fulbright-Hays Seminars Abroad Program in Hungary (Summer, 1993). Dr. Bryant served as President of the Southern Sociological Society (1978–1979) and as President of the Mid-South Sociological Association (1981–1982). He was the recipient of the Mid-South Sociological Association’s Distinguished Career Award in 1991 and the Distinguished Book Award in 2001. He is also the recipient of the Southern Sociological Society’s 2003 Distinguished Contributions to Teaching Award. He has been listed in

Who’s Who in America since 1984 and in Who’s Who in the World since 1991. He is a member of Omicron Delta Kappa, Phi Kappa Phi, Phi Beta Delta, Alpha Kappa Delta, Pi Kappa Alpha, and Alpha Phi Omega. Dr. Bryant was founder and Chairman of the Editorial Board of Sociological Symposium (1968–1980). He was also the founder of Deviant Behavior and served as Editor-in-Chief of that journal from 1978 to 1991. He continues to serve as Chair of the Editorial Policy Board for the journal. He was editor of the Southern Sociologist (1970–1974). He has served as a member of the editorial board of Criminology (1978–1981), Associate Editor of Sociological Forum (1979–1980), Associate Editor of Sociological Spectrum (1981–1985), member of the Board of Advisory Editors of Sociological Inquiry (1981–1985) and also Associate Editor of that journal (1997–2000). He was a member of the Board of Editors of Society and Animals (1997–1999) and was Associate Editor for a special issue of Marriage and Family Relations (Fall 1982). He is the author of Sexual Deviancy and Social Proscription; Khaki-Collar Crime: Deviant Behavior in Military Context; and Deviant Behavior: Occupational and Organizational Bases; editor of The Encyclopedia of Criminology and Deviant Behavior (four volumes); Deviant Behavior: Readings in the Sociology of Norm Violations; The Rural Work Force: Nonagricultural Occupations in America; Sexual Deviance in Sexual Context; The Social Dimensions of Work; and coeditor of Social Problems Today: Dilemmas and Dimensions; Deviance and the Family; and Introductory Sociology: Selected Readings for the College Scene. He has published articles in a number of professional journals, including Social Forces, Society, Sociological Inquiry, Sociology and Social Research, Rural Sociology, Sociological Forum, American Journal of Public Health, the Journal of Sex Research, Journal of Veterinary Medical Education, Journal of Leisure Sciences, Sociological Spectrum, The Rural Sociologist, Psychological Reports, Free Inquiry in Creative Sociology, World Leisure and Recreation, Hort Technology, Anthrozoos, Applied Behavioral Science xxiii

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Review, Man and Environmental Systems, The Southern Sociologist, and Deviant Behavior. He received his B.A. and M.A. degrees from the University of Mississippi, did advanced graduate work at the University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill), and received his Ph.D. degree from Louisiana State University.

MANAGING EDITOR Patty M. Bryant has worked as an executive secretary for various corporations and agencies, including the law firm of Stennett and Stennett in Jackson, Mississippi; Orgill Brothers Hardware Corporation; Great Southern Box Corporation; Illinois Central Railroad; and the city of Blacksburg, Virginia. She has been involved in the editorial process of several journals, including Sociological Symposium, Southern Sociologist, and Deviant Behavior, for which she served as Assistant Editor and later as Managing Editor. She has traveled extensively in Asia and lived in both the Philippines and Taiwan, where she worked with Clifton D. Bryant in conducting research on Asian culture. She was involved in the editorial process (with Clifton D. Bryant) on several books, including Deviant Behavior: Readings in the Sociology of Norm Violation, Deviant Behavior: Occupational and Organizational Bases, and The Social Dimensions of Work. Most recently, she served as Managing Editor of The Encyclopedia of Criminology and Deviant Behavior (four volumes). She graduated from Draughon’s Business College in Jackson, Mississippi, and did undergraduate work at Western Kentucky University, majoring in sociology.

ASSOCIATE EDITORS Charles Edgley, Ph.D., is Professor and Chair of the Department of Sociology at Oklahoma State University. The author or coauthor of six books and numerous scholarly articles, he has been teaching courses on death and dying, social psychology, deviance, and sociological theory for more than 30 years. Working within the symbolic interactionist tradition, he coedited the widely acclaimed Life as Theater: A Dramaturgical Sourcebook as well as several articles with the late Dennis Brissett. That book represented a major contribution to dramaturgical analysis and brought together some of the first dramaturgical thinking applied to death and dying. He also coauthored (with Ronny Turner) “Death as Theater: A Dramaturgical Analysis of the American Funeral.” Michael R. Leming, Ph.D., is Professor of Sociology and Anthropology and Asian Studies at St. Olaf College. He is the coauthor (with George E. Dickinson) of Understanding Dying, Death, and Bereavement (1985, 1990, 1994, 1997, and 2000) and Understanding Families: Diversity,

Continuity, and Change (1990, 1995). He is also the coeditor (with Raymond DeVries and Brendan Furnish) of The Sociological Perspective: A Value-Committed Introduction (1989) and (with George E. Dickinson and Alan C. Mermann) Annual Editions: Dying, Death, and Bereavement (1992, 1994, 1996, 1998, 2000, and 2002). He is the founder and former director of the St. Olaf College Social Research Center, former member of the Board of Directors of the Minnesota Coalition on Terminal Care, and steering committee member of the Northfield AIDS Response, and he serves a hospice educator, volunteer, and grief counselor. He currently directs the Spring Semester in Thailand program at Chiang Mai University. He holds degrees from Marquette University (M.A.) and the University of Utah (Ph.D.) and has done additional graduate study at the University of California at Santa Barbara. Dennis L. Peck, Ph.D., is Professor of Sociology at the University of Alabama. He has served as a senior analyst with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the U.S. Department of Education. He is a past President of the Mid-South Sociological Association, President-elect of the Alabama/Mississippi Sociological Association, and was honored as a Distinguished Alumnus by the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. Other past professional involvement includes serving as editor of Sociological Inquiry, book review editor for Deviant Behavior, and thematic issue editor for the Quarterly Journal of Ideology, Sociology and Social Welfare, and Sociological Inquiry. He was also associate editor for The Encyclopedia of Criminology and Deviant Behavior and has served on the editorial boards of several journals. Included among his publications are Fatalistic Suicide; Psychosocial Effects of Hazardous Toxic Waste Disposal on Communities; Open Institutions: The Hope for Democracy; Demographic and Structural Change: The Effects of the 1980s on American Society; and Extraordinary Behavior: A Case Study Approach to Understanding Social Problems. His research has been published in a wide range of professional journals, including Sociological Spectrum; Health and Social Work; Social Science; Omega: Journal of Death and Dying; Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare; Sociological Practice; Sociological Practice Review; Sociological Inquiry; Clinical Sociology Review; and International Quarterly of Community Health Education, among others. He earned his Ph.D. in sociology from Washington State University and M.S. degree in sociology from the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. Watson Rogers II, M.S., is a doctoral candidate in sociology at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, where he also received a master’s of science degree in sociology in fall 2000. His master’s thesis is titled “A Theoretical Synthesis of Telecommuting and Family Violence,” and his current research interests include work, technology, the sociology of science, deviance, and thanatology.

About the Editors– • –xxv

Kent L. Sandstrom, Ph.D., is Professor of Sociology at the University of Northern Iowa. He is also the Executive Officer of the Midwest Sociological Society. He received the Faculty Excellence Award from the Iowa Board of Regents in 2000, the Outstanding Teaching Award from the University of Northern Iowa in 1999, and the Herbert Blumer Award from the Society for the Study of Symbolic

Interaction in 1989. His most recent journal publications focus on how people living with HIV/AIDS manage emotions and construct vital and enduring identities. He is the coauthor of two books: Symbols, Selves, and Social Reality: A Symbolic Interactionist Approach to Social Psychology and Knowing Children: Participant Observation With Minors (Sage, 1988).

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ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS

Monika Ardelt, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Florida. She is also a Core Faculty Member of the Institute on Aging and a Founding Faculty Member and Member of the Advisory Committee of the Center for Spirituality and Health at the University of Florida. In 1999, she was elected as a Brookdale National Fellow to study the similarities and differences between aging and dying well. Her research focuses on successful human development across the life course with particular emphasis on the relationships between wisdom, spirituality, aging well, and dying well. She has been published in several professional journals, such as Journal of Gerontology, Social Psychology Quarterly, Social Forces, Research on Aging, Journal of Aging Studies, and Journal of Religious Gerontology. She received her M.A. in sociology from the Johann Wolfgang Goethe-University of Frankfurt/Main in Germany and her Ph.D. in sociology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. John Baines, D.Phil., has been Professor of Egyptology at the University of Oxford since 1976. He has held visiting appointments in Egypt, France, Germany, and the United States. He has lectured in Egypt and Sudan, Europe, Japan, and the United States and has represented the field of Egyptology at interdisciplinary conferences and advanced seminars in archaeology, anthropology, art history, and literature, as well as publishing in journals and collected volumes over a similar spread of fields. He is coauthor with Jaromir Malek of Cultural Atlas of Ancient Egypt (2nd ed., 2000). He has research interests in ancient Egyptian art, religion, and literature; social theory; and anthropological approaches to ancient civilizations. He has directed epigraphic fieldwork at Abydos in Upper Egypt. His current research is on biography, elite self-presentation, and the enactment of an aesthetic high culture by the Egyptian elite. David E. Balk, Ph.D., is Professor of Human Development and Family Science in the College of Human Environmental Sciences at Oklahoma State University. Most of his research efforts have been focused on adolescent bereavement, with some attention paid as well to program evaluation.

The National Institute of Mental Health and the William T. Grant Foundation funded some of his bereavement research proposals. He is associate editor for the journal Death Studies and for Omega and the book review editor for Death Studies. His professional memberships include the Association for Death Education and Counseling (ADEC); the International Work Group on Death, Dying, and Bereavement; the American Evaluation Association; and the American Psychological Association; he is a member of the Scientific Advisory Committee that the Center for the Advancement of Health formed to examine bereavement research issues. He also is a member of the ADEC Credentialing Council and Chair of the ADEC Test Committee working to develop a national exam to certify foundational knowledge in thanatology. He earned an M.A. in theology from Marquette University, an M.C. in counseling psychology from Arizona State University, and a Ph.D. in counseling psychology from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. Dwayne A. Banks, Ph.D., has been Country Director of the Partners for Health Reform Plus (PHRplus) project in Amman, Jordan, since March 1998. PHRplus is a USAIDfunded project providing long-term technical assistance to the government of Jordan in the areas of health insurance reform, hospital managerial reform, health policy training, and research, as well as the development of a system of national health accounts. Prior to his current assignment, he served as Assistant Professor of Public Policy at the Richard & Rhoda Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1994, he was selected as an Atlantic Fellow in Public Policy, by the British government. He was a Visiting Scholar at the London School of Economics and the King’s Fund Policy Institute. He has published extensively in prominent research journals such as Health Economics, Journal of the American Medical Association, and Health Matrix Journal of Law and Medicine and has authored numerous technical reports on health policy-related issues. He currently serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Anti-Aging Medicine. He received a Ph.D. in economics from the University of California at Berkeley, where he specialized xxvii

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in health care economics, industrial organization, and public finance. Paul T. Bartone, Ph.D., teaches in the Department of Behavioral Sciences and Leadership and serves as Director of the Leader Development Research Center at the United States Military Academy, West Point. He joined the U.S. Army Medical Service Corps in 1985 as a research psychologist and has served continuously on active duty since then. He has conducted numerous field studies on psychosocial stress, health, and adaptation among military personnel and their families, covering deployments ranging from the Gulf War through Bosnia, as well as a number of peacetime disasters. A continuing focus of his research involves the search for factors, such as personality hardiness, that might account for individual and group resiliency under stress. Professional memberships include the Inter-University Seminar on Armed Forces and Society (IUS), the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies, the American Psychological Society, the American Psychological Association (Divisions 1, 13, 19, 48, & 52), and RC01 of the International Sociological Association. He is also a member of ERGOMAS (European Research Group on Military and Society) and is the ERGOMAS coordinator for the Working Group on Morale, Cohesion, and Leadership. He has served as Division 19’s Member-at-Large, representative to APA’s CIRP (Committee on International Relations in Psychology), chair of the International Military Psychology Committee and is currently Division 19’s Web site coordinator and liaison to the IUS. He received his Ph.D. in psychology/human development from the University of Chicago in 1984. Ann Korologos Bazzarone, M.A., is a doctoral candidate in cultural studies at George Mason University. Her dissertation will be a study of Greek American cemeteries and their relevance in Greek American communities. She has an M.A. in archaeology from George Mason University and a B.A. in classics and ancient Greek from the College of William and Mary. Felix M. Berardo, Ph.D., is Professor of Sociology, University of Florida. His teaching and research interests include family sociology, social gerontology, the sociology of death and survivorship, and the sociology of risk. He has published over 100 articles in professional journals and is the author, coauthor, or editor of over a dozen major book-length works. He is former editor of the Journal of Marriage & the Family, current editor of the monograph series on Current Perspectives in Family Research, and deputy editor of the Journal of Family Issues. He also has served as President of the Florida Council on Family Relations and as associate chair and chair of the Department of Sociology at the University of Florida. He was the recipient of the Arthur Peterson Award in Death Education and has been awarded the status of Fellow by

the Gerontological Society of America and the National Council on Family Relations. His book (with F. Ivan Nye) Emerging Conceptual Frameworks in Family Analysis was included among a small, selected group of works considered “classics” in family sociology and has been recognized for its long-lasting impact on the field of family science. Frances P. Bernat, Ph.D., is Associate Professor in the Administration of Justice at Arizona State University West. She received the Governor’s Spirit of Excellence Award from the state of Arizona in 1998, the 1998 President’s Medal for Team Excellence from Arizona State, and the Semi-finalist Award for Innovations in American Government from the Ford Foundation/JFK School of Government at Harvard University. She is a member of the editorial board for Women and Criminal Justice, as well as serving as a guest editor. She has been published in over 10 professional journals. Joseph E. Boyle, M.A., is currently finishing his doctorate in sociology from Virginia Tech, where he was awarded the graduate student teaching award in 1998. He is also an instructor of sociology and criminal justice at Brookdale Community College in Lincroft, New Jersey, specializing in criminological theory, social problems, and deviant behavior. A graduate of Rutgers University, he received his M.A. in community college education from Rowan University in New Jersey and his M.S. degree in sociology from Virginia Tech. Sarah Brabant, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, is a Certified Sociological Practitioner and holds additional certifications in Thanatology: Death, Dying, and Bereavement, and Family Life Education. In 1981, she designed the first course on death and dying at her university, a course she still teaches each semester. She has served as a support person for Compassionate Friends, Acadiana Chapter, since 1983; counseled persons living with AIDS through Acadiana CARES since 1988; and was appointed to the faculty of the Delta Region AIDS Education and Training Center in 1990. She was one of the founders and serves on the Board of Directors of the Grief Center of Southwest Louisiana, a local program for bereaved children. She is the author of the book Mending the Torn Fabric: For Those Who Grieve and Those Who Want to Help Them and has contributed over 50 articles to professional journals. Her publications on death- and grief-related issues appear in Omega; the Hospice Journal; ADEC Forum; Illness, Crisis & Loss; Teaching Sociology; International Journal of Addictions; Death Studies; Clinical Sociology Review; AIDS Patient Care; and Journal of Gerontological Social Work. She has presented numerous papers, workshops, and lectures on death and bereavement at the local, state, and national levels. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Georgia in 1973.

About the Contributors– • –xxix

Donald A. Cabana, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Criminal Justice at the University of Southern Mississippi, specializing in penology and capital punishment. He worked in corrections for 25 years as a warden and Commissioner of Corrections. He is the author of the book, Death at Midnight: Confessions of an Executioner. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Southern Mississippi. Jack P. Carter, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of New Orleans. His teaching duties include senior- and graduate-level courses in population dynamics and issues, and the sociology of aging. He has published more than 30 articles on topics including mortality, fertility, migration, and aging in professional journals such as Family Life, Research on Aging, Review of Comparative Public Policy, Journal of Applied Gerontology, and Aging, as well as refereed monographs and a book. He earned an M.A. degree in sociology at the University of Texas at Arlington and an M.S. in demography and Ph.D. in sociology at Florida State University, with social demography and the sociology of aging as areas of specialization. Nancy K. Chaudoir, B.A., is a graduate student in rehabilitation counseling at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and currently serves as managing editor of Sociological Spectrum, the official journal of the Mid-South Sociological Association. Her interest areas include gender, deviance, and mental health counseling. She received her B.A. in sociology at the University of Louisiana, Lafayette, in 2001. Kyle Cole, Ph.D., is Associate Director of Religionsource (www.religionsource.org) at the American Academy of Religion at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. Formerly, he was Assistant Professor of Journalism and directed the graduate journalism program at Baylor University. He received a Ph.D. in journalism from the University of Missouri with concentrations in mass media and society and in American political behavior. He also has 7 years of editing and reporting experience at city dailies. Charles A. Corr, Ph.D., is Professor Emeritus, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, a member of the Board of Directors of the Hospice Institute of the Florida Suncoast (2000–present), a member since 2002 of the Executive Committee of the National Kidney Foundation’s transAction Council, and a member (1979–present) and former Chairperson (1989–1993) of the International Work Group on Death, Dying, and Bereavement. His professional publications include 22 books and more than 80 articles and chapters on subjects such as death education, hospice care, and children/adolescents and death. His most recent book (coauthored with Clyde M. Nabe and Donna M. Corr) is Death and Dying, Life and Living (4th ed., 2003). His professional work has been recognized by the Association for Death Education and Counseling in awards for Outstanding Personal Contributions to the

Advancement of Knowledge in the Field of Death, Dying, and Bereavement (1988) and for Death Education (1996), and by Children’s Hospice International in an award for Outstanding Contribution to the World of Hospice Support for Children (1989) and through the establishment of the Charles A. Corr Award for Lifetime Achievement [Literature] (1995). In addition, he has received Research Scholar (1990), Outstanding Scholar (1991), and the Kimmel Community Service Award (1994) from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. Donna M. Corr, R.N., M.S., took early retirement in 1977 from her position as Professor, Department of Nursing, St. Louis Community College at Forest Park, St. Louis, Missouri. She continues to write, give presentations, and offer workshops locally, regionally, nationally, and internationally. Her publications include Hospice Care: Principles and Practice (1983), Hospice Approaches to Pediatric Care (1985), Nursing Care in an Aging Society (1990), Sudden Infant Death Syndrome: Who Can Help and How (1991), Handbook of Childhood Death and Bereavement (1996), and Death and Dying, Life and Living (4th ed., 2003). Gerry R. Cox, Ph.D., is Professor of Sociology and Director of the Center for Death Education and Bioethics at University of Wisconsin–La Crosse. His teaching focuses on theory/theory construction, deviance and criminology, death and dying, social psychology, and minority peoples. He has been publishing materials since 1973 in sociology and teaching-oriented professional journals and has published more than 50 articles, chapters, and books. He is a member of the International Work Group on Dying, Death, and Bereavement, the Midwest Sociological Society, the American Sociological Association, the International Sociological Association, Phi Kappa Phi, the Great Plains Sociological Society, and the Association of Death Education and Counseling. He studied at Ball State University, the University of Kansas, Texas A&M University, and St. Mary of the Plains College. Linda Sun Crowder, Ph.D., is a cultural diversities consultant in Brea, California. She has published articles in the Journal of American Folklore, Chinese America: History and Perspectives, Cakalele (Maluku Research Journal), and others. Her research focuses on symbolism, public display, performance, identity, and death rituals. She an M.A. in theater arts from the University of Hawaii, an M.A. in anthropology from California State University, Fullerton, and a Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Hawaii where she specialized in the culture areas of Southeast Asia and American Chinatowns. Douglas J. Davies, Ph.D., is Professor in the Study of Religion and Head of the Department of Theology at the University of Durham, England. He is on the editorial board of the journal Mortality. His recent books include The Mormon Culture of Salvation (2000), Anthropology

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and Theology (2002), and Death, Ritual and Belief (2002). He holds a master of letters research degree in anthropology from Oxford University and a Ph.D. from the University of Nottingham, where he also taught for many years and was Professor of Religious Studies. The University of Uppsala conferred on him their Honorary Degree of Doctor of Sacred Theology in 1998. Jane Dillon, Ph.D., is a sociologist and independent research scientist currently conducting studies in the fields of alternative health, international religious freedom, and the science of subliminal influentiality. She is project coordinator of several double-blind clinical trials on the effect of subliminal influence technology in vivo and in vitro. She served as Visiting Professor at Whittier College in the Department of Sociology and Co-Director of the Human Science Program at the graduate school and research facility of the California Institute of Human Science. She has presented numerous papers at academic conferences for the past 18 years, including the Pacific Sociological Association, the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, the University for Peace in Costa Rica, and the historic 1993 Parliament of World’s Religions. In addition to her comprehensive work on the reincarnationist worldview, the Western yoga movement, and the Self-Realization Fellowship, she has published articles on environmental legislation, constitutive theory, and new social movements in Syzygy: Journal of Alternative Religions and Culture and The California Coast. In 1999, she completed the groundbreaking pilot “Burn Study” in which children hospitalized with severe third-degree burns demonstrated full recovery, without grafting, in less than 30 days due to the spiritual intercession (subliminal influence) of the eminent European scientist and Celtic spiritual leader of Brittany (France). She received M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from the Department of Sociology at the University of California, San Diego. Kenneth J. Doka, Ph.D., is Professor of Gerontology at the Graduate School of the College of New Rochelle and Senior Consultant to the Hospice Foundation of America. A prolific author, his books include several titles on living with grief in addition to Disenfranchised Grief: Recognizing Hidden Sorrow; Living With Life Threatening Illness; Children Mourning, Mourning Children; Death and Spirituality; Caregiving and Loss: Family Needs, Professional Responses; AIDS, Fear and Society; Aging and Developmental Disabilities; and Disenfranchised Grief: New Directions, Challenges, and Strategies for Practice. He has also published over 60 articles and book chapters and is editor of both Omega and Journeys: A Newsletter for the Bereaved. He was elected President of the Association for Death Education and Counseling in 1993 and received its award for Outstanding Contributions in the Field of Death Education in 1998. In 1995, he was elected to the Board of Directors of the International Work Group on Death, Dying, and Bereavement

and served as Chair from 1997 to 1999. In 2000, Scott and White presented him an award for Outstanding Contributions to Thanatology and Hospice. He participates in the annual Hospice Foundation of America Teleconference, hosted by Cokie Roberts, and has appeared on Nightline. He has served as a consultant to medical, nursing, funeral service, and hospice organizations as well as businesses and educational and social service agencies. He is an ordained Lutheran minister. James Claude Upshaw Downs, M.D., is coastal Georgia’s first Regional Medical Examiner. He has served as a medical examiner since 1989 and was Alabama’s State Forensics Director and Chief Medical Examiner from 1998 to 2002. He has lectured extensively in the field of forensic pathology and has presented at numerous national and international meetings in the fields of anatomic and forensic pathology. He is a consultant to the FBI Behavioral Science Unit in Quantico, Virginia, having authored four chapters in their manual on Managing Death Investigation, and was primary author of the FBI’s Forensic Investigator’s Trauma Atlas. His professional activities have included service on numerous professional boards and committees. He has testified in state and federal court, as well as before the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives. He is on the Board of Advisors for the National Forensic Academy and the Board of Directors of the National Association of Medical Examiners. He received his doctor of medicine degree, his residency training in anatomic and clinical pathology, and held a fellowship in forensic pathology from the Medical University of South Carolina (Charleston). He is board certified in anatomic, clinical, and forensic pathology. Keith F. Durkin, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Sociology and Director of the Institute for Social Research at Ohio Northern University in Ada. He is a coauthor of How Chiropractors Think and Practice and author or coauthor of approximately two dozen research reports and monographs. His articles have appeared in Deviant Behavior, Federal Probation, the Journal of Alcohol and Drug Education, and the College Student Journal. He was a contributing author for the Encyclopedia of Criminology and Deviant Behavior and is a member of the editorial board for Sociological Inquiry. He received his Ph.D. in sociology from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. Kim A. Egger, B.A., is planning to begin studies for her Ph.D. in 2003. She is coauthor, with Steven Egger, of a chapter on victims of serial murder in a monograph on victimology and is the author of “Motives for Murder” in The Encyclopedia of Homicide and Violent Behavior and “Victims: The ‘Less-Dead’ in The Killers Among Us: An Examination of Serial Murder and Its Investigation. For the past 12 years, she has been developing a database on serial killers that currently holds information on over 1,300 serial murderers. She has lectured at Purdue

About the Contributors– • –xxxi

University; University of Illinois at Springfield; Brazosport College, Texas; and the University of Houston, Clear Lake. She is currently working on an encyclopedia of serial murder with Steven Egger. She received a B.A. in psychology from the University of Illinois at Springfield. Steven A. Egger, Ph.D., is Professor Emeritus of Criminal Justice at the University of Illinois at Springfield and is Associate Professor of Criminology at the University of Houston, Clear Lake. He was formerly interim Dean at the University of Illinois and was Project Director of the Homicide Assessment and Lead Tracking System, the first statewide computerized system in the nation to track and identify serial killers. He has worked as a police officer, homicide investigator, police consultant, and law enforcement academy director. He is the author of Serial Murder: An Elusive Phenomenon (1990) and The Killers Among Us: An Examination of Serial Murder and Its Investigation (2nd ed., 2002) and was the editor for two different monograph series. He has written numerous articles, encyclopedia entries, and chapters and given many lectures and presented academic papers in the United States and in England, Spain, Canada, and the Netherlands. He has appeared on numerous national television networks and many local television and radio stations, in addition to giving numerous interviews in the print media around the world. He is currently coediting a book on police misconduct as well as continuing his research on serial murder. He holds an M.S. degree from Michigan State University and a Ph.D. from Sam Houston State University, where he completed the first dissertation in the world on serial murder. Charles F. Emmons, Ph.D., is Professor of Sociology at Gettysburg College, Pennsylvania. Most of his publications have been in Chinese studies and in the sociology of religion and the paranormal. His books include Chinese Ghosts and ESP: A Study of Paranormal Beliefs and Experiences, Hong Kong Prepares for 1997, and At the Threshold: UFOs, Science and the New Age. He has also been a consultant for and appeared in popular television programs on apparition experiences. His recent research examines the spiritualist and new age movements. He received an M.A. in anthropology from the University of Illinois, Urbana, and a Ph.D. in sociology (1971) from the University of Illinois at Chicago. Graves E. Enck, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Memphis, where he has taught courses on medical sociology, sociology of mental illness, and sociology of aging since 1974. He served as Director of the Master of Arts in Liberal Studies Program from 1999 to 2002. He has published articles in professional journals and was a contributor to the Encyclopedia of Criminology and Deviant Behavior (2001). He serves on the editorial board of Sociological Inquiry. In his current research, he is conducting a long-term study of

changes in rural health care and other community institutions as a result of the legalization of casino gambling in the Mississippi Delta. He earned his Ph.D. at Yale University in 1975, having attended as a U.S. Public Health Service trainee in medical sociology. Morten G. Ender, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Sociology in the Department of Behavioral Sciences and Leadership at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, where he teaches introductory sociology, sociological theory, and courses on cinematic images of war and on the Armed Forces and society. Prior to teaching West Point, he taught in Norway, at the University of North Dakota, and at the University of Maryland. An awardwinning teacher at both the University of Maryland and at West Point, he has also taught a course on the sociology of death and dying through correspondence study for the past 8 years to over 200 undergraduate students. His research areas include military sociology, social psychology, and teaching sociology, with single and coauthored articles published in The American Sociologist, Teaching Sociology, the Journal of Political and Military Sociology, and Armed Forces and Society. He is currently investigating the representations of children of military personnel in American films—follow-up research to his 2002 book, Military Brats and Other Global Nomads: Growing Up in Organization Families. He earned his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Maryland at College Park. Rhonda D. Evans, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. Her research interests are in the areas of crime, deviance, and gender. Her work has appeared in a number of journals, including Sociological Spectrum and Sex Roles. She received her doctorate in sociology from Texas A&M University in 2002. David P. Fauri, Ph.D., is Professor of Social Work at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) where he teaches in the M.S.W. foundation, advanced concentration courses in administration and planning, the advanced standing M.S.W. program, doctoral program, and B.S.W. program. He has been at VCU for 20 years, having previously taught or served in administrative positions at the University of Tennessee, the University of Kentucky, and Southern Illinois University. He has served on the Board of the Council on Social Work Education, has been active in leadership for the National Association of Social Workers in Virginia and Tennessee, and has served and led mental health, public social services, Parents Anonymous, and United Way boards. His practice has included planning community programs for elders and staff work in training and management analysis. Topics of his recent writing include dying and caregiving by professionals, family, and volunteers; bereavement programming; and political participation of social workers. He is currently a member of the editorial board of Arete.

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Robert M. “Bob” Fells, J.D., has worked on behalf of the cemetery and funeral services industry since 1975 and has served as General Counsel of the International Cemetery and Funeral Association (ICFA) for the past 20 years. Also for the past 4 years, he served as the Association’s Chief Operating Officer, External Affairs. In addition to these duties, he serves as President and General Counsel of the ICFA Service Bureau, Inc., a for-profit subsidiary of the association, which administers the Credit Exchange Plan for prearranged cemetery lot purchases. He is also National Coordinator and Assistant Secretary of the Cemetery Consumer Service Council, an industry-sponsored consumer assistance organization. He is contributing editor for the ICFA WIRELESS, a biweekly e-mail newsletter that reviews important legal and regulatory developments affecting the industry. His news column, “The Washington Report,” appears each month in the ICFA magazine, International Cemetery & Funeral Management. He is member of the Virginia State Bar and the U.S. Supreme Court Bar and has been listed in Who’s Who in American Law and in Who’s Who Among Emerging Leaders in America. He is a graduate of George Mason University School of Law. Louis A. Gamino, Ph.D., ABPP, is a Diplomate in Clinical Psychology on staff with the Scott & White Clinic in Temple, Texas, since 1980. In addition to a clinical practice specializing in bereavement-related problems, he is an Associate Professor who teaches about death and dying at the Texas A&M Health Science Center College of Medicine. Together with Ann Cooney, he is the author of When Your Baby Dies Through Miscarriage or Stillbirth (2002). He is editor of The Forum, the official (quarterly) publication of the Association for Death Education and Counseling. He also conducts empirical research on the phenomenology of grieving, from which he is developing a model of adaptive bereavement. He received his doctorate from the University of Kansas. DeAnn K. Gauthier, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor of Sociology in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. She is also editor in chief of Sociological Spectrum, the official journal of the Mid-South Sociological Association. Her interest areas include deviance, gender, criminology, and death and dying. Her work appears in journals such as Criminology, Sex Roles, and Deviant Behavior. Francis D. Glamser, Ph.D., is Professor of Sociology and a former department chair at the University of Southern Mississippi. His research areas are social gerontology and the sociology of sport, and he has published articles in various journals, including the Journal of Gerontology, The Gerontologist, Aging and Work, the Journal of Aging and Religion, and the Journal of Sport Behavior. He earned an M.S. degree from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and a Ph.D. in sociology from the Pennsylvania State University.

Donald E. Gowan, Ph.D., is Emeritus Robert Cleveland Holland Professor of Old Testament at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, where he served from 1964 to 1999. He worked as a mathematician for the General Electric Co. at the Hanford Atomic Products Operation in Richland, Washington, from 1951 to 1954. He participated in the excavation of Tel Ashdod, in Israel, in 1965 and 1968, and was a visiting scholar at Mansfield College, Oxford, in 1971–1972. He has published 10 books in Old Testament studies, is the editor of the new Westminster Theological Wordbook of the Bible, and was coeditor of the journal, Horizons in Biblical Theology, from 1990 to 1998. He earned a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1964 and is an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). Robert O. Hansson, Ph.D., is Professor of Psychology at the University of Tulsa. His research interests focus on successful aging, aging families, and coping with bereavement and loss. With Margaret S. Stroebe and Wolfgang Stroebe, he coedited a special issue of the Journal of Social Issues on the topic of bereavement and widowhood (Fall 1988) and The Handbook of Bereavement: Theory, Research, and Intervention (1993). He also coedited (with Margaret S. Stroebe, Wolfgang Stroebe, and Henk Schut) The Handbook of Bereavement Research: Consequences, Coping and Care (2001). He coauthored (with Bruce Carpenter) Relationships in Old Age (1994). He is a Fellow of the Gerontological Society of America and serves on the editorial boards of The International Journal of Aging & Human Development, Journal of Loss and Trauma, and Journal of Social & Personal Relationships. He earned his Ph.D. in social psychology from the University of Washington in 1973. William J. (Bill) Hauser, Ph.D., is currently a research and business intelligence consultant. Prior to that, he was the Senior Vice President and Director of Market Research and Planning at KeyCorp in Cleveland, Ohio. Before going to Key in 1999, he was the Director of Business Development and Research at Rubbermaid and its toy subsidiary, Little Tikes. He is also an adjunct professor at the University of Akron, where he teaches courses in death and dying, applied sociology, and rock and roll. In 2001, he was named the University of Akron, Buchtel College of Arts and Sciences, Part-time Teacher of the Year. His current research focuses on the role that communities play in dealing with traumatic events, such as disasters. Along with AnneMarie Scarisbrick-Hauser, he is currently preparing a handbook that communities can use in responding to disasters and their aftereffects. He earned a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Akron in 1979 and has taught at Washington University in St. Louis and at West Virginia University. Bert Hayslip, Jr., Ph.D., is Regents Professor of Psychology at the University of North Texas. He is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, the

About the Contributors– • –xxxiii

Gerontological Society of America, and the Association for Gerontology in Higher Education and has held research grants from the National Institute on Aging, the Hilgenfeld Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. He is currently associate editor of Experimental Aging Research and editor of the International Journal of Aging and Human Development. His published research deals with cognitive processes in aging, interventions to enhance cognitive functioning in later life, personality-ability interrelationships in aged persons, grandparents who raise their grandchildren, grief and bereavement, hospice care, death anxiety, and mental health and aging. He is coauthor of Hospice Care (Sage, 1992): Psychology and Aging: An Annotated Bibliography (1995); Grandparents Raising Grandchildren: Theoretical, Empirical, and Clinical Perspectives (2000); Adult Development and Aging, (3rd ed., 2002); Working With Custodial Grandparents (2002); and Historical Shifts in Attitudes Toward Death, Dying, and Bereavement (in press). He received his doctorate in experimental developmental psychology from the University of Akron in 1975. Keith P. Jacobi, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor of Physical Anthropology at the University of Alabama and Curator of Human Osteology at the Alabama Museum of Natural History at the University of Alabama. His work on human skeletal remains spans over 25 years. His academic interests include skeletal biology, paleopathology, forensic anthropology, dental anthropology, medical anthropology, history of disease and medicine, and dermatoglyphics. He has been a forensic consultant for the Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences since 1996 and on contract with the department since 2000. His research work currently involves archaic and Mississippian period warfare among Native Americans in northern Alabama, dental morphology, and dental metrics at the prehistoric site of Moundville, health in Alabama as seen through skeletal remains from early 19thcentury cemeteries, and the health of the historic Chickasaw. He has published articles on the health of Barbadian slaves at Newton Plantation and the historic Maya from Tipu, Belize. His book Last Rites of the Tipu Maya (2000) is on the dental genetics of the historic Tipu Maya as well as prehistoric Maya. He was the recipient of the Indiana University Medical Sciences Teaching Award. He earned a Ph.D. in anthropology from Indiana University in 1996.

Death in the Midst of Life: Social and Cultural Influences on Death, Grief, and Mourning (currently being revised), coeditor of Performers and Performances: The Social Organization of Artistic Work, and editor of Negotiating Responsibility in the Criminal Justice System. He has served as a consultant on suicide and occupational stress for New York City’s Emergency Medical Services and was a member of a committee on suicide prevention at the New York City Police Department. He is currently working on a comparative study of the New York and Vienna Philharmonics during the directorship of Gustav Mahler. He received a Ph.D. in sociology from New York University. Robert Kastenbaum, Ph.D., is a psychologist with a crossdisciplinary approach who has been active as a clinician, researcher, program developer, and educator with particular attention to gerontology, thanatology, and creativity, and Professor Emeritus at Arizona State University. He directed the first major study of the terminal phase of life in a geriatric hospital where he also introduced wine, beer, and relationship therapy programs that inspired other programs across the nation. A past President of the American Association of Suicidology, he served for many years as editor of Omega: Journal of Death and Dying, and International Journal of Death and Dying. His books include The Psychology of Death; Death, Society, & Human Experience; Defining Acts: Aging as Drama; Dorian, Graying: Is Youth the Only Thing Worth Having? and the forthcoming On Our Way: The Final Passage Through Life and Death. He and his wife Beatrice edited the first modern Encyclopedia of Death (1989/1993), and he served as editor of the new Macmillan Encyclopedia of Death and Dying (2002). His interest in music has been expressed in libretti and lyrics for the operas Dorian, Closing Time, and American Gothic and the musicals Outlaw Heart, and Parlor Game.

Kelly A. Joyce, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at the College of William and Mary. Her current research examines perceptions of medical imaging technologies in the United States, investigating why these techniques occupy a privileged space in contemporary medical practice. She publishes primarily in the fields of medical sociology and science and technology studies. She earned a Ph.D. in sociology from Boston College.

Michael C. Kearl, Ph.D., is Professor and Chair of the Department of Sociology & Anthropology at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas. He publishes and teaches in the areas of social gerontology, thanatology, social psychology, family, the sociology of knowledge, and the sociology of time. His works feature titles such as Endings: A Sociology of Death and Dying, “You Never Have to Die! On Mormons, NDEs, Cryonics and the American Immortalist Ethos” (in The Unknown Country: Experiences of Death in Australia, Britain and the USA, edited by Charmaz, Howarth, and Kellehear), and “Political Uses of the Dead as Symbols in Contemporary Civil Religions” (in Social Forces). An early explorer of the pedagogical potential of the Internet, he is perhaps best known for his Web site “A Sociological Tour Through Cyberspace.” He holds a Ph.D. in sociology from Stanford University.

Jack Kamerman, Ph.D., is Professor of Sociology at Kean University in Union, New Jersey. He is the author of

Thomas A. Kolditz, Ph.D., is Professor and Head of the Department of Behavioral Sciences and Leadership at the

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U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York. An Army officer with more than 20 years of active service, his research and teaching activities span applied social psychology, personality, mentoring dynamics, and leadership development. He has published across a diverse array of academic and military journals, including Military Review, the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Field Artillery Professional Journal, the Journal of Personality, and Perception and Psychophysics. He holds a master’s degree and Ph.D. degree in social psychology from the University of Missouri. He has also received a master of military arts and science degree from the School of Advanced Military Studies at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, and a master’s in strategic studies from the Army War College at Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania. Pamela J. Kovacs, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Social Work at Virginia Commonwealth University where she teaches social work practice and research in the undergraduate, master’s, and doctoral programs. She worked as a clinical social worker for 15 years in a variety of settings, including hospice, oncology, prenatal, and other health care positions, as well as community mental health, private practice, and a college counseling center. She joined the faculty at Virginia Commonwealth in 1996. Her scholarship and service have focused on chronic illness and end-of-life care, in particular, the hospice response to HIV/AIDS, hospice volunteers, the patient, family, and professional caregiver experience of living with chronic and terminal illness, as well as how best to prepare social workers to assist persons with these life challenges. Between 1997 and 2001, she served as an evaluation mentor for the Promoting Excellence in End-of-Life Care grantees, programs funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. She is a consulting editor for Health and Social Work. She earns an M.S.W. from Boston College and a Ph.D. in social welfare from Florida International University. Peter Lacovara, Ph.D., is Curator of Ancient Egyptian, Nubian, and Near Eastern Art at the Michael C. Carlos Museum of Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. Previously, he was Assistant Curator in the Department of Ancient Egyptian, Nubian, and Near Eastern Art in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. He has excavated extensively in Egypt and has written on the mortuary archaeology of ancient Egypt and organized a number of exhibitions and symposia around that theme. He received his Ph.D. in Egyptian archaeology from the University of Chicago. Vicki L. Lamb, Ph.D., is a Research Scientist at the Center for Demographic Studies, Duke University. Her former appointments were at Johnson C. Smith University and the University of South Carolina. She has numerous publications on measures of health and disability, particularly of older adults. The National Institute on Aging/National Institute of Health has funded her most

recent research project on “Foods Programs and Nutritional Support of the Elderly.” She is an associate editor of Population Research and Policy Review (Southern Demographic Association) and a member of the Scientific Review Board for Demographic Research (Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research). She received her Ph.D. in sociology from Duke University in 1992, with concentrations in demography of aging and life course studies. David Lester, Ph.D., is Professor of Psychology at the Richard Stockton College of New Jersey. He is a former President of the International Association for Suicide Prevention and has written 2,000 scholarly articles and notes, mostly on thanatology, with a special focus on suicide. His latest books are Fixin’ to Die: A Compassionate Guide to Committing Suicide or Staying Alive and Katie’s Diary: Unlocking the Mystery of the Suicidal Mind. He has doctorates in psychology (Brandeis University) and social and political science (Cambridge University, UK). Eric Lichten, Ph.D., is Professor of Sociology and chairs the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Long Island University, C.W. Post Campus, where he has taught since 1981. He is a recipient of Long Island University’s Trustee Award for Scholarly Achievement for his book Class, Power & Austerity: The New York City Fiscal Crisis (1986) and has published numerous articles in professional journals and publications. He has also received Long Island University’s David Newton Award for Teaching Excellence and an “award of excellence” for “his outstanding contribution to the training of pediatric residents and health care providers” from the Child Development Center at North Shore University Hospital (Long Island, New York) and Project D.O.C.C. (Delivery of Chronic Care). His current research concerns the social problems associated with children’s chronic and terminal illnesses. J. Robert Lilly, Ph.D., is Regents Professor of Sociology/Criminology and Adjunct Professor of Law at Northern Kentucky University. His research interests include the patterns of capital crimes committed by U.S. soldiers during World War II, the “commercial corrections complex,” juvenile delinquency, house arrest and electronic monitoring, criminal justice in the People’s Republic of China, sociology of law, and criminological theory. He has published in a number of journals, including Criminology, Crime & Delinquency, Journal of Drug Issues, Social Problems, Qualitative Sociology, and the British Journal of Criminology. He is coauthor (with Richard A. Ball and C. Ronald Huff) of House Arrest and Correctional Policy: Doing Time at Home (Sage, 1988) and coauthor (with Francis T. Cullent and Richard A. Ball) of Criminological Theory: Context and Consequences (3rd ed; Sage, 2002). In 2003, he published La Face cachée des GI’s: Les viòls commis par des soldats américains en France, en Angleterre et en Allemagne pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale [The Hidden Face of the GI’s: The Rapes

About the Contributors– • –xxxv

Committed by the American Soldiers in France, England and Germany During the Second World War]. In 1988, he was a visiting professor in the School of Law at DeMonfort University, Leister, England, and a visiting scholar at All Soul’s College, Oxford University. Since 1992, he has been a visiting professor at the University of Durham, England. He received in Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Tennessee in 1975.

include policing and theories of crime causation. She has written several articles on women in policing and is serving as the research analyst for Project Safe Neighborhoods, a federally funded project designed to reduce gun violence. She is also an associate editor for Criminal Justice Policy Review. She received her M.A. and Ph.D. in criminology from the University of Maryland, College Park.

Janice Harris Lord, M.S.S.W., is a consultant for a number of crime victim organizations and serves as a media representative for victims. She is certified in thanatology (CT) by the Association of Death Education and Counseling and is a member of the International Association of Traumatic Stress Studies and the American Association of Pastoral Counselors. She has worked in the crime victims’ movement since 1976 and was National Director of Victim Services for Mothers Against Drunk Driving for 14 years. She has written two books for the popular market—No Time for Goodbyes: Coping With Sorrow, Anger, and Injustice After a Tragic Death and Beyond Sympathy: How to Help Another Through Injury, Illness, or Loss—and has published many journal articles, curricula pieces, brochures, booklets, research reports, and other works. She served as editor of MADDVOCATE, a magazine for victims and their advocates, for 11 years and is a founding Advisory Board member of the National Institute of Victim Studies at Sam Houston State University. In 1994, she received the U.S. Presidential Award for Outstanding Service on Behalf of Victims of Crime from President Bill Clinton and U.S. Attorney General, Janet Reno. She received her M.S.S.W. degree from University of Texas at Arlington and is a licensed social worker and professional counselor.

Alan H. Marks, Ph.D., is Professor and past Chair of the Department of Sociology, Anthropology and Gerontology at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. He is cofounder and has served as Vice Chairman of the Arkansas Youth Suicide Prevention Commission since 1985. He also served as a scientific adviser to the National Lieutenant Governor’s Association from 1985 to 1988, helping to create and participating in a video and educational materials distributed nationally. He created a high school curriculum on youth suicide prevention that has been used in Arkansas. In 1990, he won the University of Arkansas at Little Rock’s Excellence Award in Public Service for his work in Youth Suicide Prevention and with the elderly. He received national news coverage when he assisted the police in Shreveport, Louisiana, in preventing a suicide by talking a man off a bridge, an event that occurred when he and the Lt. Governor of Arkansas were in Shreveport doing a radio show on suicide prevention. He and a former student, who was elected to the Arkansas Legislature, were responsible for the enactment of the Intergenerational Security Act of 1995.

Vicky M. MacLean, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Sociology at Middle Tennessee State University where she teaches courses in social theory, qualitative research methods, community studies, and race/class/gender. She is currently researching the impact of innovative educational interventions on the development of health resiliency among adolescent African American, Latina, and Anglo females. Additional interests include neighborhood development and diversity issues, health care access, and the development of American sociology. She has taught sociology at Wake Forest University, Mary Washington College, and for the graduate federation of the North Texas University system. She has worked as an applied sociologist for the Federal Women’s Program of the National Institutes of Environmental Health Sciences, the U.S. General Accounting Office, and the Texas Woman’s University Institute for Women’s Health. She has published on compensation, careers in science, and gender. She received her M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in sociology from Duke University. Stephanie Picolo Manzi, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice in the School of Justice Studies at Roger Williams University. Her current research interests

John L. McIntosh, Ph.D., is Chair of and Professor in the Department of Psychology at Indiana University South Bend. He is the author, coauthor, or coeditor of six published books on suicide, including Suicide and Its Aftermath: Understanding and Counseling the Survivors (1987) and Elder Suicide: Research, Theory and Treatment (1994). He has contributed chapters to many books and articles to numerous professional journals and has made over 100 presentations at professional conferences. He also serves on the editorial boards of Suicide & Life-Threatening Behavior, Gerontology and Geriatrics Education, and Crisis: The Journal of Crisis Intervention and Suicide Prevention. He is also on the National Advisory Board of the Yellow Ribbon Suicide Prevention Program and is a past President of the American Association of Suicidology (AAS). He was the 1990 recipient of the AAS’s prestigious Edwin Shneidman Award (awarded to a person below the age of 40 for scholarly contributions in research to the field of suicidology) and the 1999 recipient of AAS’s Roger Tierney Award for Service. He has also been recognized by his university with awards for teaching, service, and research. His work has been reported in newspapers and magazines across the country. He received his doctorate degree from the University of Notre Dame. Jerry T. McKnight, M.D., is Professor in the Department of Family Medicine at the University of Alabama School

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of Medicine–Tuscaloosa. His primary interest is training physicians for service to underserved populations. After completing his National Health Service Scholarship obligation in Tennessee, he returned to the University of Alabama–Tuscaloosa Family Practice Residency where he has spent 12 years in the training of family medicine residents in minimizing medical errors. He has been published in 18 different professional journals, manuals, and books. He received his M.D. from the University of Tennessee College of Medicine–Memphis and completed his residency at the University of Alabama–Tuscaloosa Family Practice Residency. Stephen J. McNamee, Ph.D., is Professor of Sociology at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington. He has served as Chair of the Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice at UNC Wilmington and is the recipient of the UNC Wilmington Distinguished Teaching Award and the UNC Board of Governors Award for Teaching Excellence. His research interests include stratification, theory, and organizations. He coedited Wealth and Inheritance in America with Robert K. Miller, Jr., and they are completing another book, The Meritocracy Myth. He received his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in sociology from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. Robert K. Miller, Jr., Ph.D., is Professor of Sociology at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, where he serves as Assistant Chair of the Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice. His research interests include stratification and racial and ethnic group relations. He coedited Wealth and Inheritance in America with Stephen J. McNamee, and they are completing another book, The Meritocracy Myth. He received his M.A. and Ph.D. in sociology from Temple University. Calvin Conzelus Moore, J.D., Ph.D., is Visiting Assistant Professor of Sociology and Anthropology at Bowdoin College. Prior to pursuing his Ph.D., he practiced criminal defense law in the District of Columbia. His current research focuses on determining structural correlates of violent crime. He earned his law degree from Harvard Law School and his Ph.D. from Boston College. James L. Moore III, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor in Counselor Education in the School of Physical Activity and Educational Services at Ohio State University. His research agenda is centered on black male issues, academic persistence and achievement, cross-cultural counseling issues in schools, counseling student athletes, and using innovative technological approaches in counselor education. He is currently working to use his research and scholarship to shape state and national public policy as it relates to preparing highly competent school counselors, improving the overall quality of school counseling, developing interventions and programs for improving the academic persistence and achievement of African American students and other people of color in public schools and

higher education, and advancing the mission of the academy in the areas of teaching, service, and scholarship/ research. Robin D. Moremen, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Sociology at Northern Illinois University. She is also a Faculty Associate in Gerontology and Women’s Studies and has received numerous awards for excellence in undergraduate teaching. Her research interests include health and aging, complex organizations, HIV/AIDS, death and dying, women’s health issues, and social inequality. She has published on Medicare admissions to nursing homes, the effects of third-party payers on clinical decision making, long-term care and AIDS, multicultural curriculum transformation, gender discrimination after death, and women’s friendships and health. She is past Teaching Chair of the Medical Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association. Currently, she is a member of the Provost’s Task Force on Multicultural Curriculum Transformation (Northern Illinois University), Undergraduate Director in the Department of Sociology (Northern Illinois University), and a nationally certified hospice volunteer. She received an M.A. degree in physical therapy from Stanford University, and M.A and Ph.D. degrees in sociology from Yale University. John D. Morgan, Ph.D., a pioneer in the death awareness movement, brings to the podium a wide range of topics in the field of death and bereavement drawn from his work as educator, author, lecturer, and program organizer. He is presently the Program Manager of the London Ontario Grief Resource Centre, and Coordinating Secretary of Bereavement Ontario Network. In 1997, he received an award from the Association for Death Education and Counseling for his work in death education. He has spoken extensively throughout the world, has edited 18 books, and is series editor for the Death, Value, and Meaning Series, which now has over 50 volumes. His most recent project (with Dr. Pittu Laungani) is Death and Bereavement Around the World (five volumes). He holds a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Southern California. Harold Mytum, Ph.D., is Reader in the Department of Archaeology at the University of York and for 5 years was head of the department. A major research interest is that of mortuary archaeology, with particular emphasis on historic burials and monuments. He has carried out and published fieldwork on graveyard memorials from England, Wales, Ireland, and Gibraltar. Present graveyard research is concentrated in Ireland and Wales through his Castell Henllys Field School, which is open to international students. He has also developed the methodology of graveyard recording and published Recording and Analysing Graveyards in 2000. He serves as archaeologist on the York Diocesan Advisory Committee responsible for the care of over 600 churches and churchyards in the diocese.

About the Contributors– • –xxxvii

Robert A. Neimeyer, Ph.D., holds a Dunavant University Professorship in the Department of Psychology, University of Memphis, where he also maintains an active clinical practice. Since completing his doctoral training at the University of Nebraska in 1982, he has conducted extensive research on the topics of death, grief, loss, and suicide intervention. Neimeyer has published 18 books, including Meaning Reconstruction and the Experience of Loss; Lessons of Loss: A Guide to Coping; and Dying: Facing the Facts. The author of over 200 articles and book chapters, he is currently working to advance a more adequate theory of grieving as a meaning-making process. Neimeyer is the editor of the respected international journal Death Studies and has served as President of the Association for Death Education and Counseling (1996–1997). In recognition of his scholarly contributions, he has been granted the Distinguished Research Award (1990), the Distinguished Teaching Award (1999), and the Eminent Faculty Award (2002) by the University of Memphis, elected Chair of the International Work Group on Death, Dying, and Bereavement (1993), designated Psychologist of the Year by the Tennessee Psychological Association (1996), made a Fellow of the Clinical Psychology Division of the American Psychological Association (1997), and been given the Research Recognition Award by the Association for Death Education and Counseling (1999). Pat Norton, Ed.D., is Program Director for the Introduction to Clinical Medicine course at the University of Alabama School of Medicine in Birmingham, Alabama (UASOM). After completing a master’s degree in library science, her position was the Medical Education Coordinator within the Department of Family Medicine in the University of Alabama School of Medicine–Tuscaloosa Program. In addition to curriculum development and grant writing with the Family Medicine Department, she was placed in charge of the Standardized Patient program and assisted in clinical skills assessment activities. In her current position, she continues to participate in curriculum development as well as serving as the Director of the UASOM Standardized Patient program, providing patients for teaching, assessment, and research activities within the School of Medicine. Paul David Nygard, Ph.D., is Associate Professor and Chair of the Social and Behavioral Sciences Department at St. Louis Community College–Florissant Valley Campus. His writings have appeared in several publications, including the Illinois Historical Journal and The Encyclopedia of New England Culture. He is President of the St. Louis Area Historical Association and a 2002 recipient of an Emerson Excellence in Teaching Award. He received an M.A. in history from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville and a Ph.D. from St. Louis University. Ann M. Palkovich, Ph.D., is Krasnow Associate Professor at the Krasnow Institute of George Mason

University. She is a biological anthropologist interested in the evolution of hominid cognition, prehistoric population dynamics, and the cultural dynamics of cemeteries. She holds an M.A. and Ph.D. from Northwestern University. Brian Parsons, Ph.D., has worked in the funeral industry in London since 1982. His doctoral research focused on the impact of change during the 20th century on the funeral industry. He has contributed to The Manual of Funeral Directing, to numerous industry periodicals, and to the journal Mortality. He is the author of The London Way of Death (2000) and is active in funeral service education. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Westminster (London). Carolyn Pevey, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Auburn University–Montgomery. Her research and teaching interests include medical sociology, thanatology, gender, and religion. Currently, she is using a new faculty grant in aid to explore premenstrual syndrome among health care workers. An edited and greatly improved version of her master’s thesis “Male God Imagery and Female Submission: Lessons From a Southern Baptist Ladies’ Bible Class” was published with Christine Williams and Christopher Ellison in Qualitative Sociology. She received an M.A. from the University of Texas at Austin in 1993 and a Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin in 2001. Anantanand Rambachan, Ph.D., is Professor or Religion, Philosophy and Asian Studies at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota. He is the author of several books, book chapters, and numerous articles and reviews in scholarly journals. Among these are Accomplishing the Accomplished: The Vedas as a Source of Valid Knowledge in Shankara and The Limits of Scripture: Vivekananda’s Reinterpretation of the Authority of the Vedas, The Hindu Vision, Gitamrtam, and Similes of the Bhagavadgita. He has been very active in the dialogue programs of the World Council of Churches and was Hindu guest and participant in the last three General Assemblies of the World Council of Churches in Vancouver, Canada; Canberra, Australia; and Harare, Zimbabwe. He is a regular participant in the meetings of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue at the Vatican. He is an associate editor for the Encyclopedia of Hinduism, a project that is working to produce the first, comprehensive, multivolume series treating the Hindu tradition. He is also a member of Consultation on Population and Ethics, a nongovernmental organization affiliated with the United Nations. Jon K. Reid, Ph.D., is Professor and Chair of the Department of Behavioral Sciences at Southeastern Oklahoma State University in Durant, Oklahoma. He is a member of the 2002–2003 Outstanding Professor’s Academy for Oklahoma Colleges and Universities and holds Texas licenses as a professional counselor, a marriage and family therapist, and a Certificate in Thanatology

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from the Association for Death Education and Counseling. He is an ordained Unitarian Universalist minister. Previous professional experiences include serving as a minister of single adults and as an outpatient therapist. He has led grief support groups in public schools, churches, and hospitals and is the bereavement consultant for Camp Fire for Boys and Girls in his community. He has been published in Death Studies; Illness, Crises, and Loss; School Psychology International; and the Journal of Personal and Interpersonal Loss. He completed a doctorate in family studies at Texas Woman’s University in Denton, Texas, and a master’s degree in religious education at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas. Catherine H. Reilly, M.A., is Assistant Professor and Reference Librarian at St. Louis Community College–Florissant Valley campus. She has presented on the subject of death in America at several professional gatherings throughout the United States and is also a founding member of the St. Louis Chapter of the Jane Austen Society of North America. She received a B.A. in history from the University of Missouri–St. Louis and an M.A. in library science from the University of Missouri–Columbia and is in the American Culture Studies program at Washington University in St. Louis. Russell B. Riddle, M.S., is a doctoral student in counseling psychology at the University of North Texas. His interests focus on determinants of adjustment to the funeral as a ritual. He currently serves as research director for the psychology unit at Scottish Rite Children’s Hospital in Dallas, Texas. Tillman Rodabough, Ph.D., is Professor and Graduate Program Director in the Department of Sociology at Baylor University. He is also the Research Director for the Baylor Center for Community Research and Development. Active in the field of sociology, he is past President of the Southwestern Sociological Association and is currently President-elect of the Society for Applied Sociology. For the past 25 years, he has conducted research and published in the area of death and dying as well as in applied sociology. His current work in developing a Ph.D. program with emphases in applied sociology and in sociology of religion allows him to integrate both interests. Currently, he is examining through survey research and focus groups the efficacy and changing attitudes toward capital punishment, as well as the impact of different aspects of religiosity on the fear of death specifically as it relates to war and the threat of terrorism. Jerome Rosenberg, Ph.D., is Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology and the New College Program at the University of Alabama. He teaches and conducts research in the areas of the Holocaust and genocide, human destructiveness and dehumanization, traumatic stress, humane survival, and ethics. He is a charter member of the Association of Genocide Scholars. He has served as

Chair of the Alabama Holocaust Advisory Council and is currently a member of the Alabama Holocaust Commission. He has worked with Holocaust survivors and has served on the Hospice of West Alabama Ethical Review Board. He teaches in the University of Alabama Thanatology Certificate Program and serves on its planning board. He has published on the issues of dehumanization and the Holocaust. He received his Ph.D. from Florida State University in clinical psychology. Paul C. Rosenblatt, Ph.D., is Morse-Alumni Distinguished Teaching Professor of Family Social Science at the University of Minnesota. His writing on bereavement includes five books and dozens of articles. With Beverly Wallace, he is working on an interview project dealing with African American bereavement, and with Sungeun Yang he is working on a paper on how Korean families deal with terminal illness. Jeffrey P. Rosenfeld, Ph.D., writes on the social dynamics of inheritance, disinheritance, and will contests. Apart from writing, he has consulted to the estate tax area, statistics of income, at the Internal Revenue Service, and to the estateplanning industry. In recent years, he has become interested in the financial abuse and exploitation of older people. He is currently funded by the Bar Foundation of the State of New York to develop an elder abuse resource center to facilitate the detection and prevention of elder abuse (including financial abuse). Diana Royer, Ph.D., is Professor of English at Miami University. Her most recent book is A Critical Study of the Works of Nawal El Saadawi, Egyptian Writer and Activist (2001). She has coedited anthologies on the commercialization and appropriation of American Indian cultures and on regional women writers, and currently, she is coauthoring a volume of horror film criticism. She has written articles, book chapters, and conference papers on Virginia Woolf, horror cinema, and death in 19th-century American literature. She serves as a manuscript referee for the Woolf Studies Annual. She holds an M.A. and a Ph.D. in English from Temple University. Jerome J. Salomone, Ph.D., is Dean Emeritus of the College of Arts and Sciences at Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond, Louisiana. He presently serves as Professor of Sociology and Scholar-in-Residence. He has previously taught at Louisiana State University, Nicholls State University, and the University of New Orleans, and he has held research appointments at Ohio State University. His professional involvements, among many others, have included serving as President of the Mid-South Sociological Association, editor of Sociological Spectrum, and member of the board of the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities, which he chaired for 2 years. The Mid-South Sociological Association has honored him with its Career Achievement Award. His written work appears widely in a variety of sources,

About the Contributors– • –xxxix

including Phylon, Rural Sociology, Sociological Spectrum, and Philosophy and Social Science. His book Bread and Respect: The Italians of Louisiana was published in 2002. He did his graduate work at Louisiana State University where he received his master’s and doctorate degrees in sociology. AnneMarie Scarisbrick-Hauser, Ph.D., is Senior Vice President of Client Information and Relationship Management at KeyCorp in Cleveland, Ohio. Prior to coming to KeyCorp in 1999, Anne was the Associate Director of the Survey Research Center at the University of Akron. She is also an adjunct professor at the University of Akron, where she teaches courses in collective behavior and emergency management. Her current research focuses on the role of human factors in dealing with traumatic events, such as disasters. In 2001, Anne was part of a select team sent to Somerset, Pennsylvania, immediately after the September 11 tragedy to observe how emergency workers responded to the traumatic situation. Along with Bill Hauser, she is currently preparing a handbook that communities can use in responding to disasters and their aftereffects. She earned a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Akron in 1991, along with degrees from the University of Limerick (Ireland) and Purdue University. Ruben Schindler, Ph.D., is the Dean of Ashkelon College, associated with Bar Ilan University in Israel. Previously, he served as Dean of Students at Bar Ilan University. He is a founding member of the School of Social Work at Bar Ilan and served as Dean of the school for almost a decade. His research in social work education has taken him to India, where together with Alan Brawley, he wrote the book Social Care at the Front Line (1987). Over the years, he has published widely, exploring the interface between the secular and the sacred and Jewish and social science literature in assisting people facing crises and trauma. Prior to his current post, he spent his sabbatical at the Rutgers School of Social Work. He was raised and educated in New York and attended the City College of New York and Columbia University School of Social Work. He earned his doctorate from the Wurzwelier School of Work, Yeshiva University. He was ordained for the rabbinate by Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, a leading 20th-century scholar known for his seminal Talmudic responsa and piety. Clive Seale, Ph.D., is Professor of Sociology in the Department of Human Sciences, Brunel University, London. His research focuses on topics in medical sociology, including work on the experience of dying and the popular media representation of illness, health, and health care. He is author or editor of numerous books, including The Year Before Death (1994); Researching Society and Culture (Sage, 1998); Constructing Death: The Sociology of Dying and Bereavement (1998); Health and Disease: A Reader (2001); The Quality of Qualitative Research (Sage, 1999); Media and Health (Sage, 2002); Social Research Methods: A Reader (in press); Qualitative Research Practice (Sage, in press).

Trina N. Seitz, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina. Her professional experience includes having served 9 years as a patrol officer with the Wake County Sheriff’s Department and as a death row correctional officer at the North Carolina Correctional Institution for Women. Her research interests are in the areas of the death penalty as well as extralegal social control, specifically throughout North Carolina’s history. She recently submitted an article to the North Carolina Historical Review that examined the social and political factors that affected the state’s shift in execution methods during the first three decades of the 20th century. She is a member of the North Carolina Criminal Justice Association, the American Correctional Association, the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences, and the North Carolina Literary and Historical Society. She received her Ph.D. in sociology from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, where she specialized in criminology and deviant behavior. Kenneth W. Sewell, Ph.D., is Professor of Psychology and Director of Clinical Training at the University of North Texas. He has authored dozens of journal articles and book chapters in the areas of posttraumatic stress, psychotherapy, constructivism, bereavement, and forensic assessment. He has studied posttraumatic stress in combat veterans, sexual assault survivors, mass murder witnesses, and women diagnosed with HIV. Stemming from his work with trauma survivors, he was a collaborator in the development of the Scott & White Grief Project. This multiphase program of research is dedicated to understanding how some bereaved persons struggle with distressing symptoms for years following a loss and others seem to undergo transformative personal growth. He received his Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the University of Kansas in 1991, which included an internship with the Department of Veterans Affairs. Donald J. Shoemaker, Ph.D., is Professor of Sociology at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. His research interests include international studies of delinquency, theoretical studies of delinquency, Philippine studies, and evaluation research. In 1990, he received a Fulbright grant to study patterns of juvenile justice in the Philippines. His publications include Theories of Delinquency (a 5th edition is in preparation), International Handbook on Juvenile Justice (editor), and numerous article and book chapters on crime and delinquency. He is currently on the editorial board of the Philippine Journal of Law and Justice and the Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency. He received a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Georgia in 1970. Sangeeta Singg, Ph.D., is Professor of Psychology and Director of the Graduate Counseling Psychology Program at the Angelo State University, San Angelo, Texas. She is also a licensed psychologist in the State of Texas and has practiced and taught psychology for over 20 years. She has

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published in the areas of counseling training, student personal responsibility, childhood sexual abuse, self-esteem, posttraumatic stress disorder, depression, color preference and color therapy, memory, alternative methods of healing, grief, and suicide. She received an M.A. in sociology from Mississippi State University and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in psychology from Texas A&M University–Commerce. William E. Snizek, Ph.D., is Distinguished Professor of Sociology at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. Prior to coming to Virginia Tech in 1972, he taught at the University of South Florida and Western Kentucky University. During his tenure at Virginia Tech, he has won over 25 departmental, college, university, state, national, and international teaching awards. These include 10 Certificates of Teaching Excellence from the College of Arts and Sciences, the university’s W. E. Wine Award, Alumni Teaching Award, Diggs Teaching Scholar Award, and the Commonwealth of Virginia’s 1991 Outstanding Faculty Award. In 2001, he received the Delta Gamma Foundation Award for University Excellence in Teaching. He has been a Visiting Professor and Senior Research Fulbright Fellow at the University of Leiden, The Netherlands and has been employed as a consultant by numerous government business and labor groups. He has coedited five books and published over 75 refereed articles and notes in journals such as the American Sociological Review, Social Forces, Academy of Management Review, Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, Organizational Behavior and Human Performance, Human Relations, and Organizational Studies. He received his master’s and doctoral degrees from The Pennsylvania State University. Alan E. Stewart, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor in the Department of Counseling and Human Development at the University of Georgia. From 1997 to 2002, he was Assistant Professor of psychology at the University of Florida. He has established his line of research in the areas of death, loss, and trauma. Specific interests within these areas involve death notification following fatal vehicular crashes, death notification training, and the psychological effects of surviving serious crashes. He also has interests in measurement and evaluation and has created several scales for use with people who have experienced crashes: the Driving and Riding Avoidance Scale and the Driving and Riding Cautiousness Scale. Finally, he has research interests in family emotional processes and the ways in which language can be used to characterize one’s family of origin experiences or to construct healing narratives in the aftermath of a trauma. He received his Ph.D. in counseling psychology from the University of Georgia in 1994 and has since completed postdoctoral training in counseling and psychotherapy at the HUB Counseling Center in Tucker, Georgia. He also completed research postdoctoral training in psychology at the University of Memphis.

Dawood H. Sultan, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor of Sociology in the Department of Sociology, Anthropology, Social Work and Criminal Justice at the University of Tennessee at Martin. From August 1998 to June 2003, he served as an instructor in the Department of Sociology at Louisiana State University (LSU). From August 2001 to May 2003, he also served as Assistant Director of International Development in the Office of International Programs at LSU. In 1999, he was selected by the University of Nebraska–Lincoln (UNL) as the recipient of its Multicultural Teaching Fellowship Award and, subsequently, spent part of the summer teaching at UNL’s Department of Sociology. He is fluent in Arabic, has traveled extensively, and is published in a number of professional journals. He was born and raised in Sudan and received a B.Sc. (Hon.) in economics from the University of Gezira (Sudan) and an M.A. in development studies from the University of East Anglia (England). In 1996, he received a doctorate degree in sociology from LSU. Hikaru Suzuki, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the School of Economics and Social Sciences at Singapore Management University. She is the author of The Price of Death: The Funeral Industry in Contemporary Japan (2001). This work investigates the transformation and professionalization of funeral practices in Japan. Her future research interests include the impact of globalization and marketing on everyday practices, medical institutions and professionals, the expansion of Internet recruitment systems, and the professionalization/ transformation of working culture. Prior to her appointment at Singapore Management University, she was a Freeman postdoctoral student at Wittenberg University. She received a B.A. from Beijing University, M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Harvard University, and an M.B.A. from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Michael R. Taylor, Ph.D., is Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Oklahoma State University, where he teaches Death and Dying, Holocaust Studies, Metaphysics and Epistemology, and Philosophy of Life. Before coming to Oklahoma State University, he held a temporary appointment as an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Bowling Green State University, where he taught Death and Dying and Philosophy of the Development of Persons. He has also held positions as a counselor, as coordinator of a tri-county mental health emergency service, and as Associate Director of the George F. Linn Center, a public mental health center in Ohio. His primary areas of research are social and political philosophy and ethics. He has publications in Southwestern Philosophical Review, Proteus: A Journal of Ideas, and Public Affairs Quarterly. He is a member of the American Philosophical Association, the Southwestern Philosophical Society, and the Society for the Philosophical Study of Genocide and the Holocaust. He has an, M.A. in philosophy from Bowling Green State

About the Contributors– • –xli

University and a Ph.D. in philosophy from Florida State University. Todd W. Van Beck is President and CEO of the Commonwealth Institute of Funeral Service Education in Houston, Texas. He is an internationally known speaker and writer in the funeral service profession. He sits on the Board of Trustees of the Academy of Professional Funeral Service Practice and on the Board of Directors of the National Funeral Service Museum. Florence Vandendorpe, Diplome d’Etudes Approfondies, is an assistant teacher at the Institute for the Study of Family and Sexuality at the université Catholique de Louvain-LaNeuve (UCL) in Belgium. She is a sociologist whose research interests focus on symbolism and cultural representations. She carried out research at UCL for a few years, notably in the field of sociology of religion. She received her master’s degree from UCL in 1994 and a postgraduate diploma at École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) Paris in 1995. María I. Vera, Ph.D., is Associate Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Florida. In 1974, she joined the faculty of the College of Medicine at the University of Florida, where she has taught in various programs of the medical school curriculum. She has specialized in teaching and training psychiatric residents in various modalities of psychotherapy, and she has been the Director of the Family Therapy and Group Therapy Programs in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Florida. She practices psychotherapy as a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and Clinical Social Worker. She has extensive clinical experience in individual, family, and group psychotherapy. Her clinical interests and expertise include treatment of depression, adjustment disorders, and anxiety disorders; stress management; grief resolution; conflict and anger management; infertility counseling, couples and family conflict; divorce and stepfamily issues; domestic violence; sexual victimization; and career- and work-related issues. She has published her research in professional journals in her areas of specialty. Her undergraduate work was in sociology at Universidad Católica in Santiago, Chile. Her master’s degree in social work is from the University of Kansas, and her Ph.D. is from Florida State University. Thomas J. Vesper, J.D., is a Certified Civil Trial Attorney admitted to the bar of New Jersey in 1973. A senior partner in the Atlantic City law firm of Westmoreland, Vesper & Schwartz, he concentrates on personal injury and wrongful death cases. He served with the U.S. Marine Corps Reserve from 1969 to 1991 and was certified as a UCMJ 27(b) Trial Counsel and Defense Counsel by the Secretary of the Navy. Past President of the New Jersey Chapter of the Association of Trial Lawyers of America, he is a Diplomate and Sustaining Member of the Association of Trial Lawyers of America (ATLA), Fellow of the International Academy of Trial Lawyers, a founding member

of Trial Lawyers for Public Justice, and was selected by his peers to be listed in The Best Lawyers in America. His litigation experience includes products liability, commercial trucking and bus crashes, negligence, professional negligence, and consumer fraud cases. He is a frequent guest lecturer for ATLA, state trial lawyer associations, bar associations, and law schools. A faculty member and past trustee of the National College of Advocacy, he has published articles and lectured on wrongful death, products liability, truck and bus accident reconstruction, discovery, case evaluation, settlement, and trial techniques. He received his legal education at Rutgers University (J.D., 1973) where he was a writer and member of the Rutgers-Camden Law Review. Lee Garth Vigilant, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Minnesota State University, Moorhead, where he teaches courses in social thanatology, sociological theory, and qualitative methods in social research. He has been the recipient of teaching awards at both Boston College and Tufts University, receiving in 2000 the Donald J. White Teaching Excellence Award in Sociology at Boston College and in 2001, the TCU Senate Professor of the Year Award at Tufts University. His current research is in the area of illness recovery. His past publications, in the area of race and ethnic relations, appear in the journal Gryo Colloquium Papers (Boston College). He received his Ph.D. in sociology from Boston College in 2001. Gail C. Walker, Ph.D., is Professor of Psychology at Alfred University, where she has been a member of the faculty since 1981. Prior to coming to Alfred University, she was on the staff of the Cook County Office of Special Education in Chicago. She had previously been Assistant Professor of Psychology at Marian College in Fond-du-Lac, Wisconsin. Her honors include Phi Kappa Phi, Honor Scholastic Fraternity; Phi Delta Kappa, Honor Education Fraternity; nine Bi-annual Excellence in Teaching Awards (1984–2001); Citizen Ambassador to the U.S.S.R. (1989); Sears Foundation Excellence in Teaching and Campus Leadership Award (1991); Independent College Fund of New York Teaching Excellence Award (1993-1999); and the Omicron Delta Kappa leadership Award (2001). She is listed in the International Directory of Distinguished leadership (1990), Who’s Who Among America’s Teachers (1996, 1998, and 2000), Outstanding Americans (1998), and Directory of American Scholars (10th ed.). She has published extensively on the topic of death and dying in journals such as Omega and Journal of Death Studies. She is a member of the Foundation of Thanatology and the Association for Death Education and Counseling. She received her M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from Oklahoma State University. Charles Walton, Ph.D., is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Lynchburg College in Lynchburg, Virginia. He has previously taught at Radford University, Virginia Tech, Roanoke College, and Mary Baldwin College. He specializes in cultural theory, deviance, and popular

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culture. He has published in the Encyclopedia of Criminology and Deviant Behavior and the Journal of Higher Education and contributed a chapter on contemporary theory to Shifflett and Everett’s Fundamentals of Sociology (2003). He earned an M.S. in sociology from Virginia Commonwealth University and a Ph.D. in sociology from Virginia Tech. Joyce E. Williams, Ph.D., is Professor of Sociology at Texas Woman’s University, Denton, Texas, where she has been since 1980, serving as Department Chair for more than half that time. She is the author of three books and articles in more than a dozen journals, including Omega, Teaching Sociology, Victimology, and the Journal of Marriage and the Family. She has held faculty positions at the University of Mary Hardin-Baylor, the University of Texas at Arlington, and Trinity University. She is currently working on a history of early sociology in the United States. She holds a Ph.D. degree in sociology from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. Melissa Johnson Williams is a licensed funeral director and embalmer with over 30 years practical experience. Her presentations have included practical embalming demonstrations and talks on restorative art, history of embalming, infectious disease and medical technology, and shipping of human remains. She has over 75 published articles in the Director (National Funeral Directors Association publication), the American Funeral Director, and medical journals. She is the editor of the International Shipping Section in the Blue Book (American Funeral Director), has contributed several new chapters to the third revised edition of the textbook Embalming: History, Theory, and Practice, and was a chapter contributor to the new Textbook of Thanatology. She serves on the Ethical Practice Committee of the Illinois Funeral Directors Association and the Board of Trustees of the Academy of Professional Funeral Service Practice and is a board member of the Funeral Directors Services Association of Greater Chicago and Autopsy Committee member of the Institute of Medicine of Chicago. She is also the founder and Executive Director of the Midwest Forensic & Mortuary Support Foundation and is a cofounder of the American Society of Embalmers. She is a graduate of Governors State University in Governors Park, Illinois, and Worsham College of Mortuary Science.

John B. Williamson, Ph.D., is Professor of Sociology at Boston College. He is coeditor (with Edwin Shneidman) of the fourth edition of Death: Current Perspectives. In the area of death studies, he has published articles dealing with hospice, euthanasia, suicide, and homicide. He is the author of 15 books and more than 100 journal articles and book chapters. He has written extensively in the areas of aging and aging policy, including Social Security reform, the politics of aging, the debate over generational equity and justice between generations in connection with public policy, the proposed privatization of Social Security, and the comparative study of Social Security policy. He has been elected Chair of the Youth, Aging, and Life Course Division of the Society for the Study of Social Problems and secretary/treasurer of the Aging and the Life Course Section of the American Sociological Association. He is currently on the editorial board of four journals. His books and articles have been translated into Chinese, Hungarian, Italian, German, French, and Spanish. He holds a Ph.D. from Harvard University in social psychology. David D. Witt, Ph.D., is Professor in the School of Family and Consumer Sciences at the University of Akron. His published work includes articles in the Journal of Marriage and the Family, Social Forces, Sociological Spectrum, American Journal of Dietetics, and the Professional Journal for Primary Education. He holds M.A. (1978) and Ph.D. (1983) degrees from Texas Tech University, where his emphasis was on social theory and research in family studies. Timothy W. Wolfe, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Sociology and Director of Criminal Justice at Mount Saint Mary’s College in Emmitsburg, Maryland. His research interests include juvenile drug dealing, chronic and violent delinquency, college student binge drinking, and social thanatology. His work has appeared in the American Journal of Criminal Justice, Journal of Alcohol and Drug Education, and The College Student Journal. He received his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in sociology from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. William Wood, M.Div, is currently finishing his Ph.D. in sociology at Boston College. He also has an M.Div. from Union Theological seminary in New York City, where he studied religious history and philosophy.

Preface– • –xvii

PART I DEATH IN CULTURAL CONTEXT

THE UNIVERSAL FEAR OF DEATH AND THE CULTURAL RESPONSE CALVIN CONZELUS MOORE JOHN B. WILLIAMSON

s the fear of death universal? Anthropologist Ernest Becker (1973) seems to think so, arguing that “the idea of death, the fear of it, haunts the human animal like nothing else; it is the mainspring of human activity— activity designed largely to avoid the fatality of death, to overcome it by denying in some way that it is the final destiny for man” (p. ix). There is much about death to fear: Whether by accident, disease, or intentional infliction by another human, the path to death for all but a few fortunate humans is accompanied by pain. Death can also be a lonely and isolating experience (Feder 1976). Humans are social beings, and it is our interactions with other humans that complete our existence and give our lives meaning. Death is thus separation from everything that gives our life form; it is the loss of everything that we hold dear (Hinton 1967). The loss of a loved one to death is often one of the most emotionally painful experiences that a human can have (Gordon 2000). Even when the death is not that of a loved one, simply being a witness to death can evoke a natural horror and revulsion (Malinowski 1948). Furthermore, because of its seeming finality, death presents one of the most formidable challenges to the idea that human life has meaning and purpose. Given these facts, it should be no surprise that fear has been one of the most commonly expressed responses of humans to death. Because the idea of death evokes a number of fears, researchers have suggested that the fear of death is actually a multidimensional concept. Hoelter and Hoelter (1978) distinguish eight dimensions of the death fear: fear of the dying process, fear of premature death, fear for significant others, phobic fear of death, fear of being destroyed, fear of the body after death, fear of the unknown, and fear of the dead. Similarly, Florian and Mikulincer (1993) suggest three components of the death fear: intrapersonal components related to the impact of death on the mind and the

body, which include fears of loss of fulfillment of personal goals and fear of the body’s annihilation; an interpersonal component that is related to the effect of death on interpersonal relationships; and a transpersonal component that concerns fears about the transcendental self, composed of fears about the hereafter and punishment after death. Because of the complexity of death fears, some authors suggest using the term death anxiety to describe the amorphous set of feelings that thinking about death can arouse (Schultz 1979). Because of the complexity of death fears, scholars have debated whether such fears are natural or whether they are social constructs. The most common view that runs through the history of thought on death is that the fear of death is innate, that all of life tends to avoid death, and that the underlying terror of death is what drives most of the human endeavor. The anthropological, philosophical, and psychoanalytic perspectives offer evidence and rationales that the fear of death is a natural response, given all the attempts of biological organisms to preserve life. Throughout human history, fear has been the universal response to death. In 1889, the cultural anthropologist Edward B. Tylor stated, “All life fears death, even brutes which do not know death” (p. 433). Aristotle (1941) said that “plainly the things we fear are terrible things” and referred to death as “the most terrible of things” (p. 978). According to the anthropologist Ernest Becker (1973), of the various factors that influence behavior, one of the most important is the terror of death. The most common view, then, is that fear is one of the most natural reactions to encounters with death (Charmaz 1980). On the other hand, some sociologists argue that the fear of death is not necessarily innate; rather, it is a learned reaction (Schultz 1979). Vernon (1970) states that the fear of death is the result of an individual’s learning 3

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experiences, and not an internal phenomenon. Charmaz (1980) notes that social and cultural conditions may give rise to the fear of death. The industrialism and individualism of modern society, for example, may create the fear of death: “The rise of individuality with the illusion of selfsufficiency fosters an emergence of the fear of death. In societies that foster individuality, fear of death logically follows” (p. 14). In traditional and rural cultures, on the other hand, the fear of death is not as strong. Such arguments seem to suggest, however, that if the cultural response in a given society is not to fear death, individuals within that culture do not respond to death with fear. This is a premise that requires empirical validation. Perhaps the most useful conception of the fear of death may be that it is a variable subject to manipulation by social context. A society’s culture may offer explanations of death that either repress or encourage fears about death according to the needs of the society. In this chapter, we explore cultural responses to the fear of death. The fact that humans are symbolic beings allows us to construct symbolic systems that preserve the meaning and significance of life in the face of death. An examination of various cultures throughout history suggests that an underlying fear of death has always been a major organizing force in human society. Because the social construction of meaning is a fundamental element of culture, an examination of the universal fear of death and cultural responses to that fear offers us an opportunity to survey the vast human experience with death, from the earliest beginnings of society to the present. In that regard, we examine here the major theoretical contributions to our understanding of the fear of death and its relation to human culture, from anthropological studies of preliterate societies to the religious, philosophical, and psychoanalytic systems of more advanced societies. Every culture has generated a system of thought that incorporates the reality and inevitability of death in a manner that preserves the social cohesion of that culture in the face of the potentially socially disintegrating aspects of death. Early human societies developed religious systems, including ancestor worship, that bridged the divide between the dead and the living and portrayed death not as an end, but as a transition to another world that is still very much connected to the earthly one. The Greeks used reason and philosophy to deal with the fear of death. Early Jews incorporated a variety of practices into their religious beliefs surrounding cleanliness and purity to stave off unwanted death. Christians of the Middle Ages gave themselves over to the reality of death by associating the death of the body with the freeing of the spirit to spend eternal life with God. Religious systems of the Eastern world evolved ideas of continual rebirth and the attainment of freedom from the cycle of rebirth through enlightenment or nirvana. In each case, the symbolic system accords death a place in society that offers meaning to the individual and prevents the society from lapsing into complete nihilism in the face of death.

EARLY AND PRELITERATE HUMAN RESPONSES TO THE FEAR OF DEATH Perhaps the most basic human response to death is flight from it. Herzog (1983) describes several groups of preliterate peoples in Malaysia and North India who had burial practices but simply fled, never to return to the place where one of their members died. He attributes this behavior to the sheer horror that accompanies the inexplicable change from living to dead as witnessed by tribal members. Another group of preliterate Malays, however, fled to abandon the dying, but later returned to see whether the person had died; if death had occurred, they buried the deceased with leaves. Afterward, they would desert the place, returning only years later. Herzog views this practice as an important stage in the psychological development of humans, the stage at which humans first confronted death. Only by confronting death could humans gradually begin to integrate the concept of death into their understanding of the natural scheme of existence. Early humans did not always flee from death; at some point, they were actually confronted with the dead. Once confronted, the dead produced a mixture of emotions in the living, ranging from horror at the sight of a corpse to a combination of fear and feelings of loss for the departed (Malinowski 1948). The deaths of members of a society were thus traumatic and potentially disintegrating experiences for the group. The development of practices surrounding disposal of the corpse served to reintegrate the community by allowing members to assert some manner of control over the society’s relationship with death and the dead (Malinowski 1948). Cultural practices regarding disposal of the corpse thus became important in all human societies. These practices were subject to an infinite degree of variation, but in all cases they served a similar underlying purpose: bringing what was once an incomprehensible horror within the realm of an ordered understanding of the role of death in the human experience. Early humans understood death to be a gateway to an afterlife. The belief that humans live on after death is almost universal (Frazer 1966). According to Malinowski (1948), preliterate humans were actually incapable of imagining death as the annihilation of being. This can be attributed to the fact that humans are symbolic beings; although human bodies are confined to a series of single moments in time and space, the human mind is able to traverse many temporal and spatial dimensions simultaneously. Humans are able to imagine, reflect, and dream. Tylor (1889) notes that animism, the most preliterate form of religion, originated in primitive explanations of dreams, visions, apparitions, and other products of the imagination. Similarly, Durkheim (1915:66) says that humans’ belief in the spirit world originated in early humans’ attribution of equal reality to the waking world and the world of sleep and dreams. Because humans, through these mental processes, could form images of persons who had died, they could use these images and the effects that memories

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of the dead continued to have on the living to reason in the most elementary fashion that humans live on after death. The prevailing attitude of early human societies toward the dead, with some exceptions, was fear. Frazer (1966) notes: While it would be foolish and vain to deny that [the savage] often mourns sincerely the death of his relations and friends, he commonly thinks that their spirits undergo after death a great change, which affects their character and temper on the whole for the worse, rendering them touchy, irritable, irascible, prone to take offence on the slightest pretext and to visit their displeasure on the survivors by inflicting on them troubles of many sorts, including accidents of all kinds, drought, famine, sickness, pestilence and death. (Pp. 10–11)

Evidence of this fear has been found in most preliterate societies. This is to be expected. For many millennia, life on the whole for humans has been brutal and short, yet the natural tendency of preliterate groups was to view life and health as natural, whereas sickness and death required supervening causes that required explanations (Malinowski 1948). The obvious culprits were either disgruntled dead relatives or higher-order beings who took a special interest in human affairs. Because of fear of the dead, gods and ancestors became the objects of attempts at either appeasement or control by the living. These two goals, says Malinowski (1948), branched off in two directions: religion and magic. Religion is essentially the attempt to appease, whereas behind magic is the desire to control. Religion sustained fears of the gods and focused on efforts to supplicate them; magic purported to transfer power to the hands of the magician, giving that individual a degree of control over forces that affected human lives. In one sense, magic was intensely psychological, as it involved convincing participants of the power of its wielder. Magic also involved experimentation, however, and some of that experimentation eventually laid the foundation for more formal scientific experimentation (Malinowski 1948). In the anthropological distinctions between religion and magic, then, we can see the foundation for humanity’s ongoing efforts to overcome the fear of death through the opposing tactics of belief and control.

RELIGION AND THE FEAR OF DEATH Cultural practices surrounding death combined with ideas about what happens after death to form the basis of religion, which is one of the cornerstones of all civilizations. Malinowski (1948) asserts that religion “is as instinctual a response as the fear of death which underlies it” (p. 29). He states, “Of all sources of religion, the supreme and final crisis of life—death—is of greatest importance” (p. 29). Durkheim’s (1915) simple definition of religion is “the belief in spiritual beings” (p. 44). According to Durkheim, the purpose of religion is to regulate humans’ relations

with these beings through “prayers, sacrifices, propitiatory rites, etc.” (p. 44). Religion sets up a fundamental distinction between the sacred and the profane. It establishes a priesthood that acts as guardian of the sacred and serves as interlocutor between the physical and spiritual worlds (Berger 1969). Religion orders human behavior by setting up a series of taboos and prescriptions surrounding sacred objects and rites (Durkheim 1963). It thus forms one of the most elemental institutions of social order. It represents the human attempt to unite social organization with cosmic organization—to order human society, the spirit world, and the cosmic and animal world in which humans are immersed into a comprehensible reality. Cults of the dead, mythical heroes, ancestor worship, and totemism are all forms of religion that embody a combination of social organization of the living with attempts to influence relations with the dead and that act as the gateway to a desired type of immortality. In this manner, religion addresses two of the most basic fears of humans: fear of the dead and fear of what will happen to us after we die. Religion thus forms one of the basic elements of authority of humans over other humans (Weber 1956). The fundamental problem of society is the preservation of social order. Humans quickly realized that disorder ultimately leads, through chaos, to death. Order and organization represent a flight from death. Religion, which capitalizes on the innate fear of death, is one of the most efficient methods of achieving what Durkheim calls “mechanical solidarity,” which is social order premised on the understanding that all societal members follow the same behavioral norms. Underlying religion is power, and the foundation of all power is that of life over death. As Lifton (1979) notes, the final meaning of religion is “life-power and power over death” (pp. 20–21). Persons in positions of authority, whether priests, warriors, or kings, assume their power by controlling who will live and who will die, by playing upon the fear of members of society that to disobey authority means not only death, but also the possibility of an unpleasant afterlife. Rulers cannot rule by force alone. The combination of rule by force and rule through religious authority has been one of the most effective means of assuring the obedience of a population. Many monarchies share this characteristic (Sypnowich 1991). Every society remains continually under threat of revolution and disintegration from below by its youth, because of the power of the sex drive (Freud 1936). Each generation must therefore be forever diligent in the transmission of rules of behavior to the succeeding generation. The collective superego uses both the fear of death and fear of the dead to enforce the rules and preserve social order. Societies have different levels of success in generating symbolic systems that are powerful enough to maintain allegiance over time. Wars, migration, and trade, as well as constant reflection by later generations on the previous generations’ experiences, often lead to transformations of

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symbolic systems. The most enduring systems are therefore those that are best able to adapt their symbolic systems to the present set of human conditions.

KILLING, SACRIFICE, AND THE FEAR OF DEATH Even though humans instinctively fear death, they also willfully participate in death through killing. Shapiro (1989) suggests that killing by early humans may have been a response to the fear of death. Killing is seen to enhance life, to make it eternal. Killing energizes the killer. Killing allows the killer to confront death immediately and intentionally, and with that confrontation comes a sense of power. By killing, humans master the fear of death, showing death that they are not afraid to face it, and even bring it into being. For early humans, death was a nameless and formless horror; participation in the act of killing allowed them to identify themselves with death, to give shape and form to death, and, in so doing, to begin to understand it. The power behind death thus becomes recognizable. Killing evokes a complex set of psychological responses in humans. Killing was problematic for early humans. Even when they killed animals, they performed ceremonies as magic practices to “cancel out the event of death” and thus allay its horror (Herzog 1983). Herzog (1983) describes the practice of murdering the elderly and diseased group members in many preliterate societies; the variety of methods used included suffocation, strangulation, burying alive, feeding to wild animals, and abandonment. It was shameful in some cultures for adult children to allow their parents to die a natural death. Herzog thus suggests that a measure of guilt may have accompanied these acts even if they were viewed as necessary and life affirming. Ceremonies performed prior to these killings may have served the psychological purpose of expiating feelings of anxiety that surrounded the murderous acts. They also may have alleviated feelings of being overwhelmed by death by suggesting that humans indeed had some authority over life and death. Once humans connected death with life and came to see that death is part of the cycle of life, that it is even required for life, participation in the act of killing may have come to be seen as an act of affirming life. The attitude toward killing progressed from one of anxiety to one in which killing was seen as pleasing to the gods (Paul 1996). Killers, particularly warriors and hunters, were glorified and given great positions of honor in society (Herzog 1983). Killing by sacrifice allowed the priest who conducted the ceremony to proclaim mastery over death to those who witnessed the sacrifice. The symbolic language system that surrounded the sacrifice enabled the religions’ adherents to believe that power over death also means power over life. According to German psychoanalyst Otto Rank (1936), the sacrifice of the other “lessens the death fear of the ego,” and “through the death of the other, one buys oneself free

from the penalty of dying, of being killed” (p. 170). Ritual sacrifices also had the purpose of instilling fear in those who witnessed and took part in the ceremonies. Sacrifice necessarily evoked a visceral reaction of horror and brought each witness into direct confrontation with his or her own hidden fears of death. Beneath the idea of sacrifice is power; priestly sacrifice represented the efforts of priests as a class to consolidate power in society by exploiting the group’s natural fears about death.

THE BODY, CULTURE, AND THE FEAR OF DEATH The concept of death is intricately tied to the human body. It is the body that dies. The body is corruptible; the body is the recipient of disease and subject to decay. It is the physical corpse that rots away, whereas the soul, according to many belief systems, is set free and lives forever. The body feels pain, and bodily misery is the source of most human misery. Passion is of the body; contemplation is of the soul. Man’s body can thus make him a slave to passion while the contemplative power of his spirit sets him free. This basic fact is behind many religious practices, philosophical systems, and science (Heinz 1999). A major function of culture, then, is to structure pleasure fulfillment of the body in a manner that supports the continuity of society. Reason, law, religion, science, even magic—all products of the contemplative mind—discipline the body, structure bodily movements, and set restraints on the desires of the body (Jones 2001). The primary struggle throughout human history is thus that between reason and passion, between the mind and the body. The thrust of human culture in response to death has been to overcome the limitations and pains inflicted on the soul by the body. Underlying many religious practices is the function of controlling bodily impulses, purifying the body through practices of mortification, asceticism, celibacy, and other forms of self-denial. Much of human culture, therefore, involves the establishment of rules surrounding bodily orifices. In the Old Testament creation myth, Adam and Eve sin by eating of the fruit of the tree of life. Their eyes are opened and they subsequently have sex. They also learn that they must die. Their sins thus involved the two bodily orifices that can be most subject to conscious control, the mouth and the genital organs. Their once-perfect bodies were corrupted by these acts, and Adam and Eve were required to leave the Garden of Eden and live by the sweat of their brows. The myth of Adam and Eve sets the foundation for a system of religious practices that revolve in large part around food and sex and that may underlie practical considerations about the relationships among food, sex, cleanliness, and death. In Purity and Danger (1966), Mary Douglas uses the Book of Leviticus to explore ideas about pollution of the body and hygiene and their incorporation into religious ideas about uncleanness and ritual purity.

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Leviticus sets forth the laws for the children of Israel, and many of those laws involve food. The laws set forth in the Old Testament Book of Leviticus are laws of God as delivered by Moses; pragmatically, they are early attempts to address the potentially corrupting effects of filth and uncleanness. The laws require priestly inspections when there is evidence of leprosy and prohibit sex when there is discharge from the penis of a male or when a women is menstruating; they set forth explicitly what foods may be eaten and prohibit the consumption of animals that die before they are killed (Porter 1976). Attempts to cleanse and purify are closely related to human societies’ attempts at order, which in turn serve to defy death and chaos; as Douglas (1966) observes, “Reflection on dirt involves the reflection on the relation of order to disorder, being to nonbeing, form to formlessness, life to death” (p. 5). Religious categorizations of what is clean and unclean are thus further indications of humankind’s attempts to build barriers to slow the encroachment of death by seeking to protect the body from the corrupting effects of filth. The anxieties associated with sex in all societies have also been linked to the fear of death (Brain 1979). Sex is linked to aggression and causes men to kill other men; it is thus a source of disorder and death. The sexual organs are also very close to the anus, which is a source of corruption, disease, and death. The smell of sex can thus resemble that of feces and is a reminder of death. Sex itself can be a corrupting agent; filth can enter into the human body through the act of sex. Humankind became aware of germs only relatively recently, but sex has historically been the cause of numerous diseases that can lead to bodily discomfort, pain, and—in the case of diseases such as syphilis—incapacitation and death. In modern society, AIDS has solidified the link between sex and death; it has been associated with higher levels of death anxiety in gay men as well as among doctors and health workers who treat patients with AIDS (Bivens et al. 1994; Essien et al. 2000; Hayslip, Luhr, and Beyerlein 1991). It is no small wonder, then, that humans have such anxiety surrounding sex. In all societies, sex is the most regulated behavior. Rules surrounding sexuality constitute the strongest taboos in almost all human societies and are at the core of many religions. Whereas Old Testament taboos focus on cleanliness and dietary practices (Douglas 1966), the New Testament is particularly focused on sexuality. Sexual morality became one of the cornerstones of the Christian Church. It was one of the major themes of the writings of the apostle Paul, one of the principal authors of the New Testament, who himself confessed to an ongoing struggle with the sins of the flesh. Sin is yielding to the desires of the flesh, becoming a slave to passion, and “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23). The Holy Spirit, on the other hand, is the gift granted by God to help humans fight against the sins of the flesh and is the source of life everlasting. Overcoming the sins of the flesh became one of the principal paths to the freedom granted by the New Testament God, a

freedom that included not only life eternal, but also a new and perfect body to inhabit in that life. The Catholic Church subsequently placed great emphasis on sexual immorality and structured the practice of confession around expiating the Christian of impure thoughts and deeds, which were primarily of a sexual nature (Foucault 1990a). Christianity thus portrays the human body as weak and corruptible and the major source of sin, and promises those who strive to be of the spirit that they will overcome those weaknesses with eternal life and new bodies. Christians of the Middle Ages despised the body. Mysticism thrived among the monks of that period; practitioners sought to overcome anxieties about death by ignoring the welfare of the body, allowing it to suffer and using that suffering as a path to freeing the spirit from the flesh (Carse 1980; Clarke 1978). Cultural productions of the Middle Ages reflected a desire to be free of the body completely (Helgeland 1984). There was an obsession with the macabre (DuBruck and Gusick 1999). The figure of Death was one of the most popular representations in artwork of the age (Aries 1981). The ideal human figure as represented in art was that of an emaciated saint whose eyes reflected the desire of his soul to depart from his body. The overall picture that emerges of the Middle Ages is one of an era that conceded the victory to death and used its cultural productions to express the people’s overwhelming despair (Worcester 1999). Yielding to death was that culture’s particular solution to the problem of meaning in life, for giving oneself over to death could be interpreted as the supreme sacrifice. When one sacrifices the self—in particular, the body that one knows death will inevitably acquire—one is taking an absurd and meaningless death and giving it meaning. Foss (1966) suggests that the significance of sacrifice operates on two levels: First, the sacrificed leaves behind in society a memory of the sacrificial act, so that the life of the sacrificed acquires meaning in the world left behind; and second, the sacrificed gives over to death the body that is the cause of so much suffering and the primary hindrance to salvation. Making the supreme sacrifice of one’s body prepares one for the transformation to new life and a new body free of the world’s ills. The act of self-sacrifice thus becomes a subversion of death’s power: Victory by death was turned into victory over death, for in the act of sacrifice, life achieves its supreme significance (Foss 1966). The ancient Greek philosophers used truths evolved from rational discourse about the relationship between the body and the soul to determine practical rules concerning bodily restraint. The Greeks despaired over death precisely because life and the body offer so many pleasures (Choron 1963). They also realized that completely succumbing to the body’s demands for pleasure is the path to death. The problem the Greek philosophers addressed was therefore one of controlling the body’s excesses. Foucault (1990b) terms the classical Greek approach a “moral problematization of food, drink and sexual activity” (p. 51). In Greek thought, the goal was for the human not to be ruled by the

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passions of the body, but rather to temper the body’s passions with reason. To the Greeks, the problem of the body was not a religious one but a moral one. The body thus required attention because it was subject to abuse; bodily excesses were associated with sickness and death (Foucault 1990b). The Greeks, too, linked bodily abuse with the mouth and sex organs. Plato’s Laws refer to three basic appetites that involve food, drink, and reproduction, and Plato notes the unique strength of the sexual desire in particular (Foucault 1990b). The goal of the Greeks, then, was the proper management of the body’s desires for pleasure. Bodily desires are also made problematic and linked to death in Eastern religions. “Desire is suffering,” says Buddha, anticipating both the apostle Paul and Freud. The fear in Buddhism is not of an unpleasant afterlife. Rather, the fear is that unless freed from bodily desires, the individual will remain trapped in the birth-death cycle that prevents the self from being united with the oneness of the universe (Prabhu 1989). Oneness is the state of nirvana that Buddhists seek. Rather than fearing the annihilation of the self, practitioners of Buddhism seek such annihilation. The body and bodily desires act as hindrances to the attainment of nirvana. The body and its desires maintain the separateness of the self from the universal one as long as the individual remains enslaved to bodily passions (Toynbee 1976; Carse 1980). The self is an equal restraint in Hinduism, in which the individual also seeks self-annihilation and union with oneness (Glucklich 1989). Whereas the Greeks emphasized thought as the path to freedom, Buddhism and Hinduism emphasize meditation (Carse 1980). “Meditation is in truth higher than thought,” states a master in the Upanishads, the great Hindu philosophical/religious work. Meditation with the mind is the path to freedom and nirvana in Hinduism and Buddhism, but both Eastern and Western systems of thought reverberate the overall human theme of restraining the body’s passions through self-discipline and self-denial. The cultural practices of many human societies resonate with the idea that bodily desires are related to death and the restraint of bodily desires is the path to freedom from death, for both the individual and the society. Two psychological processes are evident in acts of self-denial, and both are guided by the idea that excesses of the body lead to death: First, self-discipline can serve the goal of increasing the individual’s pleasure in the present life by making the body healthier through moderation; second, self-discipline can be interpreted as pleasing to the gods or as a path to reunion with an uncorrupted world after death occurs. Individuals and societies gravitate toward one or the other of these two interpretations and construct symbolic systems to support their choices. Three dominant methods have evolved to enforce selfdiscipline. Traditional religions use external coercion to force the body into submission through the threat of punishment from the gods. The Greeks constructed a moral system guided by practical reason. Eastern religions set

forth rules and practices that allow practitioners to control bodily desires through meditative practices. These are the three major routes that humans have taken in their attempts to flee from the body’s death. The goal in all cases remains the same: to overcome death by achieving freedom from bodily desires.

REASON, PHILOSOPHY, AND THE FEAR OF DEATH One of our major premises in this chapter is that human societies can exist because symbols and the objects in the worlds that they represent are organized into conceptual systems that provide coherent explanations of human existence (Samuels 1993). Human reason underlies all such efforts. The logic of existence flows from the human capacity to reason. Reason informs all but the most irrational superstitions about the causes of death (Murphy 1993). What distinguishes advanced societies from societies that are less advanced is the range of worldly phenomena accounted for within their conceptual systems and their reliance on logical proofs to validate truths about the world. The discipline of philosophy in advanced civilizations represents humankind’s most rational attempts to deal with the problem of death. “Death is the true inspiring genius, or the muse of philosophy,” says Schopenhauer (1957:249). Even in philosophy, however, conclusions about death are socially grounded; the pervasiveness of a set of conditions may lead to an era in which a singular philosophical attitude toward death prevails, or the social conditions in the life of a particular individual may determine whether that person determines that death is to be feared or not feared. The ancient Greeks took philosophy to some of the greatest heights known to humankind, but their philosophy regarding death exhibits the duality that has pervaded the remainder of history: On the one hand were the materialists, who argued that the soul dissolves at death, and on the other hand were the idealists, who argued that the soul lives on independent of the body in some form after death. Each approach was determined by the focus of the philosophical inquiry: The materialists were early scientists concerned with the organization of material phenomena in the world, and thus saw the human as tied to the change and dissolution in the material world; the idealists, in contrast, set their sights on the seemingly perfect and unchanging conceptual world that reason ordered within the human mind, and could thus discern the possibility of a world beyond material experience in which the concept of the human, as represented by the soul, could live on (Sutherland 1978). Classical Greek society itself epitomized the precarious relationship between change and decay of the material world on the one hand and universal ideals of the conceptual world on the other: It was always challenged from both within and without by the forces of decay, and yet its leaders and thinkers were also able to

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construct ideals, such as truth, freedom, democracy, and justice, that seemed eternal. The duality is most evident in the logical systems of Plato and Aristotle and their respective schools of thought. To Plato, reason supported the existence of an ideal world beyond universal time and space, whereas Aristotle argued that reason can allow knowledge of the experienced world but can never prove a world beyond experience (Crescenzo 1990). Democritus, a student of Aristotle, also saw death as dissolution; he argued for learning to accept death as a part of life. Similarly, the materialist thinker Epicurus argued that religious thinking inflicts the living soul with fear of gods and fear of the hereafter (Gill 1995), but there is no need for such fear, because the soul dissolves upon death. According to Epicurus, the fear of death is the main obstacle to pleasure; individuals can achieve peace of mind by maximizing their pleasure while they are living (Rosenbaum 1993). The rational approaches propounded by the Greeks yielded to an obsessive fear of death during the Middle Ages, but classical ideas resurfaced in Western societies during the Renaissance. People again began to think that humans are not bound by fate and death and that they can take their lives into their own hands and learn to live fully and creatively (Choron 1963). The Renaissance spirit is exhibited in the ideas of the French essayist Montaigne (1993), who argued that it is the fact of death that gives life its value. To Montaigne, life is a gift made all the more real by death. The age of reason and science that flowered in the 16th century yielded proof of a mechanically ordered universe that operates according to logical and discernible principles. The possibility of eternity seemed to exist in the ordered, efficient operation of the world. Philosophical approaches to the fear of death often reflected the orderliness of the universe. Thus Descartes (1984) argued that we need not fear death because the mind/soul is eternal; the decay of the body need not imply the destruction of the mind. Kant (1998), reasoning from the perspective of his very orderly and circumscribed existence, argued that we cannot disprove God, freedom, and immortality, so reason supports their existence. There is no need to fear death, said Kant, because death is change. Much of 20th-century existentialist philosophy reflects the need to find meaning in a world shaken by catastrophic wars. The great world wars brought forth death and human evil on such a massive scale as to strip human life completely of the meaning that Western culture had built around it in preceding centuries. Modern philosophers thus express a need to find personal meaning in human lives constrained by the finality of death. Martin Heidegger’s (1996) concern is in demystifying death, teaching the individual to develop a proper attitude toward death and to learn to live life “authentically.” Karl Jaspers (1963) argues that proofs of immortality are faulty, and also echoes the Stoic notion that individuals should deal with the horror of nonbeing by learning how to die. Jean-Paul Sartre (1992)

echoes the same notion with his arguments that individuals should accept the finitude of death and seek their freedom through the knowledge of how to die. What can we conclude, then, about philosophical approaches to the fear of death? Underlying them all is the same mind/body duality of old, and all of these thinkers prove the limitation of human thought through their ability to consider only two options: Either death need not be feared because it is the release of an immortal spirit or death is complete annihilation of the being and can offer no further punishment to the being. The conclusions of each philosopher remain products of both his era and the social conditions unique to his life. The entire philosophical enterprise, however, can be viewed as a highly evolved human cultural response to the fundamental problem of death.

THE FEAR OF DEATH AND MODERN THOUGHT Much of the modern project involves overcoming the historical human impotence in the face of death. Underlying the modern project is the discovery of the individual and the attempt to liberate the individual—whether from the strictures of past group practices that are no longer functional or from the limitations and miseries heaped upon the individual by the very nature of existence, including death (Giddens 1991). There are many fronts to this project, and it employs the full array of tactics accumulated through millennia of human experience and subsequently ordered by human reason (Webb 1997). Science, medicine, psychoanalysis, philosophy—are all adapted to the ultimate liberation of the individual (Momeyer 1988). Psychoanalysis seeks to balance the individual personality by providing the ego with psychological tools to cope with the reality of its ultimate dissolution (Minsky 1998). Science offers technology to protect the body against the harshness of nature, while medicine attempts to slow and even halt the processes associated with the body’s natural decay and corruption (Conlin 1988). In modernity, death recedes further and further from day-to-day human experience. Humans are no longer constantly faced with death, and when they do confront death, it is usually presented in a sanitized form, with the sting of its horror far removed from everyday reality. We witness death through the mass media, but in heavily filtered fashion. When a death is anticipated, the individual is sent to a hospital, and his or her dying is left to the care of professionals (Fulton 1977). Humans today have access to a great deal of information about the process of dying (Walters 1988). Humans still attempt to reduce the shock of death by confronting and understanding it, but individuals are more informed about the process of dying than ever before (Prior 1989). Advances in medicine have generated drugs that serve to reduce the pain and discomfort associated with death (Kothari and Mehta 1981; Kass 1971).

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Progress, however, has not come without a price: Modern societies have been traumatized by confrontation with death in magnitudes not experienced in previous eras; the devastatingly efficient wars and genocides of the 20th century killed millions and revealed the persistence of great evil in humanity. All humans currently live under the shadow of potential nuclear annihilation. Modernity further fuels an existential crisis within individuals by generating knowledge of a world of overwhelming size and complexity, a world in which individual lives and projects seem increasingly meaningless (Slote 1978). The sheer scale of existence thus furthers perceptions of the pointlessness of individual lives. As a result, death anxiety has not receded, despite all human advances over the millennia. To combat death anxiety, however, modern society produces a full array of diversions that take our minds off of death. At the core of all human endeavors, says Ernest Becker (1973), is the terror of death. Because all individuals instinctively fear their own annihilation, death confers a narcissistic need to preserve the individual’s self-esteem in the face of the pointlessness of life. What humankind fears most is not extinction, says Scimecca (1979), but “extinction without meaning” (p. 67). According to Becker, society provides a “cultural hero system” that creates and perpetuates the myth of the significance of human life. Cultural hero systems provide channels that allow the individual to contribute to the human enterprise. All members of society can strive to be heroes through their contributions, however large or small, thereby allowing the gratification of narcissistic impulses and the maintenance of self-esteem. Society thus creates the illusion of the significance of life by creating heroic projects that galvanize members of the society. If the illusion is lost, despair is the result (Scimecca 1979). Heroic projects focus our attention and give life meaning and purpose. “Culture opposes nature and transcends it,” says Becker (1973:159). Transcendence is thus not an otherworldly phenomenon. Transcendence occurs with each heroic human effort to counter the devastating effects that nature has on humanity. Society itself is a transcendent being, constructed by the combined heroic efforts of all the individual humans who make up society. Culture thus offers immortality. Culture offers an opportunity to preserve the memory and works of the individual within the context of the heroic project that is society itself. Culture overcomes the fear of annihilation, the fear of being forgotten. Culture preserves an individual’s productions and thus allows the individual to achieve a form of “symbolic immortality” (Lifton 1979:23). Following Becker’s ideas, Solomon, Greenberg, and Pyszczynski (2000) argue in their “terror management theory” that the awareness of mortality produces a potentially paralyzing terror in humans. We require cultural worldviews that mediate this terror by instilling in individuals the idea that they are valuable members of particular communities. Humans thus create symbolic systems that are shared among all members of given communities in

order to preserve self-esteem mutually in the face of the underlying terror of death. This idea offers the needed boost to self-esteem that humans need to overcome the paralyzing fear of death. Cultural worldviews thus produce the means for death transcendence, and so are critical for helping humans to overcome the fear of death. Solomon et al. also assert that when societies are exposed to terror or the direct threat of annihilation, they embrace their worldviews even more strongly, often to the derogation of opposing worldviews. This derogation of other worldviews is necessary because alternate conceptions of reality dispute their own and challenge the underlying sense of self-esteem that their worldview is designed to protect. Advanced societies provide a wide array of institutional structures that construct appropriate sets of goals and symbolic systems to imbue human actions with meaning and purpose (Hollach and Hockey 2001). Little time is thus left for any void through which the repressed fear of death may resurface. Modern society perpetuates elevated ideals and places noble projects before humanity, keeping members ever striving toward reform for the betterment of humankind. Eradicating diseases, feeding the hungry, sheltering the poor, controlling the population, managing resources, protecting the environment, exploring inner and outer space, developing human potential through sports, art, and entertainment—all of these projects become endowed with significance that makes those who participate in them heroes and role models for generations to come. The institutions through which meanings are transmitted are continually subjected to critical inquiry against the objective standard of whether or not the institution extends or betters human lives. Even religion is rationalized and reconciled with philosophy and science at its highest levels and participates in rather than presides over the human project. A delicate balance is struck. Religion allows continued belief in an afterlife, but its approach is more pragmatic and this-world oriented than in the past; “love thy neighbor” translates into proactively building community, doing good, and abstaining from harming fellow human beings as the path to everlasting life. The goal of building a society that best assures that members live the longest and healthiest earthly lives possible is thus reconciled with the goal of assuring entry into a rewarding afterlife.

CORRELATES OF THE DEATH FEAR Studies suggest that the fear of death varies even within modern cultures. Social institutions can manipulate fears about death. The fear of death has thus been found to correlate with religious affiliation, religiosity, and exposure to death education, although in each case, the correlates are complicated by the multidimensional nature of the death anxiety. Hoelter and Epley (1979), for example, found that religiosity serves to reduce certain fears about death, such as fear of the unknown, while heightening others, such as fear of being destroyed, fear for significant others, fear of

Universal Fear of Death and Cultural Response– • –11

the dead, and fear for the body after death. Patrick (1979) reports that Christian religions are more effective at reducing death anxiety than is Buddhism. Studies of the relationship between death anxiety and death education have yielded mixed results. For example, Davis-Berman (1998–99) found that among a sample of college students, courses on death education served to decrease the fear of death, whereas other studies have shown mixed effects of death education on death anxiety (Knight and Elfenbein 1993; Maglio and Robinson 1994). The fear of death has also been found to vary with sex and age (Drolet 1990; Florian and Snowden 1989). FirthCozens and Field (1991) found that women tend to have a greater fear of death than men. Drolet (1990) suggests that older adults are better at establishing a sense of symbolic immortality than are young adults and thus may experience less death anxiety than the young. On the other hand, Roth (1978) notes that the fear of death is “widely prevalent among old people” (p. 554), although deeply repressed, and may be due to such factors as low self-esteem and the low value that modern society attaches to the aged. Cicirelli (2002) suggests that the fear of death among the aged is variable and may be related to weak religiosity, lack of social support, and low self-esteem. The degree of advancement of a society may determine how far that society can remove the actual experience of death from the day-to-day existence of individuals. The further death can be removed from common experience, the more of an abstraction it becomes. The abstract nature of death makes the fear of it even more subject to social manipulation. Modern societies have created a variety of institutional mechanisms for removing the actual experience of death from everyday life. In addition to traditional mechanisms (such as religion), hospices, drugs, death education, psychotherapy, philosophical belief systems, and other secular mechanisms all serve to remove, sanitize, and ease the pain of the transition from life to death. It thus becomes ever easier for societal members not to fear such an abstraction. When the veils over death that society has provided are suddenly stripped away, however, scholars have an opportunity to assess the most basic human response to death. Research findings suggest that a lingering fear of death is one of the most consistent outcomes of traumatic encounters with death (Solomon et al. 2000). Death fears have been linked to individuals’ experiences of traumatic events such as air disasters and the experience of trauma surrounding the deaths of loved ones. Chung, Chung, and Easthope (2000) found, for example, that residents of a town in England near which an airliner crashed exhibited higher death anxiety than did members of a control group. Florian and Mikulincer (1993) found the fear of death to be positively related to the loss of significant others. Even exposure to death through the media has been found to increase death fears (King and Hayslip 2001–2). In each of the cases cited above, the sense of security that society had provided between death and the individual was suddenly

stripped away, and the encounter with death became direct and immediate. One of the starkest examples of the relationship between the fear of death and trauma is provided by the terrorist attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center of September 11, 2001. In that instant, all Americans simultaneously came face-to-face with death. A terror of death suddenly resurfaced from beneath the comfortable, security-generating symbolic universe that had served to repress that fear. The anthrax attacks soon after September 11 produced the same response of fear, as does the general threat of nuclear annihilation. The general response to these threats seems to suggest that fear is a natural response to the threat of death, and that direct confrontation with the possibility of death can erode the symbolic buffers that cultures erect between individuals and death.

CONCLUSION The evidence suggests that human progress is indeed ultimately driven by the fear of death. Death, in all its complexity, finality, and absurdity, its challenge to existence, its ugliness, pain, and isolation, and its power to deprive, continues to hold sway over humankind. The anthropological record suggests that early human societies experienced death as children might—as a faceless, nameless horror that sought to deprive them of the few pleasures offered by existence. There were understandably mixed reactions to death—accept its lordship, make excuses for it, create a more powerful friend to humankind and enemy to death, avoid it, embrace it, or deny its finality. Experience with the world over time suggested a variety of means for incorporating the unwanted and yet everpresent guest into the human household. The history of humankind represents the sum total of the various experiments that have evolved to minimize the effects of death’s constant presence in the midst of human society. Death has been inextricably linked to the death of the body and the body’s fallibilities—its susceptibility to disease, injury, and death. Humans have sought to blame themselves for the body’s weaknesses and have established practices aimed at strengthening the body, through morality, diet, exercise, medicine, magic, and supplications to the gods. The spirit or soul, on the other hand, has come to be conceptualized in most cultures as the seat of reason, hope, truth, and immortality. Humans have dichotomized themselves and convinced themselves that if only they could be free of the body, then they could be truly free. Yet most still fear the prospect of a bodiless existence, so much so that many religions offer a new body on the other side of death. One of the most basic responses to death in all human societies has therefore been to place restrictions on the fulfillment of bodily desires. Yet excessive self-denial of the body by an overreaching conscience can be equally harmful to the being. Societies can lean toward either too little discipline and too much self-indulgence or too many restrictions on human desire and creativity. Both paths

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can lead to the very death whose avoidance is sought. The theme of psychoanalysis for individuals and for societies should therefore be the same—to prevent individuals or societies from being overwhelmed by either the desires of the body or the strictures of conscience and law. The goal is to develop a healthy balance of the two forces, so the personality of the individual or society can live life with maximum success, which means maximum happiness and pleasure and minimum pain and suffering. It is this ideal that is embodied in the modern human project. Culture is the primary vehicle through which passion and reason are mediated, and by which the pangs of death are lessened. Culture ennobles efforts at self-restraint and turns into heroes those who deny the self and face the possibility of self-annihilation for a larger cause. Through culture, the insulting banality that death confers on life is transformed through symbolism into a noble quest for being, a heroic struggle against the forces of evil. Funerals, birth ceremonies, remembrances of the dead, memorials, holy days, and other rituals, as well as art, literature, and drama, all seek to clothe the stark, absurd events of life and death within a system that gives human history meaning and purpose. Cultural productions order seemingly random and meaningless events into coherent narratives whose ultimate goal is to grant dignity to humans in the face of the utter disregard that nature seems to have for life. In sum, although death’s sovereignty will persist for some time to come, the human spirit will forever struggle to deprive it of its central place in human existence.

REFERENCES Aries, Philippe. 1981. The Hour of Our Death, translated by Helen Weaver. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Aristotle. 1941. The Basic Works of Aristotle, edited by Richard McKeon. New York: Random House. Becker, Ernest. 1973. The Denial of Death. New York: Free Press. Berger, Peter. 1969. The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion. Garden City, NY: Doubleday. Bivens, Alexander, Robert A. Neimeyer, Thomas M. Kirchber, and Marlin K. Moore. 1994. “Death Concerns and Religious Beliefs Among Gays and Bisexuals of Variable Proximity to AIDS.” Omega 30:105–20. Brain, James Lewton. 1979. The Last Taboo: Sex and the Fear of Death. Garden City, NY: Anchor. Carse, James P. 1980. Death and Existence: A Conceptual History of Human Mortality. New York: John Wiley. Charmaz, Kathy. 1980. The Social Reality of Death. London: Addison-Wesley. Choron, Jacques. 1963. Death and Western Thought. New York: Macmillan. Chung, Man Cheung, Catherine Chung, and Yvette Easthope. 2000. “Traumatic Stress and Death Anxiety Among Community Residents Exposed to an Aircraft Crash.” Death Studies 24:689–95. Cicirelli, Victor G. 2002. “The Fear of Death in Older Adults: Predictions From Terror Management Theory.” Journals of Gerontology Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences 57:357–66.

Clarke, John J. 1978. “Mysticism and the Paradox of Survival.” In Language, Metaphysics and Death, edited by John Donnelly. New York: Fordham University Press. Conlin, D. Walters. 1988. “Future Health Care: Increasing the ‘Alternatives.’” Futurist 22:13–15. Crescenzo, Luciano de. 1990. The History of Greek Philosophy. London: Pan. Davis-Berman, Jennifer. 1998–99. “Attitudes Toward Aging and Death Anxiety.” Omega 38:59–64. Descartes, Rene. 1984. The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, vol. 2, translated by John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, and Dugald Murdoch. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Douglas, Mary. 1966. Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Drolet, Jean-Louis. 1990. “Transcending Death During Early Adulthood: Symbolic Immortality, Death Anxiety, and Purpose in Life.” Journal of Clinical Psychology 46:148–60. DuBruck, Edelgard and Barbara Gusick, eds. 1999. Death and Dying in the Middle Ages. New York: Peter Lang. Durkheim, Émile. 1915. The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life. New York: Free Press. ———. 1963. Primitive Classification. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Essien, Ekere James, Michael W. Ross, E. Ezedinachi, and Martins Meremikwu. 2000. “Measuring AIDS Fears in Health Workers: Structure of the FAIDSS Across Countries.” International Journal of Intercultural Relations 24:125–29. Feder, Samuel. 1976. “Attitudes of Patients With Advanced Malignancy.” Pp. 430–37 in Death: Current Perspectives, edited by Edwin S. Shneidman. Palo Alto, CA: Mayfield. Firth-Cozens, Jenny and David Field. 1991. “Fear of Death and Strategies for Coping With Patient Death Among Medical Trainees.” British Journal of Medical Psychology 64:263–71. Florian, Victor and Mario Mikulincer. 1993. “The Impact of Death-Risk Experiences and Religiosity on the Fear of Personal Death: The Case of Israeli Soldiers in Lebanon.” Omega 26:101–11. Florian, Victor and Lonnie R. Snowden. 1989. “Fear of Personal Death and Positive Life Regard: A Study of Different Ethnic and Religious-Affiliated American College Students.” Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology 20:64–79. Foss, Martin. 1966. Death, Sacrifice and Tragedy. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Foucault, Michel. 1990a. The History of Sexuality, vol. 1, An Introduction. New York: Vintage. ———. 1990b. The History of Sexuality, vol. 2, The Use of Pleasure. New York: Vintage. Frazer, James George. 1966. The Fear of the Dead in Primitive Religion. New York: Biblo & Tannen. Freud, Sigmund. 1936. The Problem of Anxiety. Albany, NY: Psychoanalytic Quarterly Press. Fulton, Robert. 1977. “The Sociology of Death.” Death Education 1:15–25. Giddens, Anthony. 1991. Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Gill, Christopher. 1995. Greek Thought. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Glucklich, Ariel. 1989. “Karma and Rebirth in India: A Pessimistic Approach.” Pp. 81–87 in Death and the Afterlife, edited by Stephen T. Davis. New York: St. Martin’s.

Universal Fear of Death and Cultural Response– • –13 Gordon, Rosemary. 2000. Dying and Creating: A Search for Meaning. London: Karnac. Hayslip, Bert, Jr., Debra Luhr, and Michael M. Beyerlein. 1991. “Levels of Death Anxiety in Terminally Ill Men: A Pilot Study.” Omega 24:13–19. Heidegger, Martin. 1996. Being and Time. Albany: State University of New York Press. Heinz, Donald. 1999. The Last Passage: Recounting a Death of Our Own. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Helgeland, John. 1984. “The Symbolism of Death in the Later Middle Ages.” Omega 15:145–60. Herzog, Edgar. 1983. Psyche and Death: Death-Demons in Folklore, Myths and Modern Dreams. Dallas: Spring. Hinton, John. 1967. “The Physical and Mental Distress of the Dying.” Quarterly Journal of Medicine 32:1–21. Hoelter, Jon W. and Rita Epley. 1979. “Religious Correlates of the Fear of Death.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 45:795–800. Hoelter, Jon W. and Janice A. Hoelter. 1978. “The Relationship Between Fear of Death and Anxiety.” Journal of Psychology 99:225–26. Hollach, Elizabeth and Jenny Hockey. 2001. Death, Memory and Material Culture. New York: Oxford University Press. Jaspers, Karl. 1963. Philosophy and the World: Selected Essays. Washington, DC: Regnery. Jones, James W. 2001. Terror and Transformation: The Ambiguity of Religion in Psychoanalytic Perspective. New York: Routledge. Kant, Immanuel. 1998. Critique of Pure Reason. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kass, Leon R. 1971. “The New Biology: What Price Relieving Man’s Estate?” Science 19:779–87. King, Jennifer and Bert Hayslip, Jr. 2001–2. “The Media’s Influence on College Students’ Views of Death.” Omega 44:37–56. Knight, Kim H. and Morton H. Elfenbein. 1993. “Relationship of Death Education to the Anxiety, Fear, and Meaning Associated With Death. Death Studies 17:411–26. Kothari, Manu L. and Lopa A. Mehta. 1981. “The Trans-Science Aspects of Disease and Death.” Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 24:658–66. Lifton, Robert Jay. 1979. The Broken Connection: On Death and the Continuity of Life. New York: Basic Books. Maglio, Christopher J. and Sharon E. Robinson. 1994. “The Effects of Death Education on Death Anxiety: A Meta-Analysis.” Omega 29:319–36. Malinowski, Bronislaw. 1948. Magic, Science and Religion and Other Essays. Boston: Beacon. Minsky, Rosalind. 1998. Psychoanalysis and Culture: Contemporary States of Mind. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Momeyer, Richard W. 1988. Confronting Death. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Montaigne, Michel de. 1993. The Complete Essays. New York: Penguin. Murphy, Jeffrie G. 1993. “Rationality and the Fear of Death.” Pp. 42–58 in The Metaphysics of Death, edited by John Martin Fischer. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Patrick, John W. 1979. “Personal Faith and the Fear of Death Among Divergent Religious Populations.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 18:298–305. Paul, Robert A. 1996. Moses and Civilization: The Meaning Behind Freud’s Myth. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Porter, J. R., ed. 1976. Bible: Old Testament: Book of Leviticus. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Prabhu, Joseph. 1989. “The Idea of Reincarnation.” Pp. 65–80 in Death and the Afterlife, edited by Stephen T. Davis. New York: St. Martin’s. Prior, Lindsay. 1989. The Social Organization of Death: Medical Discourse and Social Practices in Belfast. New York: St. Martin’s. Rank, Otto. 1936. Truth and Reality: A Life History of the Human Will. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Rosenbaum, Stephen E. 1993. “Epicurus and Annihilation.” Pp. 291–305 in The Metaphysics of Death, edited by John Martin Fischer. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Roth, Nathan. 1978. “Fear of Death in the Aging.” American Journal of Psychotherapy 32:552–61. Samuels, Robert A. 1993. Between Philosophy and Psychoanalysis: Lacan’s Reconstruction of Freud. New York: Routledge. Sartre, Jean-Paul. 1992. Being and Nothingness: A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology, translated by Hazel E. Barnes. New York: Washington Square. Schopenhauer, Arthur. 1957. The World as Will and Idea. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Schultz, Richard. 1979. “Death Anxiety: Intuitive and Empirical Perspectives.” Pp. 66–87 in Death and Dying: Theory/ Research/Practice, edited by Larry A. Busen. Dubuque, IA: William C. Brown. Scimecca, Joseph A. 1979. “Cultural Hero Systems and Religious Beliefs: The Ideal-Real Social Science of Ernest Becker.” Review of Religious Research 21:62–70. Shapiro, Warren. 1989. “Thanatophobic Man.” Anthropology Today 5:11–14. Slote, Michael A. 1978. “Existentialism and the Fear of Dying.” In Language, Metaphysics and Death, edited by John Donnelly. New York: Fordham University Press. Solomon, Sheldon, Jeff Greenberg, and Tom Pyszczynski. 2000. “Pride and Prejudice: Fear of Death and Social Behavior.” Current Directions in Psychological Science 9:200–204. Sutherland, Stewart. 1978. “Immortality and Resurrection.” Pp. 196–207 in Language, Metaphysics and Death, edited by John Donnelly. New York: Fordham University Press. Sypnowich, Christine. 1991. “Fear of Death: Mortality and Modernity in Political Philosophy.” Queen’s Quarterly 98:618–36. Toynbee, Arnold. 1976. “Various Ways in Which Humans Beings Have Sought to Reconcile Themselves to the Fact of Death.” Pp. 13–44 in Death: Current Perspectives, edited by Edwin S. Shneidman. Palo Alto, CA: Mayfield. Tylor, Edward B. 1889. Primitive Culture, vol. 1. New York: Henry Holt. Vernon, Glenn M. 1970. The Sociology of Death: An Analysis of Death-Related Behavior. New York: Ronald. Walters, Conlin D. 1988. “Future Health Care: Increasing the Alternatives.” Futurist 22:13–15. Webb, Marilyn. 1997. The Good Death: The New American Search to Reshape the End of Life. New York: Bantam. Weber, Max. 1956. The Sociology of Religion. Boston: Beacon. Worcester, Thomas. 1999. “In the Face of Death: Jean Dulumeau on Late-Medieval Fears and Hopes.” In Death and Dying in the Middle Ages, edited by Edelgard DuBruck and Barbara Gusick. New York: Peter Lang.

HISTORICAL CHANGES IN THE MEANING OF DEATH IN THE WESTERN TRADITION WILLIAM R. WOOD JOHN B. WILLIAMSON

o speak of a single death is to speak biographically. In the deaths of others and in the recognition of our own mortality, death cultivates the creation of stories that testify to the quality of life lived as well as to the relative manner of death itself. To hear that one lived a good life is to combat the nonsensical specter that haunts the modern bios. In some sense, death has always haunted the living. Biography underscores, in particular, a modern proclivity toward individual narrative—death as the last unavoidable chapter of an otherwise fulfilling life, death as the thief of the devoted husband, death as the end of a long period of suffering, death as the accidental drowning of a child. Modern obituaries function as the briefest of biographies from which we can deduce structure and meaning.1 Senseless death is anathema to us. Such individuated narratives of death stand historically in marked contrast to earlier traditions in the West. In the philosophical treatment of life as preparation for death, or the contemptus mundi of the early Christians, or even in the danse macabre of medieval and baroque Europe, death remained a question of the psyche, the nous, the soul, the species. It served not merely as an end, but also as a beginning, an illusion, a test, an immutable force of nature. Not until the rise of the natural sciences in the late 18th century did matters of life and death become fundamentally organic. In this discursive epistemological rupture, a new biomedical positivism emerged as the legitimate sentinel of life. The language of life itself, once the prerogative of

theology and philosophy, became calculated, instrumental. The language of death, on the other hand, reemerged as antithetical, its only function that of nonfunction. Beginning initially with the cessation of breath (which still bore some of the ancient relation between pneuma and life), death moved in definition with advances in medicine to the stoppage of the heart, and then finally now to the cessation of brain activity.2 Bodies begin to fail and break down, systems begin to malfunction. We look to our stories, perhaps, for differentiation. The historical complement to the rise of the biographical ethos has been the gradual disappearance of death from the world of the living. In the United States and Western Europe, dying is now primarily a private and often technical affair, hidden behind the closed doors of the hospital, the mortuary, and the funeral home. For most of us, the actual witnessing of death will occur quite infrequently over the course of our lives. When it does, as in the case of the death of a friend or loved one, we find ourselves in the uncomfortable position of spectator, witnessing the sublimation of dying to the auspices of professional medical and postmortem practices. With these practices, public and private rituals of dying, burial, and care for the dead common to earlier eras fade into solitary and disconnected stories. It is this thesis, the radical transformation of attitudes and experiences of dying in the modern world, that has underscored virtually all recent critical works on the history of death in the West.3 Stemming largely from the

1. In speaking about obituaries of well-known figures, William Powers (2001) argues, “Obits are, in a sense, arguments. They make the case for why we should care about a particular life.” 2. On the shift in the definition of death from cardiovascular to neurological, from the heart to the brain, see Pernick (1999). 3. Aries (1974) expresses such an attitude when he notes, “In our day, in approximately a third of a century, we have witnessed a brutal revolution in traditional feelings and ideas, a revolution so brutal that social observers have not failed to be struck by it” (p. 85).

Historical Changes in the Meaning of Death– • –15

work of French social historians, recent works on changing attitudes toward death evidence a shift away from the contracted analyses of funerary art, epitaphs, wills, and occidental literary sources that occupied much of late-19th- and early-20th-century writings on the topic.4 Historians and other scholars have begun to address the difficult task of elucidating not only what was said about death in earlier times but also the lived experience of dying, expressed not merely in words but in ritual, gesture, and even silence. It is certainly not the case that critical analyses of literature, wills, epitaphs, and funerary art are lacking in contemporary historiographies. Such analyses continue to serve as primary resources for those concerned with the history of death and dying. Rather, the shift lies more in the posture of social historians toward already established collections of historical knowledge. It is not at all clear, for example, that epitaphs from the 14th century speak any more definitively to ritual and belief in the medieval world than modern gravestone inscriptions speak to contemporary understandings of death and dying. Although epitaphs often help to elucidate funerary customs and religious motifs, they provide less evidence for the myriad practices, beliefs, and rituals that elude or even contradict formal transcription. As such, more recent works (by social historians or others) tend to move among disparate sources and methods, often transgressing earlier disciplinary boundaries and methodologies. Disciplinary transgressions speak to the difficulty of the task facing historians who are concerned with establishing working parameters from which to investigate changes or shifts in cultural attitudes toward death. In the introduction to his work The Hour of Our Death (1981), Philippe Aries argues his methodological imperative: “If the modern observer wishes to arrive at an understanding that eluded contemporaries, he must widen his field of vision. . . . The historian of death must not be afraid to embrace the centuries until they run into a millennium” (pp. xvi–xvii). Yet we might suppose that to “widen one’s field of vision” is not necessarily to engage in a millennial historiography. Indeed, among the work of his contemporaries, Aries’s work stands arguably as the most chronologically ambitious. Such a widening of vision, however, requires an epochal familiarity with prevailing ideas, theologies, art, literary themes, and cultural rituals, as well as a questioning of the usefulness of commonly accepted historical demarcations (the classical world, the medieval world, the Renaissance, and so on) in their ability to speak to historical shifts in attitudes on death and dying. Thus Aries proposes an alternative historical scheme in which death had gradually become less familiar to the living, moving initially from what he calls the “tame death” of the ancients

and the early Middle Ages to the “wild death” of the modern world. Similarly, American scholar John Stephenson has proposed in his work Death, Grief and Mourning: Individual and Social Realities (1985) the movement in American society from an age of “sacred death” in Puritan times to one of “secular death” and finally “avoided death” in the modern age. Often these alternative historical schemata parallel larger historical transformations in the West. Sometimes, however, they do not. In any case, the historian of death is faced with the question of a beginning and an end, a pericope for transformation that exceeds any one text, monograph, painting, inscription, or ritual. Finally, to propose that many of the more recent historical works on death and dying share common threads is not to argue that these works are saying the same thing. Most emphatically, they are not. Specifically, most recent works on the history of death lack Aries’s chronological ambition. Indeed, many take exception to Aries’s (1981) insistence that “the errors [the historian] will not be able to avoid are less serious than the anachronisms to which he would be exposed by too short a chronology” (p. xvii). The examination of such a large time span has the propensity to both illuminate certain shifts and obscure others, particularly in the case of women, the poor, and the dispossessed.5 In this case, the history of death is no less a battlefield than other social histories, one in which both method and source are central to the histories of the dying, and ultimately to how we interpret our own death. Thus in this chapter we offer only the briefest of sketches, taking into account both the major shifts that have occurred in people’s experience of death and dying and the methodological and interpretive collaborations and disagreements central to this endeavor.

PHILIPPE ARIES’S HISTORY OF DEATH The work of French historian Philippe Aries stands as arguably the most visible social history of death available to date. In Western Attitudes Toward Death and Dying (1974) as well as in the better-known The Hour of Our Death (1981), Aries proposes that death itself has, from the early medieval period onward, undergone a series of gradual yet discernible changes, which he titles “tame death,” “one’s own death,” “thy death,” and “forbidden or wild death.” This fourfold division centers directly on how people experience and understand death. As such, it stands as a peculiar history, one that often eschews more visible changes (e.g., the Reformation) in favor of less discernible shifts present in literature, art (including funerary art), liturgy, burial practices, and wills. It is characterized by the

4. On the contribution of the French to social studies of death and dying, see Mitchell (1978) and McManners (1982). 5. Koslofsky (2000) states: “As one reviewer of Ariès’s essays has noted (and the point applies to Vovelle’s schema as well), many aspects of death in pre-modern Europe, from the gruesome death presented at a public execution to the deaths of heretics, Jews or witches in the wake of mass persecutions . . . fall outside his view” (p. 6).

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use or assumption of mentalités—attitudes that characterize particular epochs or periods of time.6 Michel Vovelle (1983, 1990), another French historian and contemporary of Aries, has argued that the primarily French social histories of “attitudes” (mentalités) occupy a specific location in the overall investigations into history of death. Such investigations Vovelle divides into three categories: mort subie (the burden of death), characterized by works that measure the demographic levels and effects of death in particular places and times; mort vécue (experienced death), which seeks to explain how people have understood dying and, in particular, their own mortality; and discours sur la mort (discourses on death), which seek to elucidate how philosophy, religion, art, and literature have depicted death.7 Within this tripartite division, the works of both Aries and Vovelle move among all three, but remain arguably focused on la mort vécue, occupied with elucidating the manner in which people have experienced and lived death (see Koslofsky 2000:5). It was Aries’s work that, in the context of French social history, first suggested the usefulness of examining mentalités (or attitudes) for understanding long-term changes in attitudes toward death. In Aries estimation, although each attitude (or rather loose collection of attitudes) exhibited a distinct posture toward death and dying, these shifts were also part of a larger gradual movement in the West, where death had receded from the public, visible, and highly stylized rituals of late antiquity and the early Middle Ages toward an increasingly private, individuated, and ultimately socially inchoate event.8 Hidden from public view, and finally even from the dying person himor herself, death had became ultimately unspeakable and unknowable. Once tame, the modern world had, in Aries’s estimation, rendered death wild. The tame death was, for Aries, not necessarily commensurate with a tame life, especially in late antiquity and the early Middle Ages, when material conditions were unimaginably horrid and death was a common event. War, famine, pestilence, and childbirth made living a perilous endeavor. A span of 30 years often constituted a full life. The decline of the Roman Empire returned urban populations to the familiarity of towns and villages. Roads declined, and people did not travel long distances, usually living in one location for the entirety of their lives. If death was “tame,” it was because people died frequently, in plain view of their townsmen or fellow villagers; in such times, it would have been difficult to die a private death. The tame death was more than mere familiarity with the spectacle of death, however. Aries (1981) argues that

the tame death had been occurring for hundreds or even thousands of years. It was, in his estimation, the “oldest death there is” (p. 28). The rituals that surrounded an individual’s approaching death were deeply inscribed into the actions of both the dying and those present at the death. Throughout his work, Aries often juxtaposes the highly stylized and familiar rituals of the tame death against what he understands to be the social incomprehensibility of death in the modern world. In his writings, figures from earlier eras find meaning in ritual. They understand their deaths and what is expected of them in a manner that would appear highly scripted and even unemotional today. In this oldest death, an individual’s passing was usually forewarned; it was the dying person who first saw his or her own death, allowing time for preparation, contemplation, and prayer. Aries contrasts this—that the dying knew their own death when they saw it—with the modern hospital or cancer ward, where knowledge of death often comes last, or not at all, to the dying. Not all deaths in the Middle Ages were so sanguine, however. People died suddenly, violently, or by accident. The death of children was common. Both the ancient and early medieval worlds distrusted those who had died mors repentina, in sudden death. Outside the familiar rituals of the tame death, a murky and uncertain world existed in which those who had perished suddenly were suspected, blamed, and potentially excluded from Christian burial. Such attitudes toward the victims of unexpected or violent death had existed for ages. As early as Homer, the shades of those who had been murdered or killed accidentally were understood to present trouble for the living. The specter of death haunts Achilles as the slain Patróklos visits him after his victory over Hektor. “Sleeping so?” Patróklos inquires of his friend. “Thou has forgotten me, Akhilles [sic]. Never was I uncared for in life but am in death. Accord me burial in all haste; let me pass the gates of Death” (Homer 1974:chap. 23, ll. 80–84). Virgil spoke as well of the falsely accused and murdered inhabiting the darkest part of the underworld. Their very deaths marked them as suspect and culpable. As Aries (1981) notes: The vile and ugly death of the Middle Ages is not only the sudden and absurd death, it is also the secret death without witness or ceremony: the death of the traveler on the road, or the man who drowns in a river, or the stranger whose body is found at the edge of a field, or even the neighbor who is struck down for no reason. It makes no difference that he was innocent, his sudden death marks him with malediction. (P. 11)

6. Michel Vovelle (1990) has said about mentalités: “It seems to me to be very much the case that we have progressed from a history of mentalities which, in its beginnings, essentially stuck to the level of culture . . . to a history of attitudes, forms of behavior and unconscious collective representations. This is precisely what is registered in the trends of the new research—childhood, the mother, the family, love, sexuality, and death” (p. 5). 7. This discussion of Vovelle is based on Craig Koslofsky’s The Reformation of the Dead (2000:5). 8. Although the term Middle Ages has generally fallen out of favor, it is the term Ariès employs.

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By the 12th century, perceptions of innocence and culpability were shifting beyond the boundaries of the mors repentina. If for at least a millennium the living had remained “as familiar with the dead as they were . . . with the idea of their own death” (Aries 1974:25), small but discernible changes began to appear that placed more emphasis on the religious significance of a person’s own death. Although many of the rituals surrounding death remained familiar, the certainty with which men and women faced death was becoming increasingly individuated. Illustrations of the Parousia depicting Christ as Judge suggested that salvation was moving from a collective rite to an individual trial (Aries 1981:101). The iconography of the Book of Life (liber vitae), depicted in paintings as well as in the woodcuts of the artes moriendi, illustrated these changes.9 Prior to the 13th century, the Book of Life had been represented largely as a collection or list of those who were to be saved, a “formidable census of the universe” (Aries 1974:32). Between the 13th and 15th centuries, however, a shift occurred, as the (now) familiar image of the Book of Life, often draped around the neck of the judged, replaced the earlier emphasis on collective salvation. The sins and deeds of human beings emerged as the currency of the Book of Life. Aries (1974) calls this book a “personal account book.” Presumably, this is an allusion to the bookkeeping techniques central to the rise of industrialization and capitalism, both of which play a central role in Aries’s analysis of the eventual dissolution of ritual and meaning in the West. Even if capitalism had not yet made large inroads into Europe, Aries suggests that a historical movement toward individualism (so often linked to economic processes) was under way as early as the 13th or 14th century. Unlike the Homo faber central to historical materialism, however, or even Max Weber’s emphasis on the relationship between Calvinistic salvation and capitalism, Aries (1974) suggests a precursor: In the mirror of his own death, each man . . . discover[ed] the secret of his own individuality. And this relationship—which Greco-Roman Antiquity and especially Epicureanism had glimpsed briefly and had lost—has from that time on never ceased to make an impression on our Western civilization. (P. 52)

In the 17th and 18th centuries, although death remained visible in the vestiges of public ritual, the growing division between reason and madness, portrayed so well in Brueghel’s The Fight Between Carnival and Lent (1559), placed death increasingly within the auspices of the erotic, the phantasmagoric, and the forbidden. Already in

Brueghel’s painting, the world of carnival (the world of the tame death) is at odds with the increasingly austere, orderly, and rational movements transpiring within the Church and society. It remains perhaps within the later romantic rejection of the Enlightenment, and its turn toward the interior world (including the emphasis on the baroque), where burgeoning relationships among madness, the erotic, and death begin to haunt an increasingly disenchanted world. A growing fascination with death transpired in the larger context of the removal of the dead from churchyard cemeteries located within cities. The public and visible death, including the daily reminders provided by such town cemeteries, gave way in one sense as the burial places of the dead became themselves casualties of an emerging discourse of concern over public hygiene, disease, and general disregard for the treatment of the body. In both Britain and France, from about 1750 to 1850, the dead were relocated to burial locations outside city walls. This move, however, was coupled with a less visible but nevertheless present emerging cult of the dead (e.g., involving secular cemeteries and familial tombs where one could visit the dead), as well as increasingly erotic depictions of the bodies of the dead (especially the saints), depictions that Aries (1981) calls “the confusion between death and pleasure” (p. 373).

THE CONTESTED MOVEMENT OF DEATH For Philippe Aries, within the scope of perhaps the past hundred years, death had become wild, forbidden, excluded. Much of Aries’s work on death from the 18th century onward (and perhaps the impetus for his work on death as a whole) details the movement away from death as a collective ritual and toward something unmentionable, unspeakable. From the baroque fascination with death in the 17th and 18th centuries, and the later removal of the dead from urban cemeteries in the 19th century, the dying were increasingly disappearing from the world of the living. With both the act and evidence of death removed from public view, it was not long before the dying themselves were repositioned behind the opaque veneer of hospitals, nursing homes, and mortuaries. According to Aries, by the middle of the 20th century death had become invisible, or worse. In the words of English anthropologist Geoffrey Gorer ([1955] 1965), it had become pornographic. This thesis of Aries, this “forbidden death,” is arguably at the center of the resurgence in the scholarship and

9. Aries (1981:107) notes that in the 15th century, the iconography of the Last Judgment was replaced by a new iconography that was popularized by the printing press in the form of books containing woodcuts, individual images that each person could contemplate in his or her own home. These books were the treatises on the technique of dying well, the artes moriendi. Latin artes moriendi emerged around 1475, and translations into German, English, Dutch, and French followed.

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debate surrounding the history of death and dying. Virtually no contemporary work on the social history of death in the West does not reference the work of Aries, if not directly address his arguments. Perhaps because of this, or in spite of it, the dearth of scholarship is least evident in historical studies of death from the 18th century to the present. Yet within this scope, many scholars have taken exception to Aries’s use of mentalités.10 They have also taken exception to his lack of geographic specificity and class analysis. Perhaps most important, although it is clear that changes have taken place in people’s attitudes toward death and dying over the previous three centuries, whether these changes constitute a “rupture,” in Aries’s terms, and whether such a rupture denotes the radical exclusion of death and aging from contemporary life, is not at all certain.11 What is clear is that, from the 17th century onward, death was already receding from its more traditional religious and social roles. The way in which people experienced death was changing. Part of the explanation for this is demographic. Increasing urbanization in Britain and Western Europe underscored growing anonymity, both in life and in death. It also allowed for a degree of freedom not common to provincial and rural ecclesiastical parishes. The recurring appearance of the plague, smallpox, and influenza in Britain and continental Europe between the 15th and 17th centuries ensured that death remained visible in and central to the lives of both urbanites and those living in provincial areas. But this visibility, as Aries notes, was already moving toward an increasingly individualized perception of death, if not yet in Puritan America, then certainly in both Britain and France, where the convergence of medicine, commerce, and incipit industrialization provided further discursive impetus toward a view of the individual as the emerging locus of truth in an increasingly secular world. If death was becoming increasingly individualized, so was the fate of the body and its location after death. As Aries (1974) notes, “In the second half of the eighteenth century . . . the accumulation of the death within the churches or in small churchyards suddenly became intolerable” (p. 70). On the surface, the impetus for this newfound concern came largely in the form of newly perceived health dangers

involving the close proximity of the living and the dead. In response to this health crisis, the dead, who had for so long been buried within the city walls and churches, were increasingly moved to outlying cemeteries or familial plots. Beginning in the middle of the 18th century, a massive displacement of cemeteries, particularly urban cemeteries, to outlying regions was undertaken; this displacement continued for almost a century in France. This was the case in Britain as well, where as early as 1726, Thomas Lewis had published Churches to Charnel Houses; Being an Enquiry Into the Profaneness, Indecency and Pernicious Consequences to the Living, of Burying the Dead in Churches and Churchyards (Houlbrooke 2000:193). In 1839, George Alfred Walker’s Gatherings From the Graveyards painted for its audience an alarming picture of the putrescence and visible gore present in graveyards (Rugg 2000:220). The communicability of death and decay reached a peak in the middle of the 19th century. By that time, a large number of private and commercial burial sites had emerged in both Britain and France. Such sites were located almost uniformly on the outskirts of towns or cities, away from the traditional churchyard sites (Houlbrooke 2000:193). By 1850, in Britain, private cemetery companies in effect had begun to take over from the Church the role of caretakers of the dead. As Rugg (2000) explains: “A series of Burial Acts . . . built on the success of cemetery companies by permitting the establishment of Burial Boards. . . . The Church’s virtual monopoly on provision for the dead had been irredeemably shattered” (p. 221). In place of the Church arose the first professional organizations concerned solely with the disposal of the dead. Yet within the emerging discourses on hygiene and health, more than one impetus was at work in the drive to relocate cemeteries and burial plots outside of city centers. Hygienic arguments alone do not adequately explain the transfer of cemeteries to outlying regions (Kselman 1993:167). A new relationship between the living and the dead was emerging as well, a relationship appropriate not only to health but to the individuality required of both parties. Such a relationship, contrary to the concerns of the hygienists, was evidenced not in the increased removal of the dead from the world of the living, but rather in the

10. As Mitchell (1978) has noted, “The French perception of the problem . . . has generally been in terms of attitudes toward death.” This seems correct in the case of Aries’s work, as well as that of Michel Vovelle. Such works, Mitchell argues, are characterized by “the famous search for a definition of mentalités that has guided the efforts of French historians and determined the course of their investigations. They seek not what we could precisely call an ideology of death, but they do hope to synthesize a popular conception or collective attitude, and to trace its evolution over several centuries” (p. 685). 11. Georges Minois’s writings represent a challenge to Aries’s proposition that the exclusion of death in France is a historically recent phenomenon. In his work Histoire de la vieillesse (1987), Minois argues that although death, and particularly death of the elderly, was in fact excluded from much of daily life, this exclusion was far older than Ariès realized. Minois places the rupture between accepted and excluded death not in the rise of modern medicine, or even in the rise of capitalism, but rather in the shift from oral to written cultures. Michel Vovelle, as well, has questioned Ariès’s insistence that the “forbidden death” was necessarily a new phenomenon. Vovelle’s well-known La Mort et l’occident: de 1300 à nos jours (1983) was critical of both Aries’s methodology and his conclusion that the exclusion of death signified a recent and radical break in French history. Vovelle proposes that, although death had indeed become alienated and invisible to most of the living, this process occurred more gradually than Ariès himself has estimated, perhaps 200 or 300 years earlier than he proposes in The Hour of Our Death (1981).

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movement of the living to these newly relocated places of the dead. Cemeteries, for so long the anonymous grave sites of the faithful, were over time replaced with individual burial sites or plots. In and around Paris and other urban centers, such plots began to appear in number for those who could afford them. Some plots were quite exquisite or even ostentatious, but many bore nothing more than names and brief inscriptions, particularly in more urban areas (Aries 1974:49). The coffin, as well, came to be seen as “an essential element of the decent funeral, even for the poor” (Houlbrooke 2000:193). Easily accessible to the living—not for purposes of prayer or devotion, but for purposes of visitation—such plots evidenced individual characteristics almost unknown since antiquity. The acceptability of the mass grave and the anonymous burial was replaced with an emphasis on individuality, even in death. A secular sentimentality for the dead was emerging. This sentimentality played out along several vectors. On one hand was the emerging personal relationship between the living and the deceased. By the end of the 18th century, the visitation of the dead was becoming increasingly common. Those with money could afford to bury their family members at home, on family property. Those not inclined to do so were still able to visit the deceased, buried as they were in public cemeteries. However, as Aries (1974) notes, “in order to be able to visit them, the dead had to be ‘at home,’ which was not the case in the traditional funeral procedure, in which they were in the church” (p. 72). The dead required homes of their own. On quite another level was the emergence of civic and national sentiment surrounding the places of the dead: The use of mausolea shifted memorialism of the dead to areas outside the confines of the church building. In France from the 1770s there was considerable discussion of the need for new places in which to bury the dead which would celebrate civic virtue rather than spiritual worth. . . . In England a shift away from the spiritual worth of the deceased is best reflected in the neoclassical treatment of civic and military heroes. (Rugg 2000:208)

Although the hygiene-related arguments of health officials kept the spaces of the dead at bay for perhaps a hundred years, the growing movement toward memorials— both private and public—slowly returned the dead to the inner sanctuary of the city. Devoid of either their posthumous relationship with the Church or their propensity for disease and sickness, the cemeteries, memorials, and mausoleums became in essence secularized cults of the dead. In this manner, it was the “unbelievers [who became] the most assiduous visitors to the tombs of their relatives” (Aries 1974:72). This secularization occurred throughout Western Europe as well as in the United States. In the United States, however, there were marked differences stemming from the geographic insularity of America—what David

Stannard (1977) has called the prevalence of a “Puritan way of death” (we discuss this topic below). In the case of Europe, however, the work of another scholar, Barbara Ann Day (1992), provides a useful longitudinal index for understanding the changing expectations of life and attitudes toward death in early-modern Europe. In analyzing various common prints depicting the “stages of life,” Day found that in the earliest known prints from 16th-century Amsterdam “for the most part, death was central to the Stages of Life. The very placement in [the] sixteenth century Dutch version of that theme demonstrates its function as arbiter standing on the axis of a rotating universe” (p. 694). By the 17th century, however, the centrality of death had been altered. Death had been relegated to its position under the bridge of life, instead of at the center of it. According to Day, death’s descent from a superior to an inferior location, the fundamental change of both the trajectory of life and the role of death, represented a radical shift. As death sank slowly to a position below the bridge of life, the bridge itself came to act as a shield for those “privileged figures located on the rising scale of status and age” (p. 695). Yet the figures are not privileged merely because they are shielded from death. Rather, as the prints changed from the 16th to the 17th and 18th centuries, the depiction of exactly who was walking across the bridge of life shifted as well: The concurrent displacement of the gleaner from earth to an underground domain and the ascendance of the bourgeoisie to the top of the pyramid function as a historical telltale that marks a major transformation in cultural attitudes. Such shifts in priority register not only separation from death, but also changes in power relations that favor the prerogative of the French bourgeoisie. (Day 1992:696)

Thus, for Day, the gradual displacement of death, first from the cosmic center to under the bridge of life and then finally disappearing altogether from prints in the late 18th century, represents the larger historical movement toward the exclusion of death. It also suggests a class distinction that was already playing out both before and after 1789; the rising bourgeoisie were growing into expectations of a longer life, a complete life with its various stages, that moved progressively through the world over the specter of death (Day 1992:697). By the early 19th century the expectation of longer life was becoming more realistic, particularly for those living in urban centers. The appearance of public health offices, as well as advances in medical science, made the understanding, anticipation, and prevention of mortality an increasing reality (Rugg 2000:203). Within this movement toward an understanding of life and death as a natural phenomenon, Michel Foucault has proposed, it is in fact with the natural sciences, at the end of the 18th century, where the greatest shift in the understanding of life and death emerged. In his work The Order of Things (1973),

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Foucault argues that by 1795, a transformation occurred (largely in the work of Cuvier) that allowed the natural sciences to introduce a precise and technical definition of life. In what Foucault terms the “era of biology,” the natural sciences reorganized not around the language of the visible (Aristotelian) systems of classification, but rather around the principle of the “organic,” the deduction of the living and the nonliving through the classification of biological function. From the moment when organic structure becomes a basic concept of natural characterization, and makes possible the transition from visible structure to designation, it must of course cease to be no more than a character itself. . . . This being so, the opposition between organic and inorganic becomes fundamental. (Pp. 231–32)

It is this fundamental shift, Foucault notes, that allowed Vicq d’Azry to exclaim in 1786, “There are only two kingdoms in nature, one enjoys life and the other is deprived of it” (p. 232). The recognition of the difference between living and nonliving had of course existed before this rupture. Foucault’s (1973) point, rather, is that the shift represented a reorganization of classifications schemes within the natural sciences that allowed for the distinctly scientific distinction between life as “that which produces, grows and reproduces” and the nonliving as “that which neither develops nor reproduces . . . the unfruitful—dead” (p. 232). The shift that allowed Cuvier to relate functions, as opposed to appearances, enjoined life as a function unto itself. Whereas “life” and, with it, death had before been inexorably enjoined with religion, and then later philosophy and even humanism, the organic definition of life rejoined nothing but the beginning of a purely technical and operational functionality. In a short time, through discursive and often unconnected processes, the idea of the natural or normal life began to replace (if it had not already) the fear and trembling of the Christian tradition. The good life, as depicted in Day’s work on the stages of life, was slowly evolving into the expectations of a bourgeois class nurtured on the positivism of 19th-century life—increased life expectancy, decreased illness, urban growth, and industrialization. The belief in the movement forward in history was perhaps nowhere better expressed than in the redefinition of life itself, which, given its natural course, had nothing but death to fear. The implication of Foucault’s proposal finds the physician, rather than the priest, at the bed of the dying. Whereas the Church had, with little regard for the body, attended (perhaps not always sufficiently) to the needs of the soul, it was the state and its relation to the emerging bureaucratic organization of hospitals, clinics, health boards, and public hygiene that found the greatest interest in the body itself. Keeping track of the dead and dying, along with disease and famine, “was the beginning of a

process that would eventually re-create dealing with death as a municipal and medical function, increasingly hidden from the general population” (Rugg 2000:216). Not only the act of dying, but the management of illness, disease, pestilence, and death became functions for public or semipublic bureaucratic institutions, hidden behind the veneer of daily life. If it is true that by the 19th century “death could be viewed as a natural phenomenon, over which man appeared to have increasing control” (Rugg 2000:203), it is in this context of control where death was largely redefined through the languages of management (public hygiene and disposal of the dead) and pathology (medicine and illness). Medical inventions such as inoculation and immunization, improvements in diet and hygiene, and public health projects all contributed in the latter half of the 19th century to advances in life expectancy, decreases in infant mortality, and a general improvement in health for those lucky enough to escape class warfare, genocide, and slavery. But control over death was effected in another important way as well. Quite simply, the dying were themselves beginning to disappear from the world of the living. If the deceased had returned in their civic cemeteries and public monuments to the center of urban life, it was the dying who were, by the end of the 19th century, becoming increasingly removed from view. With the advent of the 20th century, the rise of institutions responsible for the dying and the dead would prohibit all but the most cursory of interactions between the two worlds. To argue, as John Stephenson (1985) does, that by the end of the 19th century Europe and the United States had moved in large part to a “secular death” is to admit that such a term serves, at best, as a general indicator. To be sure, religious considerations of the fate of the soul waxed and waned—as they do today in both Europe and the United States. It is clear, however, that by the dawn of the 20th century the epiphanies of the deathbed scene, as well as the anguish of the Puritan struggle with salvation, had all but disappeared. The place of the confessor at the bedside was increasingly filled by that of the medical practitioner. The state had taken over, either directly or through the licensing of professionals, the role of the care of the dead. Death was becoming, in most aspects, impersonal, managed increasingly through bureaucratic and professionalized institutions.

THE SHORT 20TH CENTURY In an essay originally published in 1955, anthropologist Geoffrey Gorer ([1955] 1965) argued that the treatment of death in the 20th century bore many similarities to the treatment of sex in the previous one. In the Victorian era death was openly discussed, but sex had become increasingly taboo, kept from children, performed only behind closed doors with the lights low. In Gorer’s estimation, the

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situation had reversed itself some 100 years later. Sex was now discussed more freely, whereas death had become taboo, dirty, hidden—pornographic. It is the contention of both Gorer and Aries that this change occurred over a short period of time, somewhere between the end of the 19th century and the middle of the 20th century. Similar to Aries, who argues that death had become shameful and forbidden, Stephenson (1985) has written of the movement in the 20th century toward “avoided death.” He notes: The lack of open observance of mourning and the individualization of grief have aided in banishing references to death in everyday living. No longer are those who are grieving easily identified. Any public display of strong feelings is considered inappropriate today. . . . [T]he relegating of death to institutions has removed death from the home, and hidden it behind institutional walls. (P. 41)

The difference in the terms that Stephenson and Aries use is negligible. The main facets of the argument that a radical change occurred, particularly in the case of the United States, center on the following observations of historians and social scientists: a growing fear and anxiety surrounding death and aging (Becker 1973); the refusal to discuss death, particularly with the elderly, the infirm, or the dying themselves (Glaser and Strauss 1968, 1978); the removal of the elderly and the dying to nursing homes, hospitals, and hospices (Stephenson 1985); the increasing medicalization of death (Illich [1976] 1982; Aries 1981: 563–88); and the beautification and cosmetic enhancement of the dead and the professionalization of the funeral industry (Mitford 1963, 1998). If, in the above-mentioned processes, death had indeed become excluded and pornographic, it is also Aries’s contention that this exclusion of death—far above its mere secularization and increased individualization—began in earnest in the United States. Exactly why Aries believes this impetus came from America is unclear. In many ways American changes in attitudes toward death and dying in the late 18th and early 19th centuries parallel those that took place in Western Europe. In some important ways, however, they do not. In his well-known work The Puritan Way of Death (1977), David Stannard addresses the unique context from which American attitudes toward death emerged. According to Stannard, the Puritan tradition of death in America is important, as it led Americans to resist much of the secularization and individualization surrounding death in 18th-century Europe. Even as Enlightenment ideas took hold in urban centers toward the end of the century, the intensely individual death of the Puritans, even in vestiges, remained present. In one sense, the Puritan death was, as Weber argued, intensely personal and perhaps excruciatingly so. Stannard notes that “the Puritans were gripped individually and collectively by an intense and unremitting fear of death” (p. 79). On the other hand, this occurred while they were “simultaneously

clinging to the traditional Christian rhetoric of viewing death as a release and relief for the earth bound soul” (p. 79). We can imagine that this experience was perhaps not so different from that of Puritans in Europe. What was different—and is worth consideration, according to Stannard—was that, in contrast to Aries’s supposition that the extended family was the primary familial structure in the 17th and early 18th centuries, the nuclear family was already present and central in Puritan life in both America and England. Stannard (1977) suggests that this proposition does not seriously compromise Aries’s thesis, however, “since the central idea of his argument is not really dependent upon . . . the changing structure of the individual family life” (p. 169). Aries’s argument is not dependent upon this changing structure because, for Stannard, Puritan nuclear families formed interfamilial relationships that functioned in much the same way as extended family structures. Might we not suppose, however, that this difference, insignificant in Puritan 17th-century America, would gain significance as the world of Puritan New England gave way to a world of increasing industrialization, capitalism, science, and medicine? According to Aries, it is exactly in the growing relations of the nuclear family where the dead would begin to be shunned, pitied, and lied to. It was the members of the nuclear family, as much as the doctors and the institutions, who would eventually turn their heads away at the moment of death. It is not so difficult to imagine that the relative speed and thrust of capitalism and the emerging Industrial Revolution were central to these changing attitudes. In Puritanism, the community was held close through interfamilial structures as well as through the Puritans’ own understanding of themselves and their divine mission on earth (Stannard 1977:169). The speed with which the Puritan view of death lost its sway, as America moved from provincialism to “the nineteenth century attitude towards death and dying that was characterized by self-indulgence, sentimentalization, and ostentation” (Stannard 1977:171) underscores the rapid movement from an intensely religious worldview to one characterized by growing emphasis on commerce, individualism, and productivity. As Aries (1974) notes, in the 19th century in the United States, everything was happening as if the Romantic interval had never existed, and as if the mentality of the eighteenth century had persisted without interruption. [But] this hypothesis was false. It did not take sufficient account of American Puritanism, which is incompatible with confidence in man, in his happiness. . . . We must concede [however] that the phenomenon we have just observed occur much later than the French Enlightenment. (P. 96)

It is not merely that these phenomena occurred later, but that they occurred much more rapidly, within the contexts of three devastating wars (the Civil War and World Wars I and

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II), a series of economic depressions including the Great Depression, rapid advances in medicine and science, increasing longevity, and an emerging normalized rubric of health and life. Stephenson (1985) argues that perhaps the massive carnage and loss of life stemming from World War II12, following so closely on the losses of the Great War, produced a kind of “death overload” in which “the extensive mourning process and the sentimental approach to grief of the past were seen as old fashioned” (p. 31). If such an overload existed, perhaps it was not so much because of the wars themselves—after all, wars, plagues, and massive illness were common to modern Europe. Rather, perhaps it was within the expectation of longer and healthier lives, induced no doubt in part through the increasing medicalization and commodification of daily life, that the tragedy of war, both in the United States and Europe, became most present. A note of caution to anyone who would seek any single explanation for Aries’s tentative thesis: If a rapid change—an exclusion—of death has characterized much of the 20th century, there are still substantive differences among France, Great Britain, and the United States, for example, that require explanation. The practice of embalming, common in the United States for at least the past hundred years, has made hardly any inroads in either Britain (where cremation is common) or France. If the United States has exported its denial and exclusion of death, why has this practice that seemingly refuses to acknowledge death (a practice devoted to making the dead appear as lifelike and serene as possible) not taken hold? Similarly, the rise of memorial services in the United States, with their requisite managed, contrite emotionality, has not been imitated in other countries, where more traditional funerals are still the norm. In many respects, common characteristics exist; the institutionalization and medicalization of death, to a greater or lesser degree, stands central to all Western cultures. But within these cultures, if we assert that something like a mentalité of death exists, we must temper our assertion with a recognition of the enormity of difference and distinction present throughout the West.

EPILOGUE: TOWARD A NEW ACCEPTANCE OF DEATH? In the past 30 years, “back-to-death movements” have challenged our growing alienation from and exclusion of death. Much has been written on the hospice movement in both Britain and the United States, for example, as a humane response to the growing impersonalization and dehumanization of death in hospitals and nursing homes. Death awareness, spurred on by the publication of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s On Death and Dying (1969), has challenged the notion that death should remain hidden

12.

Overall, in World War II a staggering 61 million people were killed.

behind closed doors. Marilyn Webb (1997) writes of the return to prepared dying—a mix of traditions from both the East and the West that seeks an alternative to the medicalized and insular institutional death. Even primetime television, it seems, has a response to the “taboo pornography” of death in the HBO television series Six Feet Under, in which semimorbid humor attempts to interject the discussion and visibility of death back into the world of the living, or at least the world of the living who are able to view HBO. Such movements, however, have their detractors as well. All of these movements are in some way mediated through the reality of commerce. Is good dying merely becoming good business? Ron Rosenbaum (1982) has said of the back-to-death movement inspired by KüblerRoss: What’s been lost in the general approbation of Kübler-Ross’s five stages is the way her ordering of those stages implicitly serves a behavior control function for the busy American death professional. The movement from denial and anger to depression and acceptance is seen as a kind of spiritual progress, as if quiet acceptance is the . . . highest stage to strive for. (P. 34)

In a bifurcated and even schizoid culture, the effectiveness of death professionals seems reasonable. In a culture that reasons death. When a friend’s mother recently passed away—in the hospital—all anyone could think to say was “I’m sorry.” Our friend later confessed that he felt dirty, used, taken advantage of. People were unable to address him directly, permitting nothing but the most hollow of phrases. He refused to engage in conversation about his mother’s death with anyone who had not earned the right to participation in her life. In many deaths, including those of close family members, we have witnessed much the same thing—a medicalized and excruciatingly painful death followed by awkwardness and a sense of bewilderment. Somewhere between the nether regions of the dying who inhabit the county hospital and HBO’s guarded optimism, people are seeking alternatives. The hospice movement, although not uncontroversial, is testament to the success of social movements that are increasingly concerned not only with the question of life but also the manner of death. It is unclear, however, if such movements can continue to shoulder the burden of caring for the dying in a world increasingly defined by the attenuation of social welfare, huge gaps in the distribution of wealth, burgeoning medical costs, and a growing elderly population. If the redefinition of life that Foucault describes as the separation of the organic and nonorganic signified the beginning of the era of biology, it is the medicalization of life, so defined, that remains for most of us the likely conclusion to the biographies we seek of ourselves.

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REFERENCES Aries, Philippe. 1974. Western Attitudes Toward Death: From the Middle Ages to the Present, translated by Patricia M. Ranum. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. ———. 1981. The Hour of Our Death, translated by Helen Weaver. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Becker, Ernest. 1973. The Denial of Death. New York: Free Press. Day, Barbara Ann. 1992. “Representing Aging and Death in French Culture.” French Historical Studies 17:688–724. Foucault, Michel. 1973. The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. New York: Pantheon. Glaser, Barney G. and Anselm L. Strauss. 1968. Time for Dying. Chicago: Aldine. ———. 1978. Awareness of Dying. Chicago: Aldine. Gorer, Geoffrey. [1955] 1965. “The Pornography of Death.” Pp. 192-99 in Geoffrey Gorer, Death, Grief and Mourning. Garden City, NY: Doubleday. Homer. 1974. The Iliad, translated by Robert Fitzgerald. Garden City, NY: Doubleday. Houlbrooke, Ralph. 2000. “The Age of Decency: 1660–1760.” In Death in England, edited by Peter C. Jupp and Clare Gittings. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Illich, Ivan. [1976] 1982. Medical Nemesis: The Expropriation of Health. New York: Pantheon. Koslofsky, Craig. 2000. The Reformation of the Dead: Death and Ritual in Early Modern Germany. New York: St. Martin’s. Kselman, Thomas A. 1993. Death and the Afterlife in Modern France. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Kübler-Ross, Elisabeth. 1969. On Death and Dying. New York: Macmillan.

McManners, John. 1982. “Death and the French Historians.” In Mirrors of Mortality: Studies in the Social History of Death, edited by Joachim Whaley. New York: St. Martin’s. Minois, Georges. 1987. Histoire de la vieillesse. Paris: Fayard. Mitchell, Allan. 1978. “Philippe Aries and the French Way of Death.” French Historical Studies 10:684–95. Mitford, Jessica. 1963. The American Way of Death. New York: Simon & Schuster. ———. 1998. The American Way of Death Revisited. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Pernick, Martin S. 1999. “Brain Death in a Cultural Context: The Reconstruction of Death, 1967–1981.” Pp. 3–33 in The Definition of Death: Contemporary Controversies, edited by Stuart J. Youngner, Robert M. Arnold, and Renie Schapiro. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Powers, William. 2001. “Dying to Be Read: What Obits Tell Us.” National Journal, February 17, p. 505. Rosenbaum, Ron. 1982. “Turn on, Tune in, Drop Dead.” Harper’s, July, pp. 32–40. Rugg, Julie. 2000. “From Reason to Regulation: 1760–1850.” In Death in England, edited by Peter C. Jupp and Clare Gittings. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Stannard, David E. 1977. The Puritan Way of Death. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Stephenson, John S. 1985. Death, Grief and Mourning: Individual and Social Realities. New York: Free Press. Vovelle, Michel. 1983. La Mort et l’occident: de 1300 à nos jours. Paris: Gallimard. ———. 1990. Ideologies and Mentalities, translated by Eamon O’Flaherty. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Webb, Marilyn. 1997. The Good Death: The New American Search to Reshape the End of Life. New York: Bantam.

DEALING WITH DEATH Western Philosophical Perspectives

MICHAEL R. TAYLOR

eeking means to transcend death is a widespread, if not universal, inclination among human beings. The Western philosophical tradition has developed numerous viewpoints on, and fostered various attitudes toward, our mortal nature. In this chapter, I discuss five distinct strategies that have had significant impacts on how we think about and cope with death. I offer an explanation of how these ideas get developed by some of the major philosophers and their followers, followed by a consideration of the attitudes toward death that these views are likely to engender. For a discussion of reincarnation, Plato’s account is a good place to begin; I follow this with an overview of the medieval Christian understanding of death developed by Saint Thomas Aquinas. Attitudes and beliefs about death changed at the dawn of modern science, and I consider here both the dualistic theory of Descartes and the skeptical approach developed by David Hume, exploring some of the consequences of their views. Finally, the unique contribution of existentialism is exemplified by the distinctive way in which human finitude figures into the thought of Martin Heidegger. Some of the oldest accounts still have a great deal of influence; Saint Thomas and Descartes articulate ideas that still have impacts on the attitudes of many people. Plato’s account of the transmigration and reincarnation of souls has fallen out of favor in the West, but it has not entirely disappeared.

THE ANCIENT GREEKS AND THE TRANSMIGRATION OF SOULS Among the ancient Greeks, the most striking view concerning death is the idea that souls migrate into new bodies. This view was not widely held among the Greeks, but some religious sects and philosophical schools were committed to the doctrine of the transmigration of souls. Plato developed the most extensive account of these ideas in 24

several of his dialogues. He probably borrowed some elements of his account from the Greek religions of his day, and he may also have incorporated some of the ideas of the Pythagorean philosophers (Bostock 1986:12). Two fundamental beliefs are central to Plato’s thought about death: the doctrine of recollection and the transmigration and reincarnation of souls. The doctrine of recollection amounts to the idea that the soul contains within it knowledge of the most fundamental realities, which Plato calls “Forms.” The soul, according to Plato, exists eternally and is always in possession of this knowledge. The task of human beings is to recover this knowledge buried deep within the recesses of the soul. The knowledge must be recovered because it has been forgotten due to the shock of the soul’s entry into the body. The ultimate meaning of human life is, in this account, the recovery of the knowledge of the true nature of things that lies hidden in the souls of every human being. It is our ignorance concerning these ultimate realities that gives rise to human evil, misery, suffering, and injustice. Recovery of the knowledge forgotten by the soul leads to harmony and justice both within the individual and, under the right circumstances, in society. The fate of the soul depends, in Plato’s view, on the success of the quest to recall the forgotten knowledge buried within each of us. This quest can succeed only if we adopt and practice the proper philosophical attitudes along with unremitting devotion to living the philosophical life. It is through the practice of philosophy that we recover from the soul knowledge of the Forms. The practice of philosophy is illustrated through the method, called dialectic, practiced by Socrates in Plato’s dialogues. Far from being a mere irritant (although he was surely that), Socrates attempted to motivate people to care for their souls rather than for the wealth and power they saw being coveted by those around them. He tried to do this by drawing out their ideas and then submitting those ideas to examination in

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order to see if they could stand the test of criticism. According to Socrates, it is only by ridding ourselves of our false beliefs that we will become motivated to search for the knowledge that we truly need if we are to set our souls in good order. The souls of those who engage in the philosophical life and who recover the soul’s hidden knowledge live eternally with the gods after the body dies, and their lot is immensely better than that of those here on earth. What, then, awaits the soul when the philosophical life is not attained? Although Plato (1981:120) didn’t intend what he said about this matter to be taken as the literal truth, he asserts that it is reasonable for humans to expect something very much like the following: The fate of such souls is to be reincarnated, and the nature and quality of our future incarnations depends on our conduct in our current lives. Those who have discovered the truth concerning the eternal and unchanging realities go to a blissful realm and enjoy communion with the gods and contemplation of the Forms. If we have lived good lives by conventional standards but have not recovered the knowledge within us through the practice of philosophy, then we can expect to live again in the form of some social creature (as ants, bees, wasps, or as human beings again). If, however, we have not lived good lives, we can expect to return in some less desirable form, perhaps as hawks, kites, or asses (donkeys, I presume). Plato further suggests that those who live extremely evil lives may not return at all, but instead continue to exist in eternal torment (p. 121). In the final book of the Republic, Plato introduces the “Myth of Er.” This is the story of a warrior, Er, who was apparently slain in battle. The bodies of the dead were collected and Er’s body was placed upon his funeral pyre, but he revived and reported an extraordinary experience that he had while “dead.” Er claimed to see souls coming up from the earth or down from the heavens. These souls were about to be sent back into the world and were in the process of choosing the patterns of their upcoming lives. The choices that they made concerning the lives on which they were about to embark turned out to be heavily influenced by the moral quality of their previous lives. Thus one’s past life has significant consequences for one’s future prospects, but it is still up to each person to decide what to make of the conditions imposed upon him or her by the upcoming life (Plato 1992:285–86). Although I know of no evidence in support of this contention, it seems likely to me that the so-called Myth of Er is not, properly speaking, a myth. I think that it could be an account of what we today call a near-death experience (or NDE). A near-death experience sometimes occurs when a person is pronounced clinically dead or appears, given all empirically observable evidence, to be dead, but then regains consciousness. Occasionally a person who has undergone such an occurrence will report having had particular experiences while unconscious. Descriptions of NDEs reveal a recurring pattern, and Er’s story resembles many of these reports. The structure of NDEs often

includes a sensation of leaving the body, traveling through a kind of tunnel, arriving in a place of light, and being in the presence of other (usually benevolent) beings, followed by (often unwilling) return to the revived body (Beloff 1992:263). Most contemporary accounts of NDEs describe them in positive terms, but the further back in time we look, the more reports we find that include a requirement that the individual account for his or her life and how it was lived, along with judgment of that life. Carol Zaleski (1987) describes these older versions: The soul is either embraced or disowned by its guardian angel and challenged by evil spirits who look for traces of their influence; its merits or demerits, hidden during life, are now disclosed. Again, at the divine tribunal, the soul’s deeds are displayed in the form of victims who come forward to testify against it. (P. 73)

NDEs have not always been perceived as entirely pleasant, and in the older accounts that Zaleski describes there is commonly a significant element of anxiety involved. Thus, although Er’s experience may seem to deviate from contemporary accounts of NDEs, which tend to be uniformly positive, it squares pretty well with the descriptions transmitted by inhabitants of the ancient or medieval world. Of course, Plato may have modified Er’s report to suit his own purposes. Arnold Toynbee (1968) notes the similarity between the view of the soul as eternal and undergoing multiple incarnations and the conception widely held by Eastern philosophers, in which the soul is reincarnated in various forms until it achieves enlightenment: One conception of the immortality of the soul has been that souls are not only immortal but eternal: i.e. that every soul has been in existence eternally before it ever came to be embodied, and that it will remain in existence eternally after becoming disembodied once [and] for all. Of all the divers conceptions of personal immortality of the soul, this is the one that comes nearest to the Indian conception of a supra personal or a depersonalized immortality. This belief was held by some preChristian Greeks, but never, so far as we can judge, by more than a small sophisticated minority. (P. 86)

It is not known whether there was some common root from which the belief arose both in India and among the Greeks, but it is a remarkable view, and the timing would have been right for there to be either a common source or some kind of cross-fertilization. We simply have no knowledge of the matter. One Platonic dialogue seems to be much less decisive about our prospects for postmortem existence. In the Apology, which gives an account of the trial of Socrates, Plato portrays Socrates as unwilling to commit to any very definite ideas about what awaits us after death. Socrates holds at the end of the dialogue that the good man has

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nothing to fear from death, because either the soul will survive or death will amount to personal annihilation. If the latter, then there is nothing after death, and so there is nothing for anyone to fear. If this is so, then there is nothing for the good man to fear. If, on the other hand, the soul survives bodily death, then for the good person what comes will presumably be something good. It is not reasonable to fear an improvement in one’s condition, so, if the good man can expect something good after death, once again he has nothing to fear. In either case, death should hold no terrors for the good person (Plato 1981:43). Of course, that leaves the vast majority of us unaccounted for; few of us would think ourselves entirely good, and Socrates remains silent concerning the matter of what death may hold for the rest of us. There may be ample reason for most of us to adopt a fearful attitude toward death. In the Apology, Socrates seems far from certain concerning the fate of the soul. Perhaps it continues to exist, and if the person has lived a good life, then something good can be expected. Or perhaps the death of the body amounts to the annihilation of the person. Socrates leaves the matter at that and does not attempt to decide between these alternatives. Perhaps Socrates and Plato held divergent views concerning what it is reasonable to believe about the fate of the person after the death of the body. Socrates may have been uncertain about whether the soul continues to exist, but Plato may have thought he had good reason to suppose that it continues to exist after the body dies. Plato advocates an attitude that involves embracing our mortal nature. He defines death as the separation of the soul from the body, and he asserts that the body is a source of distraction from the pursuit of wisdom (understood as knowledge). Death thus removes a major obstacle to the pursuit of wisdom. Because philosophy is the love of wisdom, the philosopher should look forward to the time when the soul can engage in its pursuit of wisdom undisturbed by the perturbations of the body. Understood in this way, philosophy boils down to practice for death, because the philosopher attempts to pursue pure knowledge, and this pursuit can be successful only if the soul becomes separated from the body. So philosophers ought to look forward to death, not fear it (Plato 1981:100–103). An attitude of fearlessness and hopeful anticipation is, in Plato’s view, the appropriate one for us to adopt toward our future demise. Although Plato’s views concerning death can be inspiring or consoling to those who have, or believe that they have, the high-powered intellect needed for grasping the Forms, they offer little solace to the rest of us. For people who are caught up in the daily business of survival there is little time left after working, paying the bills, and attending to family responsibilities to devote to achieving the contemplative philosophical life that Plato advocates. For those of us caught up in the concerns of everyday existence, Plato’s ideas concerning death may not seem very comforting. The only bright spot is that we will get another chance next time around on the cycle of death and rebirth,

and yet another, until we finally achieve the knowledge harbored within our souls. Still, for those not philosophically inclined (probably the vast majority of humankind), the thought of the next life being one of philosophical contemplation of the eternal realities is unlikely to appear very attractive. Plato nowhere suggests that after death we will experience some of the things that many look forward to most, such as reunion with deceased loved ones. However, for those able to make use of them, Plato’s views can take, and have taken, a good deal of the sting out of our impending demise. Socrates died well, and the Christian philosopher Boethius found immense consolation in Plato’s views while awaiting his execution (see Boethius 1962).

MEDIEVAL CHRISTIANITY AND THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD With the rise and spread of Christianity, Western philosophical ideas concerning the prospects for survival of bodily death underwent significant change. Medieval Christians believed not only that the soul continues to exist after the body dies, but that the body itself would, at some future time, be resurrected and reunited with the soul. This doctrine of the resurrection of bodies apparently did not originate with Christianity. If Toynbee (1968) is right, “This belief in the bodily resurrection of all dead human beings is common to Christianity and Islam, and, like the belief in judgment noted earlier, it seems to have been derived by both religions from Zoroastrianism via Pharisaic Judaism” (p. 90). Not only Muslims, Christians, and Zoroastrians held this belief; the Egyptians seem to have believed that at least some dead human bodies could be resurrected (Toynbee 1968:90). The doctrine of resurrection receives its most sophisticated philosophical development in the hands of Saint Thomas Aquinas, who believed that in order to be a human being it is necessary to be a combination of body and soul. The soul is the principle of life and hence indispensable, but the body is also necessary if this life is to be the life of a human person. The soul by itself enjoys certain powers, such as understanding, willing, and considering, but in order to enjoy the powers of sensation, it must be united with a body. Taken together, soul and body united make up a complete human being (Aquinas 1992:93–96). In Thomas’s view, no postmortem survival of the person is possible without the body, because the soul by itself does not constitute a person. Anthony Kenny (1993) points this out: Aquinas undoubtedly believed that each human being had an immortal soul, which could survive the death of the body and continue to think and will in the period before the eventual resurrection of the body to which he looked forward. Nonetheless, Aquinas did not believe in a self which was distinct from the body, nor did he think that disembodied persons were possible. (P. 138)

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In other words, we will most assuredly undergo death, which we (in the sense of a self) will not survive. Our soul will survive this death, but our soul and our personal identity are not the same thing, and so the survival of the death of the body by the soul is insufficient for our continued existence as selves or persons. The Thomistic picture looks something like this: When a person dies, the soul separates from the body and goes to its proper place; eventually, at the appropriate time, it is reunited with the resurrected body. The soul is, according to this account, created by God and conjoined with the body at some point during development; it is not eternal in the sense that it exists everlastingly, both before and after its embodiment. Rather, it is created and conjoined with the body. The soul remains in existence throughout the person’s life and continues to exist after the person dies. The body, on the other hand, undergoes death. At some time in the future, the body is resurrected and reunited with the soul, and at that time the person is reestablished and enjoys eternal life through the grace of God. It is in this way that Christians achieve their final end, happiness, which is unobtainable in the present earthly form of existence. There are a number of problems associated with the idea of the resurrection of the body. Imagine, for example, that cannibals have eaten someone; how can that person’s body be resurrected when it is now part of other persons? Thomas assures us that “whatever is wanting will be supplied by the Creator’s omnipotence” (Aquinas 1992:99). This response, however, leaves unanswered a number of troublesome questions. Will my resurrected body be in the same condition as it was when I died? For some, that would be an unpleasant prospect indeed. Will it be the feeble, infirm, frail body of old age? Or will it be the body as it was during the prime of life? Attempts to answer such questions, and others like them, seem to have a strong element of arbitrariness about them. More important, from a philosophical point of view, issues concerning identity arise when one entertains the idea of resurrection. At the heart of this issue is the question of whether the resurrected body will be identical to the body that was conjoined with the soul during the earthly existence of the person. In part, this amounts to the question of whether the resurrected body will be made of the same “stuff” as the earthly body. Will the new body be composed of the same atoms and molecules as the original body? Will it be made of the same flesh, blood, and bone? Subject to the same vulnerability, pain, pleasure, growth, and decay? Or will it be composed of some special, spiritual kind of stuff, less subject (or even immune) to degeneration, decay, and injury? If the latter, how can it be identical to the original body rather than merely a facsimile of it, made out of some other material? We might also wonder whether the resurrected body could be the same as the original body if there is a break between the existence of the earthly body and the resurrected one. Suppose the body dies, decomposes, and is finally reduced to its most basic constituent parts. Come

resurrection day, all these parts are rounded up by an infinitely powerful and omniscient God, who reassembles them in exactly the way they were arranged before the original body decomposed. Is the reassembled body identical to the original one? Some philosophers contend that a break in the existence of an object amounts to a break in its identity. According to this view, the total destruction of a body, whether through natural decomposition or some other means, undermines the idea that the restoration of that body through the collection and reconstitution of its constituent parts is capable of preserving identity. The body of the person will be, at best, an exact replica, down to the last detail (even the last atom), but it cannot be the same, identical body (van Inwagen 1992:244). The resurrection of the body was the mainstay of Christian belief during the Middle Ages. It is still today the official doctrine of many Christian denominations, including Roman Catholic (Clary 1998:198), Assemblies of God (Horton 1998:6), Baptist (Hendricks 1998:44), Lutheran (Lee 1998:165), and Methodist (Warren 1998:228). Despite the philosophical problems inherent in the idea of resurrection, many of the faithful still appear to reap considerable comfort from this belief. It certainly seems to fit in better with the way many people conceive of the afterlife and what they hope to get from it than do Plato’s ideas about the contemplative disembodied soul. In thinking of the world to come, few envision a soul eternally contemplating the Forms. Rather, they think of union with the divine; freedom from pain, suffering, decay, disability, and sin; and reunion with lost loved ones. In other words, they think of the afterlife as very much like life here, but freed from things that make earthly life a burden. Thinking about reunion with those loved and lost is usually imagined in bodily terms; those loved and lost people are recognizable in their bodily form. This imagined reunion is a great consolation for many people. So the belief in resurrection is, for many, more comforting than the intellectualism of Plato. It is not necessary, in the case of resurrection, to practice the life of the Platonic sage in order to achieve beatitude; a desirable form of eternal existence is available to all of the faithful. Faith does not require the great intellectual gifts necessary to apprehension of the Forms; rather, it depends on one’s belief in the saving power of the Divine, and such belief seems to be open to all. In fact, approaching faith in an overly intellectual manner often results in suspicion within the community of the faithful. Faith is supposed to be a matter of the heart, not of the head. What the faithful picture when they consider the afterlife is a relation with a personal Divine Being, reunion with deceased friends and relatives, and freedom from sin and the sufferings associated with flesh-and-blood existence. These benefits are bestowed after death; the soul survives bodily death, and its conjunction with the resurrected body is anticipated at some future time appointed by God. One

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need not have a superhuman intellect or pass through more lives in order to look forward to the benefits of the life to come. Such a vision helps the faithful to maintain an attitude of hope while at the same time acknowledging the reality of death.

KEEPING MIND AND BODY TOGETHER: DESCARTES AND MODERN SCIENCE A different way of conceiving the relationship between soul and body developed as modern philosophy began to separate from its alliance with theology and place itself in the service of the emerging new science. The father of modern philosophy is generally held to be René Descartes. Descartes famously divides reality into mind and matter. Actually, according to Descartes, reality is made up of three separate substances—mind, matter, and God—each of which possesses a different essence. The essential property of divinity is perfection. In order for something to count as matter, it must possess the property of extension; that is, it must exist in space. The essential property of mind is thought (Descartes 1980:62–63). Mind and matter, having different essential properties, can be conceived apart from one another, and Descartes (1980:93) holds that what the mind can conceive as separate, God can make to exist separately in reality, so mind and body can actually exist apart, in separation from one another. The Cartesian mind is conceived as a conscious ego that possesses capacities such as intellection, willing, imagining, affirming, and denying; Descartes uses the word thinking in a very wide sense to cover all of the activities of consciousness. The body, on the other hand, is matter, and its operation is fundamentally mechanical (Descartes 1980:96–97). It is the mind that possesses the characteristics traditionally ascribed to the soul; the body is basically a machine. The mind, or soul, can exist without the body, if God makes it so; as mind has an essence different from that of body, the two can be conceived separately, and what the mind can conceive as separate, God can cause to exist separately (p. 93). Given that the soul can exist in separation from the body, it can survive the death of the body, and so long as God continues to preserve it, there is no reason the soul should ever perish. So, in Descartes’s view, the soul can survive the death of the body and continue to exist eternally under the influence of God’s creative power. Unlike Saint Thomas, who holds that it is essential to personhood that there be a union of both the soul and the body, Descartes associates the self—that is, personal identity—with the mind or soul. According to Descartes, I could continue to exist apart from my body, although I could not engage in a fully human existence, because the sensations that human beings undergo would no longer be fully available to me (Cottingham 1998:84–85). But, according to Descartes (1980:93), these experiences of

sensation are not part of my personal identity, and given that this is so, their lack would not obstruct my continued existence as a self in the form of a disembodied soul. The soul, then, may continue to exist in the absence of the body while maintaining personal identity, and so we can think about existence after the body dies in terms of the existence of disembodied souls. What is important for my continuing existence is the survival of my soul, and the resurrection of my body is of secondary importance or may be entirely neglected. Because our souls are the bearers of our personal identities, their continuing existence is enough to assure us that we need not die when our bodies die. A serious drawback of this view emerges when we start to wonder how the soul and body might be related to one another. Descartes (1980:98) asserts that they are causally connected, but he makes these two separate substances so entirely distinct that it is hard to understand how they could ever be closely bound together. How can an unextended thinking substance be conjoined with a material object to begin with? The nature of extended things is to occupy space, and the soul, not possessing the property of extension, cannot be localized in space. Where, then, will the conjunction of mind and body take place? Any specification of the point of conjunction would spatially locate an unextended thinking thing. The problem here is not that the soul might fail to survive the death of the body; rather, it lies in the difficulty of our trying to comprehend how it could ever have been connected with the body in the first place. Problems along these lines have led some to attempt to dispense with the two-substance account (dualism) altogether. But if we are not the conjunction of body and soul, then what are we? We could try to answer this question by following the path laid out by an influential branch of modern science, which aims to reduce the soul and its mental activity to states of the brain and nervous system. If this reduction should prove successful, it will eliminate the need to explain the relation between the soul and the body, for in this account there is no soul to be related to the body. We can, of course, take up this project, and indeed many very capable people have taken it up. But even though there have been numerous attempts to carry out a successful reduction, and many expressions of faith that it can be carried out, there is nothing on the horizon that suggests an emerging consensus on a plausible way to reduce mental states to brain or nervous system processes. Why does Descartes believe himself to be warranted in asserting that he is a mental substance, anyhow? It might be held that the most that Descartes is entitled to conclude is that there is thought (Copleston 1960:105). Descartes may have supposed that if there is an activity, such as thought, there must be something engaged in that activity; that something he calls the mind, or mental substance, and he understands it to be an unextended thinking thing. But why could it not be the brain that thinks? Descartes holds that, as the brain is a material object, its essence is extension, and because extended things

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operate in a purely mechanical fashion, an explanation that limits itself in this way cannot adequately account for thought. At best, it can offer an account of reflex behavior (Cottingham 1998:69). The trend toward attempting to explain the mental by appeal to the physical is very much in the spirit of Descartes’s conception of what it means to be a science. Taking physics as his model, he insists on the reduction of scientific explanation to the mechanical operation of efficient causes. For Descartes, anything that counts as a science must be able to offer ultimate explanations in terms of efficient causality and mathematical laws. Given this conception of science, and the fact that the scientific enterprise soon expanded beyond the realm of physics to include biology, psychology, and social science, it is unsurprising that the new science should begin inquiries into the mind and try to bring it under the sway of scientific investigation. To accomplish this after Descartes meant that science would have to explain the mind in terms of the body, conceived as a kind of machine, and the most prominent candidate for such an explanation is the brain. There is, of course, a bit of irony here, given Descartes’s own conception of the mind as a thinking thing, by which he means an immaterial, unextended substance. Although Descartes gives us what appear to be grounds for hope that we might survive the death of the body in the form of an immortal soul, the logic of his thought helps to undermine such a hope. As the scope of science expanded beyond the mechanical and geometric physics that Descartes had in mind, it eventually crept into the areas of life and mind. But the Cartesian conception of what counts as science was never given up, and that meant that these new areas of scientific endeavor had to be able to produce the same kind of mechanical and mathematical explanations that prevailed in physics. The disenchantment of life and mind are inevitable given this model of explanation and the expansion of science. And so the grounds for hoping that the Cartesian mind might outlast the corporeal husk begin to appear shaky. Science is increasingly taken to be the paradigm for knowledge, and what science investigates is the brain; but the brain dies along with the rest of the body. Despite the many problems associated with Cartesian dualism, something very similar to it seems to enjoy widespread acceptance among those who believe in life after death. Even if the official doctrines of their churches accept the resurrection of bodies, some people are concerned less with their resurrected bodies than with the fate of their immortal souls. Whether they subscribe to a version of the doctrine of resurrection or not, they tend to think of their personal identities as being associated with their souls and not their bodies. So it is the fate of the soul that is of most concern; if the soul continues after the body dies, and the soul is the seat of personal identity, then the person continues. This provides an additional comfort for some, who believe that they don’t really have to die. They will admit, “Oh, yes! The body dies,” but then

quickly add the qualification “but that isn’t really me; I am an immortal soul; and since the soul is immortal, I never really die.” The body is, from this point of view, a disposable husk, and little interest is shown regarding its fate. I am not sure how widespread this pseudo-Cartesian belief really is, but I suspect it has a fairly large following. It is worth noting that the people who hold this belief usually emphasize different qualities of the soul than did Descartes; whereas his emphasis was primarily on the intellectual powers associated with the soul, they see the elements of moral character as more important. Still, their view is a Cartesian one in the sense that they (usually without self-conscious realization) subscribe to a version of dualism in which body and soul are conceived as two separate and distinct substances, and in doing so they inherit most of the problems associated with that view. Descartes gives almost no attention to the ultimate fate of the soul or the nature of its disembodied existence, but to some contemporary religious believers, these matters are all-important, for they think that their souls are headed either for heaven or for hell, destined for eternal bliss or eternal suffering. Arnold Toynbee (1968) observes that these people should be among the most anxious of those who believe in any kind of personal immortality: The believer in a personal immortality which he may be going to spend either in heaven or in hell, according to the verdict that will be passed, after his death, on his conduct while he was alive, ought, if he holds this belief bona fide, to be the most anxious of all; and his version of the belief in personal immortality ought to have the greatest effect of all on his present behavior. (P. 93)

And so it would seem, as such people understand themselves to live under the threat of eternal damnation. Yet they often do not seem anxious at all; rather, they are serene in their assurance that they will be the recipients of good offices in the appointments to come. This tension between what one might plausibly expect of them and their actual comportment suggests that the belief functions primarily to allay death anxiety by including the assumption that the believer will be among those destined for the heavenly side of the dichotomy. The attitude of such people toward death is generally sanguine, for they believe that they will never truly die and that good things await them when their bodies expire. The hope that the mind or soul might be separable from the body was further undermined by the growing influence of the experimental method. In some (probably very complex) way, the experimental method relies for its results on confirmation through sense perception, and so much emphasis is placed on what is observable. An empirical experimentalism has come to be included among the fundamental ideas of science. But observability is precisely the property that the Cartesian mind lacks.

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SKEPTICISM AND THE GROWTH OF SCIENCE As modern science grows, accumulates experimental evidence, and enjoys increasing success in manipulating and predicting events, it becomes ever more entrenched as our paradigm for what counts as knowledge or even rational belief. Along with a growing tendency to rely primarily on observation and experience comes a rise in skepticism directed toward unobservable entities such as mind and soul. No one has epitomized this skeptical attitude more thoroughly, or employed it with more devastating results, than David Hume. Although there is a tendency among scholars today to avoid the image of Hume as an unrestrained and wholly destructive skeptic, certainly he remains a model of the skepticism characteristic of modern thought. His insistence that any expectation of survival after the death of the body can find no ground in reason or experience constitutes a serious assault on the complacency of those who seek refuge from threatened annihilation in the views of Plato, Saint Thomas, or Descartes. Hume’s skeptical analysis has two main prongs: an attack on the idea of substance followed by a series of arguments leading to the conclusion that expectation of survival after the death of the body is unreasonable and bootless. Hume’s attack on the soul or mind, conceived as a separate substance, is grounded in his commitment to empiricism. Basically, his position is that our ideas are copies of impressions that we receive through the senses, or compounds and combinations of these sense impressions. If we lack a sense impression, we can have no corresponding idea (Hume 1977:13). Hume next points out that we have no sense impression of the mental beyond our experience of various mental states, such as intellection, judging, willing, doubting, and emotion. These kinds of experiences exhaust our impressions of the mental; we have no impression of a separately existing substance that supports all of these mental activities or in which they inhere. As we have no such impression, we have no such idea, and hence no ground for supposing that such a thing exists; nor can we have any idea of such a substance, because an idea is a copy of an impression, and we have no such impression. Thus Hume (2000:164–65) sets out to undermine the notion of a separable substance that might go on existing after death. The second prong of Hume’s battery of arguments against immortality consists of a moral argument and a series of analogies. The moral argument examines the view that immortality is required in order for the virtuous and the vicious to receive their just rewards. In reply, Hume (1965:162–63) contends that, as every effect has a cause, and that cause has a cause of which it is the effect, so back until we reach the first cause of all, God. Given that God is, ultimately, the cause of everything, all things that happen are ordained by God, and so nothing can rightly be visited with God’s punishment or vengeance. Hume also puts into question the idea of eternal damnation by invoking our

intuition that in cases of just retribution there should be some relation of proportionality between the offense and its punishment. He then asks how, given that we are so morally frail, human beings could commit any offenses warranting eternal damnation (p. 164). Finally, Hume develops a series of analogies drawn from nature to discredit the idea that the soul might survive the death of the body. One of the more interesting is the idea that the waxing and waning of the soul parallel the growth and degeneration of the body: In infancy, when the body is weak, so is the soul or mind. As the body gains maturity and strength, so does the soul. As the body slips into the degeneracy of old age, so the mind begins its slide toward senility. Finally, the body dies; if the proportionality between mind and body holds, then the next logical step would be to suppose that the mind or soul dies as well. As Hume (1965) himself so bluntly puts it, “The last symptoms which the mind discovers, are disorder, weakness, insensibility, and stupidity; the forerunners of its annihilation” (p. 165). Hume continues his attack on the idea of immortality by pointing out that no form of life survives in conditions very different from the original ones in which it is found; trees perish in water, fishes in the air, men in the earth. Why, then, think that a change so great as the death of the body, which is the environment of the soul, would have no significant effect on the soul? Surely it would be more just to suppose precisely the opposite: that when the body dies, the soul perishes as well (Hume 1965:166). Hume concludes his series of arguments with a consideration of change as a general feature of the universe. Everything, no matter how firm it may seem at the moment, is subject to change. It comes into being and passes away. The universe itself shows signs of its possible decay. Why suppose that one thing, the mind or soul, apart from all else found in nature, is exempt from the principle that governs all else? We do not experience its stability or resistance to change. Experience points in precisely the opposite direction: The mind is subject to serious disorders, such as those brought on by stroke, mental illness, senility, or physical injury. Judging on the basis of experience, we ought to conclude that the fate of all else within the order of nature befalls what we call the mind or soul as well. When the body dies, according to Hume (1965:166–67), so do we, including our mind or soul. One could object, with some justice, that Hume employs an empirical standard when dismissing the likelihood of the continued existence of the soul. It is, then, little wonder that the soul fails the test, because the soul, if it exists at all, certainly does not exist as the sort of thing that might be known through empirical investigation relying on the senses. Thus the idea that we have no impression of mental substance demonstrates nothing, because if there were such a substance it would be, by its very nature, imperceptible. There is something like this seeming arbitrariness in many of Hume’s arguments, and he deploys these arguments with telling effect in dismissing the

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intelligibility of the mind or soul and a good many other things as well. Perhaps what Hume does best is make us acutely aware of the limits of intelligibility within the framework of a thoroughgoing empiricism applied in a ruthlessly consistent way. The appropriateness of Hume’s universal application of empirical standards to all things, including supposed metaphysical entities, has been the subject of significant criticism. It seems undeniable, however, that Hume expresses a powerful strand of the modern outlook formed by the rise of the empirical sciences, their ascendance and eventual edging out of the religious point of view, and finally their hegemony over the entire intellectual landscape. Some empiricist philosophers of the 20th century saw Hume as their forerunner, and there has been a resurgence of interest in his philosophical ideas over the past hundred years. His view is representative of much of the current philosophical thinking concerning the fate of the soul after the body dies. What kind of attitude toward our impending death is appropriate? The simple and straightforward answer, of which I think Hume would approve, is that impending death puts us in a position to accept the plain, brute, and unalterable fact of our mortality. It isn’t that Hume denies the possibility of survival beyond the death of the body; he allows that anything other than an outright self-contradiction is possible. Rather, he denies that there is any basis in reason or experience for belief in survival beyond bodily death. We would do well, then, to accept our finitude and adjust our expectations to what we can reasonably hope for. What we can reasonably hope for is a relatively long, healthy, and vigorous life, and a death as free from pain as possible. If this seems like cold comfort, remember that Hume himself demonstrated the viability of his own view. By his conduct in the face of death, Hume showed us that we can live this attitude and that by doing so we can command the respect of those we love and who care for us (Mossner 1980:589–603). In Hume’s account, the appropriate attitude toward death is one of humility; if we successfully cultivate this perspective on mortality, we finally come to understand that the universe is not as horrified as we are by the idea that it might have to get along without us.

EXISTENTIALISM AND DEATH: ONE’S OWNMOST POSSIBILITY THAT CANNOT BE OUTSTRIPPED Human finitude, and particularly concern for our mortal nature, took a new turn in the 20th century, when it became a central theme in European philosophy. The German thinker Martin Heidegger made facing up to one’s own death a crucial element of his philosophy. Heidegger holds that a confrontation with one’s own finitude is an indispensable feature of the human project, and that without it one is unable to achieve an authentically human life. For Heidegger, many, perhaps most, of us will live inauthentic

lives, mostly due to our evasiveness concerning our own finitude. Living an authentic, fully human life involves an unavoidable confrontation with the death that is one’s own. According to Heidegger, generally and for the most part, Dasein (roughly, Heidegger’s term for human being) avoids facing up to its mortal nature by means of diverting its attention away from thoughtful consideration of its death. Dasein finds itself thrown into a world, into a situation that it did not choose and had no hand in creating, and immerses itself in the everyday objects and projects that it encounters. Its understanding of its own conditions and projects is provided by the “they,” an anonymous, public understanding that Dasein finds ready-made and that it is strongly encouraged to accept without question. A prefabricated understanding of and involvement in the objects and projects of the everyday divert us from confronting the nature of our finitude. By losing ourselves in everydayness, we shield ourselves from seeing that our own existence, as well as our way of existing, is not a mere given but an issue for us. Without such an understanding, authenticity, in Heidegger’s (1962:303) sense of the word, is unattainable. We tend to lose ourselves in the everyday existence of the “they,” and this anonymous, public understanding discourages us from being attentive to our own finitude and the fact that we must (and will) die. This anonymous, public understanding insists that such concern is morbid, useless, or unhealthy, but it is not entirely successful in diverting Dasein’s attention (Heidegger 1962:223). The experience of anxiety calls us away from our involvement with the objects of everydayness and the concerns of the “they.” Anxiety is similar to fear, a strong emotion that is difficult to ignore, but whereas fear has an object, anxiety does not, so it takes our attention away from involvement with things and other people and throws us back upon ourselves. As Stephen Mulhall (1996) puts it: In effect, then, anxiety plunges Dasein into an anxiety about itself in the face of itself. Since in this state particular objects and persons within the world fade away and the world as such occupies the foreground, then the specific structures of the they-world must also fade away. Thus anxiety can rescue Dasein from its fallen state, its lostness in the “they”; it throws Dasein doubly back upon itself as a being for whom its own Being is an issue, and so as a creature capable of individuality. (P. 110)

In this way, anxiety constitutes an opportunity for Dasein to divest itself of its involvement in the everyday, to rid itself (at least temporarily) of the understanding that is articulated for it by the “they,” and to confront its own finitude. The encounter of Dasein with its own finitude is an indispensable element of authenticity. If I respond to the experience of anxiety, then I find myself facing “that possibility which is one’s ownmost, which is non-relational, and which is not to be outstripped” (Heidegger 1962:294), that is, my own upcoming death. It is one’s ownmost

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possibility in the sense that only I can die my death, and no other can substitute for me; in this sense, death is the ultimate form of individuation. Others, of course, can die in my place, but this does not exempt me from dying my own death, it only postpones the moment when I must die. It is also isolation, in the sense that I must die on my own; no one can accompany me into my death, although they may be there beside me as I die. And this possibility cannot be outstripped; I cannot successfully avoid it, and it is not an option that I could choose to reject. By threatening to bring to a close all of Dasein’s possibilities, it reveals that Dasein’s own existence is an issue for itself. Dasein’s realization that its own existence is an issue for itself focuses attention on the fact that, for the most part, any issues that surround Dasein’s existence have been left in the hands of others; that is, Dasein has not authentically appropriated its own existence. This awareness opens up the opportunity for Dasein to make its existence its own rather than a mere reflection of understandings and engagements preapproved by the “they.” In order to do this, Dasein must choose for itself its own way of life, must endorse its own engagements selected from among its genuine possibilities. Authenticity, in this sense, involves the acceptance of responsibility for that into which one is thrown (for these conditions establish, in large part, what one’s genuine possibilities are), as well as for the projections one makes and the possibilities one chooses on the basis of that thrownness. This shouldering of responsibility, instead of relying on the “they” to provide understanding in these matters, is what makes authenticity a possibility for Dasein. Dasein becomes authentic when it resolves to endorse and make its own the choice of its possibilities on the basis of its own thrownness (Heidegger 1962:343–44). The attitude that we should adopt toward our own impending death is to keep it constantly before our minds, giving it the concernful attention it deserves if it is to play its role effectively in making a humanly authentic existence possible. Heidegger incorporates human finitude, the death of the human person, into the life of Dasein by making death integral to authentic human existence and wholeness. He does not suggest that there might be something awaiting us after the body dies; he offers no hope of a continuation of Dasein’s existence after death. To find fault with Heidegger for this would be to miss the point; it is the fact of our finitude that gives us the possibility of being authentically human. Heidegger’s view of death and its importance for an authentic form of human life has been criticized for being excessively focused on the self and the meaning that death has for that self. Although Heidegger acknowledges that a human way of being is always being among others, he largely ignores the importance of being with others in his consideration of the central role played by death in the achievement of authenticity. What is important is my death; the death of others is a secondary matter, and may even be part of that evasiveness that prevents me from facing up to

my own finitude. In relation to his concern for death, Heidegger represents Dasein’s concern for and relationships with others mainly as impediments that obstruct Dasein’s possibilities for coming to grips with its finite nature. But the criticism loses some of its bite if Heidegger is right in his characterization of the “they” and everydayness as ways of fleeing from a confrontation with our own mortality.

CONCLUSION All of the philosophical views that I have discussed in this chapter represent distinct ways of coming to terms with the fact that we die. Most Western thinkers have abandoned Plato’s account of reincarnation, but similar ideas are still a central feature of much Eastern philosophy. None of these ideas concerning our postmortem fate has achieved hegemonic status. Hume has his adherents, as does Descartes, and theologians and philosophers continue to debate and elaborate upon the issues surrounding resurrection. These, along with Heidegger’s strategy for making death meaningful even if we do not ultimately overcome it, all remain live options from the philosophical point of view. Not all philosophical problems are without solutions, but there is at present no prospect for a consensus concerning the matter of what is, ultimately speaking, in store for us when we come to our end.

REFERENCES Aquinas, Saint Thomas. 1992. “The Resurrection of Man.” In Immortality, edited by Paul Edwards. New York: Macmillan. Beloff, John. 1992. “Is There Anything Beyond Death? A Parapsychologist’s Summation.” In Immortality, edited by Paul Edwards. New York: Macmillan. Boethius. 1962. The Consolations of Philosophy, translated by Richard Green. New York: Macmillan. Bostock, David. 1986. Plato’s Phaedo. New York: Oxford University Press. Clary, Francis X. 1998. “Roman Catholicism.” In How Different Religions View Death and the Afterlife, 2d ed., edited by Christopher Jay Johnson and Marsha G. Magee. Philadelphia: Charles. Copleston, Frederick. 1960. A History of Philosophy, vol. 4, Modern Philosophy Descartes to Leibniz. Garden City, NY: Doubleday. Cottingham, John. 1998. Philosophy and the Good Life: Reason and the Passions in Greek, Cartesian, and Psychoanalytic Ethics. New York: Cambridge University Press. Descartes, René. 1980. Discourse on Method and Mediations on First Philosophy, translated by Donald Cress. Indianapolis: Hackett. Heidegger, Martin. 1962. Being and Time, translated by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. New York: Harper & Row. Hendricks, William L. 1998. “A Baptist Perspective.” In How Different Religions View Death and the Afterlife, 2d ed.,

Dealing With Death– • –33 edited by Christopher Jay Johnson and Marsha G. Magee. Philadelphia: Charles. Horton, Stanley M. 1998. “Assemblies of God.” In How Different Religions View Death and the Afterlife, 2d ed., edited by Christopher Jay Johnson and Marsha G. Magee. Philadelphia: Charles. Hume, David. 1965. Of the Standard of Taste and Other Essays, edited by John W. Lenz. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill. ———. 1977. An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, edited by Eric Steinberg. Indianapolis: Hackett. ———. 2000. A Treatise of Human Nature, edited by David Fate Norton and Mary J. Norton. New York: Oxford University Press. Kenny, Anthony. 1993. Aquinas on Mind. New York: Routledge. Lee, Daniel E. 1998. “Lutherans.” In How Different Religions View Death and the Afterlife, 2d ed., edited by Christopher Jay Johnson and Marsha G. Magee. Philadelphia: Charles. Mossner, E. C. 1980. The Life of David Hume. New York: Oxford University Press. Mulhall, Stephen. 1996. Routledge Guidebook to Heidegger and Being and Time. New York: Routledge.

Plato. 1981. Five Dialogues: Euthyphro, Apology, Meno, Crito, Phaedo, translated by G. M. A. Grube. Indianapolis: Hackett. ———. 1992. Plato’s Republic, translated by G. M. A. Grube; revised by C. D. C. Reeve. Indianapolis: Hackett. Toynbee, Arnold A. 1968. “Traditional Attitudes Toward Death.” In Man’s Concern With Death, edited by Arnold Toynbee, Keith Mant, Ninian Smart, John Hinton, Simon Yudkin, Eric Rhode, Rosiland Heywood, and H. H. Price. London: Hodder & Stoughton. van Inwagen, Peter. 1992. “The Possibility of Resurrection.” In Immortality, edited by Paul Edwards. New York: Macmillan. Warren, James I. 1998. “United Methodist Church.” In How Different Religions View Death and the Afterlife, 2d ed., edited by Christopher Jay Johnson and Marsha G. Magee. Philadelphia: Charles. Zaleski, Carol. 1987. Otherworld Journeys: Accounts of Near-Death Experience in Medieval and Modern Times. New York: Oxford University Press.

DEATH DENIAL Hiding and Camouflaging Death

BERT HAYSLIP, JR.

eath anxiety is a common human attribute. May (1950) suggests that death is the most obvious symbol of the individual’s fear of “nonbeing,” in that each of us has a finite existence. Indeed, it has been said that all anxiety is rooted in our awareness of our own mortality (Kastenbaum 1992). In this context, Becker (1973) has similarly observed that the fear of death is universal, and indeed underlies all other fears that we as human beings have. Thus the “morbidly minded” argument (Becker 1973) regarding how humans come to fear death presumes that such fears are therefore threatening and must be defended against. Consequently, anxiety about death may be prototypical of all anxiety, emphasizing not the transcendence of death but its coexistence with loving relationships (May 1969). Recognizing death-related fears can enhance the quality of an individual’s life, whereas ignoring them may lead to self-deception (Nuland 1994).

CULTURAL MANIFESTATIONS OF DEATH DENIAL Death and dying can be understood at many levels. Although we often think of the denial of death as an individual phenomenon, cultures vary in terms of the extent to which they deny the reality of death, and individuals’ responses to death are to a certain extent a function of the cultural contexts in which the individuals are born, grow, mature, and eventually die. Indeed, Kearl (1989) argues that death is socially and culturally constructed; that is, individuals’ feelings and attitudes about death and dying are reflected in their particular culture’s use of language, the culture’s religious or funeral rituals, and the values placed on different lives in the culture (e.g., the death of a child may be seen as more tragic than the death of an older person). In addition, a culture may attach greater social value to some deaths than it does to others (e.g., a death 34

due to cancer may be more highly valued than one due to suicide or to AIDS, or the death of a highly visible public figure, such as John F. Kennedy, Jr., may be valued more than the death of a homeless person). Events as small as a single robbery or as large as the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, force individuals to reconstruct their views about life’s predictability and the controllability of death. Like individuals, cultures have “thresholds” beyond which the emotional, interpersonal, political, and economic impacts of particular events are significant enough to lead cultural members to modify their daily lives. Such changes in the degree to which death is denied are therefore in part culturally driven, as when the United States mandated changes in security procedures at airports after the September 11 disaster, undermining our sense that we are immune to such tragedies. Depending on the gravity of the event, over a brief or longer period of time, a culture’s sensitivity to or preoccupation with death, like that of an individual, eventually returns to “pre-event” levels, and the predictability and rationality of life and death again become normative. This normal state of affairs is characterized by the “veil of order and meaning that societies construct against chaos” (Kearl 1989:26), which is often referred to as cultural ethos (Geertz 1973). A culture’s stance toward death—its death ethos,— affects the everyday behavior of all cultural members (e.g., willingness to engage in risky behavior, the likelihood of taking out an insurance policy) as living human beings, as well as their attitudes toward a variety of issues, such as the justifiable loss of life through war, euthanasia, organ donation, reincarnation, the death penalty, abortion, and the possibility of an afterlife and resurrection (Kearl 1989). In this respect, as cultures can be characterized as death accepting, death denying, or death defying (DeSpelder and Strickland 2002; Kearl 1989), it follows that their respective thresholds regarding death vary as well, dictating the

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quality and quantity of their responses to natural disasters, the deaths of public figures, and the loss of life through violence. Individuals’ responses to death are therefore intertwined with the death ethos of the cultures in which they are embedded.

THE DEATH SYSTEM On the assumption that fears of death (nonbeing) are indeed universal, and given the assumption of cultural embeddedness (see above), it is important to examine how both cultures and individuals cope with threats to their mortality. At a cultural level, in the context of the construct of the “death systems” that characterize all cultures (Kastenbaum 2001; Corr, Nabe, and Corr 2000), there appear to be many manifestations of the need to deny, manipulate, distort, or camouflage death so that it is a less difficult threat with which to cope. All of the culturally relevant examples of the denial or distortion of death discussed here reflect the fact that “people conspire with one another to create cultural imperatives and institutions that deny the fact of mortality” (Firestone 1994:221) All cultures’ death systems have several functions that relate to such a stance toward death. Among the various functions of death systems, the most relevant to denial as a defense mechanism against death are (a) preventing death, (b) disposing of the dead, (c) helping make sense of death, and (d) endorsing socially sanctioned killing. For example, to the extent that persons believe that medical personnel can save lives, this represents a form of denial. This belief may be reinforced through individuals’ donation of money toward medical research; that is, such donations support the belief that with enough resources, research, effort, and support, medical science can find cures for fatal illnesses or develop procedures for saving the lives of persons with acute or chronic illnesses that might kill them. Yet despite such advances, people continue to die from known illnesses (e.g., cancer, AIDS), and new illnesses develop that are beyond medicine’s current ability to treat (e.g., antibiotic-resistant strains of staphylococcus). Because not every life can be saved, our sensitivity to the failure of medical science to deal with life-threatening illness becomes more acute. Thus we need some form of denial to deal with such threats to our health and well-being. Likewise, the use of metaphors or euphemisms that serve to soften the harshness of death (e.g., passed away, deceased, expired) clearly represents a culturally approved attempt to deny or camouflage death’s impact on our daily lives. Other cultural manifestations of denial are the displacement of the event of death from the home to the hospital, medical center, or nursing home (in contrast to the modern hospice movement) and the presumed “triumph” over death offered by the use of life-extending technology (DeSpelder and Strickland 2002). Aries (1981) discusses such a cultural perspective in his treatment of historical shifts in attitudes toward death, conceptualizing the latter as

“remote and imminent death” (emphasizing its frightening nature) and “death denied–forbidden death” (emphasizing its pornographic, filthy, or indecent nature; see Gorer [1955] 1965). Many attitudes toward the dead demonstrate denial. For example, the separation of churches from cemeteries and efforts by embalmers to make the dead look as if they are only sleeping reflect the perception of death as something to be avoided. Additional cultural manifestations of death denial are found in the shift in focus from dead persons themselves to our responses to the deaths and dying of others; the removal of death from our presence via brief funerals, accompanied by the prescription that our emotions should be muted; and the “medicalization” of death (the view that death represents the failure of medicine to cure illness or save lives, where indeed the emphasis is on the disease or cause of death) (see Corr et al. 2000). Indeed, the construct of death denial has been normalized among social scientists by the assertions of writers such as Jaques (1965), who states that midlife crisis is initiated by the individual’s fear of his or her own mortality, and Kübler-Ross (1969), who argues that persons first respond to the news of their own imminent death by denying its reality, as well as by debates about the validity of “neardeath experiences” (Greyson 2000; Greyson and Bush 1992; Ring and Valarino 1998).

THE MEDIA AS AGENTS OF THE DEATH SYSTEM It is difficult to address the culture’s role in the distortion or denial of death adequately without mentioning the mass media. Indeed, the media, through news and entertainment programming, often foster and/or reinforce denial by purposefully distorting the nature of death. The news media accomplish this distortion by selectively focusing on violent or mass death and on the deaths of the famous. Other media-driven efforts to distort death’s harshness are evidenced in fictionalized attempts to represent death. Movies and television programs display deaths caused by shootings and by plane and auto crashes; they portray “dramatic” deaths in hospitals and spectacularize the deaths of characters in action and horror films. Many video games portray the deaths of “victims.” As Corr et al. (2000) state, the deaths displayed in the media represent a “highly selective portrait of death and life in today’s society” (p. 85), as well as deaths that are “very unrealistic or fantasized” (p. 87). Indeed, a person’s having been exposed to death via the media has been found to be positively related to greater death anxiety (King and Hayslip 2002), which further necessitates either complete or partial death denial to minimize intrapsychic threat. Oddly enough, to the extent that such denial is successful, it may further insulate persons from their feelings about death, leading to more distant, depersonalized, or euphemized responses to their own deaths, more generally to death itself, or to dying or dead persons. Thus the relief of one’s

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anxiety when one engages in such distortive behaviors reinforces those very efforts to avoid thinking about one’s own mortality.

DEATH DENIAL: NORMAL OR PATHOLOGICAL? It is instructive to recognize that death anxiety and its complements, suppression and denial, exist along a continuum. For this reason, it may be difficult to distinguish between normal and neurotic components of anxiety associated with death, as they may be intermingled in most people, creating a conflict representing, ultimately, our helplessness and powerlessness in the face of death. In Freud’s (1946, [1920] 1955, [1926] 1959) discussions of the dualism of life and death instincts, he concludes that when fear of death arises, the ego is depleted of libido. To protect itself, the ego uses defense mechanisms that can drive anxiety into the unconscious. The greater the extent of one’s fears, the more energy one needs to defend against them, and the excessive use of defenses necessitated by high levels of anxiety compromises the ego, leading to diminished life satisfaction (Rychlak 1981; Santrock 1986). Alternatively, as people’s defenses are lifted, they may come to place greater value on their lives, while at the same time becoming more consciously fearful of death (Firestone 1993). Thus some degree of conscious death anxiety may be necessary for psychological health (see Servaty and Hayslip 1996). According to Fromm (1941), the experience of living loses it meaning if death is ignored, thus the denial of death may represent both normal and pathological efforts to come to terms with mortality and ultimate separation from others. Becker (1973), based on the work of Otto Rank, describes high levels of conscious death anxiety as relating to the breakdown of defenses, especially denial. Thus the ability to deny death is normal and consistent with the personal cultural style that Kastenbaum and Aisenberg (1976) describe as “overcoming.”

COMPLETE VERSUS PARTIAL DENIAL OF DEATH Kastenbaum (2001) proposes that death denial is better conceived in terms of “partial denial” than in terms of complete denial. Alternatives to classical, complete denial include selective attention (purposeful ignorance or avoidance of death stimuli), selective responding (hiding one’s feelings from others), compartmentalizing (allowing incongruencies, such as understanding a terminal diagnosis and making long-term plans), purposeful deception (lying), and resistance (not giving up or giving in to death). Such variations are intrapsychic, but they are also expressed interpersonally (in terms of individuals’ relationships with dying persons)—for example, in a “mutual pretense” awareness

context (Glaser and Strauss 1965). Death denial is also situational—it may be minimized or exacerbated by the individual’s immediate situation (e.g., a hospital vs. a hospice environment). As Kastenbaum (2001) points out, although complete denial and complete awareness/ acceptance of death can exist, they are extremes and comparatively rare. Even to the extent that individuals employ forms of partial denial, efforts to cope with the threat of death must be seen in an adaptive light.

THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES ON DEATH DENIAL: TERROR MANAGEMENT THEORY A more recent conceptual equivalent to the analytic stance described above can be found in terror management theory (Greenberg, Pyszczynski, and Solomon 1986; Solomon, Greenberg, and Pyszczynski 1991), which asserts that because we can reflect on our own death, such knowledge terrifies us in light of our desire for survival. Denial in this case takes the form of the perception that the world is “controllable, fair, and just” (McCoy et al. 2000:39). Such culture-driven percepts permit us order amid chaos and ensure our immortality through a belief system that values history, accomplishment, and wealth. McCoy et al. (2000) suggest that in addition to denial, persons manage their anxiety about death by overestimating their time left to live, underestimating the likelihood that they will experience illnesses or accidents, and creating psychological distance between themselves and others who are dead or dying. Empirical support for terror management theory is extensive. Specifically, the “anxiety buffer” hypothesis (that internal psychological structures exist because they reduce anxiety) and the “mortality salience” hypothesis (that reminding persons of the source of their anxiety— their mortality—leads to greater use of defenses and greater liking of similarly minded persons to manage such fear) have been supported by research findings (for a review, see McCoy et al. 2000).

ACCURATELY IDENTIFYING DEATH DENIAL Kastenbaum and Costa (1977) and Firestone (1993, 1994) have discussed the pervasive nature and natural status of death anxiety, its relationship to separation, and the role of defenses in both the individual and the institution/culture. As Kastenbaum (1998) notes, however, the difficulty in operationalizing unconscious or covert death fear is that one must infer the existence of denial as a defense on the basis of a lack of behaviors that would otherwise suggest that individuals are anxious about some aspect of death. Moreover, if death anxiety is conscious in nature, persons should be aware of such

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concerns and should indeed purposefully and willfully behave in ways that reflect this awareness. With respect to the assessment of death fear, low scores on self-report measures of death fear may therefore represent low anxiety or high denial; only extremely high scores on such measures represent responses to genuine degrees of threat (Kastenbaum 1992, 1998). As noted above, Kastenbaum (1998, 2001) proposes that, rather than presuming that most persons completely deny their fears about death (a strategy that is ultimately ineffective), we should examine degrees or types of death denial. Perhaps complete denial as a defense, where the self is incapable of recognizing “death-laden reality” (Kastenbaum 1998:20), can be adaptive, but only if it is temporary (when threat is overwhelming). Thus denial should be considered as adaptive to the extent that it is not overused, and there are certainly persons for whom its overuse is indeed pathological. The question of how much denial is normal has yet to be addressed (Kastenbaum 1998, 2001). Consequently, in light of an approach to denial as a potentially adaptive coping strategy, higher scores on a measure of covert (unconscious) death fear and/or lower scores on self-report (conscious/overt) measures of death fear may represent degrees of selective or incomplete denial that may or may not benefit the individual. In this light, Firestone (2000) claims that microsuicidal (symbolically self-destructive) behaviors reflect an individual’s anxiety about death typified in systematic self-cognitions (“the voice”) that devalue the self, instead motivating the individual to fear living and/or becoming too attached to life.

RESEARCH PERSPECTIVES ON DEATH DENIAL Approximately 95% of the studies that have examined death anxiety have utilized measures of conscious fear in the form of self-report questionnaires or scales (Neimeyer 1997–98). However, many of these assessment measures suffer from methodological shortcomings, such as insufficient evidence of reliability and validity. Many such studies also have utilized inadequate sampling and relied too heavily on correlation coefficients (Neimeyer 1997–98) that capitalize on chance and are often interpreted as implying causality, to the exclusion of more sophisticated statistical analysis techniques (e.g., causal modeling, factor analysis). In addition, the assessment of consciously admitted fears of death may be influenced by social desirability response bias; thus such studies may yield flawed estimates of such constructs. These shortcomings suggest that exclusive reliance on direct self-report measures of death anxiety (e.g., Lester 1991, 1994; Lester and Templer 1992–93; Templer 1970) is both conceptually and methodologically unsound. Because death means different things to various individuals at different times, questions concerning the meaning a person attributes to death have the potential to evoke a variety of responses (Hayslip and Panek 2002). Indeed,

understanding a person’s conceptions of death may be the key to predicting how that person responds to such questions. Death anxiety may be one response to questions concerning death’s meaning, and such anxiety may actually be a complex mixture of responses. Fear, denial, and ambivalence are among the most frequent interpretations of orientations toward death, reflecting affective and perceptual-cognitive components (Kastenbaum and Costa 1977). In this light, it is not surprising that there is some disagreement among researchers regarding the various dimensions of death anxiety (Neimeyer 1988, 1997–98; Neimeyer and Van Brunt 1995). This inconsistency results in a lack of synthesis in the many labels, levels, and techniques researchers use to assess death anxiety (see Levin 1989–90; Neimeyer and Van Brunt 1995). Some have even criticized the interchangeable use of the terms fear and anxiety in the research; these two terms imply disparate approaches to measurement (Kastenbaum and Costa 1977). Thus death anxiety most likely is multidimensional, and the above discussion of its theoretical underpinnings suggests that such anxiety may or may not be manifested at a conscious level of awareness (Kastenbaum and Costa 1977; Lonetto, Fleming, and Mercer 1979). In addition to the conscious (overt) and unconscious (covert) dimensions of death anxiety, many research studies have differentiated the person’s fear of his or her own death from the person’s other fears related to dying and have separated responses to the death and/or dying of self from responses to the death and/or dying of significant others (Collett and Lester 1969; Kalish 1976; Kastenbaum and Costa 1977; Schulz 1978). This suggests a three-factor model of death anxiety, the three factors being conscious (overt) death and dying of self, conscious death and dying of others, and unconscious (covert) death anxiety. This model follows from the assumption that in order to understand and interpret anxiety regarding death adequately, researchers must view it from many perspectives (e.g., private, public). Kastenbaum and Costa (1977) suggest that death anxiety may reside in the unconscious, but reviews by Neimeyer (1997–98) and by Fortner, Neimeyer, and Rybarczyk (2000) fail to give much credence to this notion. For some time, scholars have stated concerns about existing self-report measures’ ability to tap any dimension of death concerns other than conscious or public attitudinal concerns (see Fulton 1961; Rheingold 1967). Some psychoanalytic thinkers believe that conscious fear of death occurs when an individual experiences a serious breakdown of his or her defenses (Becker 1973), and there is some literature to suggest that the conscious and unconscious aspects of death anxiety are relatively independent of one another (Feifel and Hermann 1973; Templer 1971).

THE MEASUREMENT OF DEATH DENIAL The measurement of the unconscious dimensions of death anxiety has been largely ignored (Kurlychek 1978-1979).

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Where exceptions can be found (e.g., Pinder and Hayslip 1981; Shrut 1958; Stroop 1938), there is, not surprisingly, a lack of a uniform approach to the assessment of covert death fear. Indeed, because of the variety of methods researchers have used to tap unconscious death fear (e.g., dream content analysis, galvanic skin response, the Stroop Color Word Interference Test [Stroop 1938], the Thematic Apperception Test), it is difficult to compare results across studies. Several researchers have noted the need for studies that assess unconscious aspects of death anxiety (especially the person’s concerns about his or her own death rather than the death of someone else) through the use of projective techniques (Feifel and Hermann 1973; Richardson and Sands 1986–87). In this light, researchers have employed several indirect measures to assess death anxiety at an unconscious level. Many such techniques—such as the Thematic Apperception Test (Diggory and Rothman 1961; Lowry 1965), measurement of galvanic skin response and reaction time to the presentation of death-related versus neutral words via wordassociation or tachistoscopic word-recognition techniques (Alexander and Adlerstein 1958; Feifel and Branscomb 1973; Feifel and Hermann 1973; Lester and Lester 1970), and dream analysis (Handal and Rychlak 1971)—are either time-consuming or otherwise not practical for screening purposes. In addition, these methods may be threatening in themselves and may produce subject reactivity (Campbell and Stanley 1963), which can have adverse effects on reliability and validity. In view of the methodological concerns noted above regarding the possibilities for subject reactivity and the pragmatic aspects of attempting to assess unconscious death fear, it is important to note that Shrut (1958) was the first to employ a sentence-completion technique to assess the covert aspects of this construct. However, Shrut’s study treated anxiety about death as unitary, and the measures utilized to assess covert death fear lacked reliability and validity. Consequently, their use could not be supported on a conceptual or empirical basis. Nevertheless, Shrut’s work provided the impetus for further research. Hayslip, Pinder, and Lumsden (1981) and Pinder and Hayslip (1981) expanded on this perspective toward understanding fear of death by creating a scoring system for the sentence-completion method that is reliable and can differentiate groups of individuals in a manner that suggests it is a valuable approach for assessing death anxiety at an unconscious level. The scoring system comprises nine dimensions of unconscious death anxiety, each dimension yielding a separate score. Summing across all nine dimensions produces a total score. The dimensions are defined as follows: 1. Overt mention of death or dying 2. Fear of separation or isolation 3. Fear of dependency or loss of control 4. Fear of stasis or stagnation

5. Fear of loss of goals 6. Fear of injury to or disease in oneself 7. Fear of pain/suffering 8. Fear of punishment or rejection by others 9. Concern over time (futurity)

Each of these dimensions can be reliably scored (Hayslip, Galt, and Pinder 1993–94; Hayslip et al. 1981; Pinder and Hayslip 1981). Since these initial studies were conducted, a great deal of evidence has been accumulated regarding the method’s validity, as such scores have been found to be sensitive to (a) the impact of death education (Hayslip and Walling 1985–86; Hayslip et al. 1993–94; Servaty and Hayslip 1996), (b) variations in occupational choice (Lattaner and Hayslip 1984–85), (c) individual differences in communication apprehension regarding the dying (Servaty and Hayslip 1996), (d) relationships to locus of control (Hayslip and Stewart-Bussey 1986–87), and (e) the impact of terminal illness (Hayslip, Luhr, and Beyerlein 1991; Hayslip et al. 1996–97).

DEATH DENIAL AND AGE In a study conducted with a sample of young and middleaged adults, Hayslip et al. (1981) found that age and conscious death fear were negatively related, whereas age and covert fear were positively related. In this light, Galt and Hayslip (1998–99) expanded on the Hayslip et al. (1981) study by cross-sectionally exploring the relationship of age to levels of death fear, utilizing samples of younger and older (age 60 and over) adults and measuring death anxiety at multiple levels of awareness. Results indicated that there were reliable age differences in both overt and covert levels of death fear. In contrast to earlier findings (see Neimeyer and Van Brunt 1995), older adults reported higher levels of overt personal death fear and expressed greater conscious fears over the loss of others. On the other hand, younger adults evidenced higher levels of conscious fear of pain associated with death and scored higher regarding conscious fears of their own dying. These results suggest that cumulative differential loss experiences over the course of a lifetime may covary with an individual’s lessened need to deny fears of his or her own death. Kastenbaum (1992) advises, however, that we must not jump to the conclusion that conscious death fears decrease with age or that young adults are typically more death anxious when compared with members of older age groups. Because most of the studies in this area have been cross-sectional, differences may be due to cohort effects (see Baltes 1968), and thus may not reflect intraindividual change over time; longitudinal designs are more advantageous for investigating intraindividual change (Baltes 1968). Neimeyer and Van Brunt (1995) suggest that

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additional work is necessary if we are to understand the apparent negative relationship between death fear and age in adulthood. Attention to the multilevel nature of death anxiety may illuminate this relationship further, especially if older adults are found to have lower conscious but higher unconscious death fear scores, suggesting that individuals’ needs to deny their fears about death vary with age because of older adults’ greater experience of threats to their mortality brought about by illness, injury, and the deaths of others, such as childhood friends, siblings, parents, grandparents, and spouses.

RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN COVERT AND OVERT DEATH FEARS Galt and Hayslip (1998–99) also found a reciprocal relationship between conscious (overt) and unconscious (covert) levels of death fear; that is, if conscious death anxiety is higher, unconscious death fear is lower (indicating less denial), and vice versa. Indeed, negative relationships between self-reported death fears and both repressionsensitization and galvanic skin responses have been noted (Templer 1971). Greyson (1994) found that persons who had had near-death experiences scored lower on a measure of death threat, indicating that having an NDE may lessen denial, perhaps by instilling or reinforcing the belief that one can transcend the destruction of one’s body and/or the belief that life will go on beyond physical death. Hayslip, Guarnaccia, and Servaty (2002) have found evidence supporting a blended projective/psychometric measurement model that allows for the assessment of both overt and covert death anxiety to explore the factorial composition of death fear, utilizing confirmatory factoranalytic techniques (LISREL; Hayduk 1996; Jöreskog & Sörbom 1993), which are more powerful than correlational/exploratory factor-analytic techniques for ascertaining the latent structure of death anxiety (see Tabachnick and Fidell 1996; Ullman 1996). Hayslip et al. (2002) tested the robustness of a six-indicator, two-factor model of overt and covert death anxiety utilizing data from two randomly selected halves of a parent sample of 392 adults. The researchers used these data to translate a theoretical model into an empirically valid factor model, wherein the model was developed in one sample and then was cross-validated with the second sample. In the Hayslip et al. (2002) study, in the development of both the cross-validation samples, the two-factor (overt and covert fear) and three-factor (overt-other, overt-self, and covert death fear) model fits were quite adequate, yet the ease with which the two-factor model was fit to both the first and second data sets suggests that death anxiety does appear to have a two-factor structure—that is, overt death anxiety and covert death anxiety. Consequently, on the joint basis of parsimony and the two-factor model’s superiority in the first (development) sample, Hayslip et al. retained the two-factor model to represent the structure of death anxiety.

In this light, the fact that covert death fear can be identified as a separate yet interrelated dimension of death anxiety suggests that a person’s conscious awareness of his or her mortality can be minimized, distorted, or denied, principally through the operation of defenses such as denial and regression or through the development of selfnourishing habits that protect the individual from existential anxiety (see Firestone 1994). The fact that the two (overt and covert) components of death anxiety are negatively related is supported by previous research (Galt and Hayslip 1998–99; Hayslip et al. 2002) as well as by Firestone’s (1994) observations, which suggest that “death anxiety increases as people relinquish defenses, refuse to conform to familial and societal standards, reach new levels of differentiation of the self, or expand their lives” (p. 237). Thus the conscious awareness of one’s fears about mortality is inversely related to the extent to which one’s defenses effectively mask such fears. Consequently, the relationship between conscious (overt) and unconscious (covert) death fear is best thought of in dynamic rather than static terms, consistent with the degree of threat the individual experiences and the individual’s need to deal with resultant anxiety through the utilization of defenses in the context of a culture that, in varying degrees, promotes the denial and/or distortion of death. In spite of the empirical basis for the existence of death denial, it is instructive to take note of Kastenbaum’s (1998) observations on the illusive nature of denial as a defense against death (see above); it may still be premature to attempt to speak definitively to the status of covert death fear without sufficient behaviorally and affectively anchored work to substantiate its existence. Methodologically, however, the use of both self-report and projective methods to assess and understand how persons cope with death anxiety represents an advantage over other methods that emphasize one approach over the other. Moreover, it can be argued that a confirmatory factoranalytic approach to this question (see Hayslip et al. 2002) is much superior to either an exploratory one or a strictly correlational strategy (see Neimeyer 1997–98; Tabachnick and Fidell 1996; Ullman 1996). That both the two-factor and three-factor models convincingly fit the data in both the developmental and cross-validation samples taken by Hayslip et al. (2002) is especially impressive given the modest internal consistency of both the Templer (1970) and Collett and Lester (1969) measures of conscious death fear.

DEATH DENIAL: WHERE ARE WE GOING? Perhaps most important, attention to the assessment of death denial reflects Neimeyer’s (1994) calls for innovation and movement in the field of death anxiety. For example, use of the Incomplete Sentence Blank to assess covert death fears is grounded in psychoanalytic theory,

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and given the integration of self-report and projective approaches in the measurement of death anxiety, such research lays the groundwork for further studies of an interventive (psychotherapeutic, death educative) nature, in which specific hypotheses might be tested based on the dualistic nature of death fear. Additionally, given the necessarily developmental relationship between an individual’s exposure to the deaths of others and the nearness/likelihood of his or her own death (see, e.g., Devins 1979), a dualistic yet integrated conception of death fear permits a greater understanding of the temporal relationship between chronologically (age) driven experiences and the individual’s need to construct defenses to maintain the illusion of immortality (see Firestone 2000; Galt and Hayslip 1998–99; Hayslip et al. 1996–97). Thus research speaking to the nature of overt and covert death fear embodies many of Neimeyer’s (1994) observations regarding the development of new and more theoretically and methodologically sophisticated approaches to the study of death fears that would move the field forward so as to enhance our understanding of death attitudes.

CONCLUSION To understand and measure the denial of death, we must attend to the nature of the responses of both cultures and individuals to the fact that all humans die. Moreover, such responses are driven by the fact that the manners in which some deaths occur are more likely than others to evoke strong denial. A step forward in our attempts to understand the denial of death would be the development of theory that integrates attitudes toward death at both individual and cultural levels. Clearly, individuals’ and cultures’ reactions to death are interwoven, as we observed on September 11, 2001. The events of that day not only altered Americans’ sense of their own vulnerability and mortality, but threatened the stability of their relationships with others and their careers (as a person might also be threatened by a diagnosis of cancer). It is also important to observe that the very meaning and role that death plays in shaping the cultural ethos is altered by death-related events, be they unique to individual lives or culturally symbolic in nature. For example, Americans’ collective identity as citizens of a powerful nation was shaken by the events of September 11, and our responses to this change have ranged from the institutionalization of greater security measures to the embrace of our collective belongingness, grief, and spirituality, to the targeting of individuals whose appearance and/or heritage cause us to be suspicious of their motives. Such responses are best understood on multiple levels—they are at once interpersonal, sociocultural, and idiosyncratic in nature. As researchers, theoreticians, practitioners, and human beings, we face the challenge of finding better ways to understand the dynamic interplay between individual life events and cultural change, so that we can appreciate more

fully the role of the denial of death in helping to shape our own individual lives as well as our culture’s death system. In many respects, this will be an ongoing endeavor, as events whose role in reinforcing the denial of death become clearer and as events that have yet to occur challenge our sense of individual and collective security. Such events may exceed our idiographic and cultural thresholds, affecting whether we respond to death by embracing it or by denying its impact on our lives.

REFERENCES Alexander, I. E. and A. M. Adlerstein. 1958. “Affective Responses to the Concept of Death in a Population of Children and Early Adolescents.” Journal of Genetic Psychology 93:167–77. Aries, P. 1981. The Hour of Our Death, translated by H. Weaver. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Baltes, P. 1968. “Cross-Sectional and Longitudinal Sequences in the Study of Age and Generation Effects.” Human Development 11:145–71. Becker, E. 1973. The Denial of Death. New York: Free Press. Campbell, D. T. and J. C. Stanley. 1963. Experimental and Quasi-Experimental Designs for Research. Chicago: Rand McNally. Collett, L. and D. Lester. 1969. “Fear of Death and Fear of Dying.” Journal of Psychology 72:179–81. Corr, C. A., C. M. Nabe, and D. M. Corr. 2000. Death and Dying: Life and Living. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. DeSpelder, L. A. and A. L. Strickland. 2002. The Last Dance: Encountering Death and Dying, 6th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill. Devins, G. M. 1979. “Death Anxiety and Voluntary Passive Euthanasia: Influences of Proximity to Death and Experiences With Death in Important Other Persons.” Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 47:301–9. Diggory, J. C. and D. Z. Rothman. 1961. “Values Destroyed by Death.” Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 63:205–10. Feifel, H. and A. Branscomb. 1973. “Who’s Afraid of Death?” Journal of Abnormal Psychology 81:282–88. Feifel, H. and L. Hermann. 1973. “Fear of Death in the Mentally Ill.” Psychological Reports 33:931–38. Firestone, R. W. 1993. “Individual Defenses Against Death Anxiety.” Death Studies 17:497–515. ———. 1994. “Psychological Defenses Against Death Anxiety.” Pp. 217–42 in Death Anxiety Handbook: Research, Instrumentation, and Application, edited by R. A. Neimeyer. Washington, DC: Taylor & Francis. ———. 2000. “Microsuicide and the Elderly: A Basic Defense Against Death Anxiety.” Pp. 65–86 in Death Attitudes and the Older Adult: Theories, Concepts, and Applications, edited by A. Tomer. Philadelphia: Taylor & Francis. Fortner, B. V., R. A. Neimeyer, and B. Rybarczyk. 2000. “Correlates of Death Anxiety in Older Adults: A Comprehensive Review.” Pp. 95–108 in Death Attitudes and the Older Adult: Theories, Concepts, and Applications, edited by A. Tomer. Philadelphia: Taylor & Francis. Freud, S. 1946. The Ego and the Mechanisms of Defence. New York: International Universities Press.

Death Denial– • –41 Freud, S. [1920] 1955. “Beyond the Pleasure Principle.” In The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, vol. 18, edited and translated by J. Strachey. London: Hogarth. ———. [1926] 1959. “Inhibitions, Symptoms, and Anxiety.” In The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, vol. 20, edited and translated by J. Strachey. London: Hogarth. Fromm, E. 1941. Escape From Freedom. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston. Fulton, R. 1961. “Discussion of a Symposium on Attitudes Toward Death in Older Persons.” Journal of Gerontology 16:44–66. Galt, C. P. and B. Hayslip, Jr. 1998–99. “Age Differences in Levels of Overt and Covert Death Anxiety.” Omega 37:187–202. Geertz, C. 1973. The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays. New York: Basic Books. Glaser, B. G. and A. L. Strauss. 1965. Awareness of Dying. Chicago: Aldine. Gorer, G. [1955] 1965. “The Pornography of Death.” Pp. 192–99 in G. Gorer, Death, Grief and Mourning. Garden City, NY: Doubleday. Greenberg, J., Pyszczynski, T., & Solomon, S. 1986. “The Causes and Consequences of the Need for Self-Esteem: A Terror Management Analysis.” Pp. 189–212 in Public Self and Private Self, edited by R. F. Baumeister. New York: Springer-Verlag. Greyson, B. 1994. “Reduced Death Threat in Near Death Experiences.” Pp. 169–79 in Death Anxiety Handbook: Research, Instrumentation, and Application, edited by R. A. Neimeyer. Washington, DC: Taylor & Francis. ———. 2000. “Near Death Experiences.” Pp. 315–52 in The Varieties of Anomalous Experience: Examining the Scientific Evidence, edited by E. Cardena, S. Lynn, and S. Krippner. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Greyson, B. and N. E. Bush. 1992. “Distressing Near Death Experiences.” Psychiatry 55:95–110. Handal, P. J. and J. F. Rychlak. 1971. “Curvilinearity Between Dream Content and Death Anxiety and the Relationship of Death Anxiety to Repression-Sensitization.” Journal of Abnormal Psychology 77:11–16. Hayduk, L. A. 1996. LISREL: Issues, Debates, and Strategies. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Hayslip, B., Jr., C. P. Galt, and M. M. Pinder. 1993–94. “Effects of Death Education on Conscious and Unconscious Death Anxiety.” Omega 28:101–11. Hayslip, B., Jr., C. Guarnaccia, and H. Servaty. 2002. “Death Anxiety: An Empirical Test of a Blended Self-Report and Projective Measurement Model.” Omega 44:277–94. Hayslip, B., Jr., D. Luhr, and M. M. Beyerlein. 1991. “Levels of Death Anxiety in Terminally Ill Men.” Omega 24:13–19. Hayslip, B., Jr., and P. Panek. 2002. Adult Development and Aging. Melbourne, FL: Krieger. Hayslip, B., Jr., M. M. Pinder, and D. B. Lumsden. 1981. “The Measurement of Death Anxiety in Adulthood: Implications for Counseling.” Pp. 14–30 in New Directions in Death Education and Counseling: Enhancing the Quality of Life in the Nuclear Age, edited by R. Pacholski and C. A. Corr. Arlington, VA: Forum for Death Education and Counseling.

Hayslip, B., Jr., H. Servaty, T. Christman, and E. Mumy. 1996–97. “Levels of Death Anxiety in Terminally Ill Persons: A Cross Validation and Extension.” Omega 34:203–18. Hayslip, B., Jr. and D. Stewart-Bussey. 1986–87. “Locus of Control– Levels of Death Anxiety Relationships.” Omega 17:41–49. Hayslip, B., Jr., and M. L. Walling. 1985–86. “Impact of Hospice Volunteer Training on Death Anxiety and Locus of Control.” Omega 16:243–54. Jaques, E. 1965. “Death and the Mid-Life Crisis.” International Journal of Psychoanalysis 46:502–14. Jöreskog, K. G. and D. Sörbom. 1993. LISREL 8 User’s Reference Guide. Mooresville, IN: Scientific Software. Kalish, R. 1976. “Death and Dying in a Social Context.” In The Handbook of Aging and the Social Sciences, edited by R. Binstock and E. Shanas. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold. Kastenbaum, R. J. 1992. The Psychology of Death. New York: Springer. ———. 1998. Death, Society, and Human Experience, 6th ed. Boston: Allyn & Bacon. ———. 2001. Death, society, and human experience, 7th ed. Boston: Allyn & Bacon. Kastenbaum, R. J. and R. Aisenberg. 1976. The Psychology of Death. New York: Springer. Kastenbaum, R. J. and P. T. Costa. 1977. “Psychological Perspectives on Death.” Annual Review of Psychology 28:225–49. Kearl, M. C. 1989. Endings: A Sociology of Death and Dying. New York: Oxford University Press. King, J. and B. Hayslip, Jr. 2002. “The Media’s Influence on College Students’ Views of Death.” Omega 44:37–56. Kübler-Ross, E. 1969. On Death and Dying. New York: Macmillan. Kurlychek, R. T. 1978–79. “Assessment of Attitudes Toward Death and Dying: A Critical Review of Some Available Methods.” Omega 9:37–47. Lattaner, B. and B. Hayslip, Jr. 1984–85. “Occupation-Related Differences in Levels of Death Anxiety.” Omega 15:53–66. Lester, D. 1991. “The Lester Attitude Toward Death Scale.” Omega 23:67–76. ———. 1994. “The Collett-Lester Fear of Death Scale.” Pp. 45–60 in Death Anxiety Handbook: Research, Instrumentation, and Application, edited by R. A. Neimeyer. Washington, DC: Taylor & Francis. Lester, D. and G. Lester. 1970. “Fear of Death, Fear of Dying, and Threshold Differences for Death Words and Neutral Words.” Omega 1:175–79. Lester, D. and D. I. Templer. 1992–93. “Death Anxiety Scales: A Dialogue.” Omega 26:239–53. Levin, R. 1989–90. “A Reexamination of the Dimensionality of Death Anxiety.” Omega 20:341–49. Lonetto, R., S. Fleming, and W. G. Mercer. 1979. “The Structure of Death Anxiety: A Factor Analytic Study.” Journal of Personality Assessment 43:388–92. Lowry, R. 1965. “Male-Female Differences in Attitudes Toward Death.” Ph.D. dissertation, Brandeis University. May, R. 1950. The Meaning of Anxiety. New York: Ronald. ———. 1969. Love and Will. New York: W. W. Norton. McCoy, S., T. Pyszczynski, S. Solomon, and J. Greenberg. 2000. “Transcending the Self: A Terror Management Perspective on Successful Aging.” Pp. 37-64 in Death Attitudes and the Older Adult: Theories, Concepts, and Applications, edited by A. Tomer. Philadelphia: Taylor & Francis.

42– • –CONFRONTING DEATH Neimeyer, R. A. 1988. “Death Anxiety.” In Dying: Facing the Facts, 2d ed., edited by H. Wass, F. Berardo, and R. A. Neimeyer. Washington, DC: Hemisphere. ———. 1994. “Death Attitudes in Adult Life: A Closing Coda.” Pp. 263–77 in Death Anxiety Handbook: Research, Instrumentation, and Application, edited by R. A. Neimeyer. Washington, DC: Taylor-Francis. ———. 1997–98. “Death Anxiety Research: The State of the Art.” Omega 36:97–120. Neimeyer, R. A. and D. Van Brunt. 1995. “Death Anxiety.” Pp. 49–88 in Dying: Facing the Facts, 3d ed., edited by H. Wass and R. A. Neimeyer. Washington, DC: Taylor & Francis. Nuland, S. B. 1994. How We Die: Reflections on Life’s Final Chapter. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Pinder, M. M. and B. Hayslip, Jr. 1981. “Cognitive, Attitudinal, and Affective Aspects of Death and Dying in Adulthood: Implications for Care Providers.” Educational Gerontology 6:107–23. Rheingold, J. C. 1967. The Mother, Anxiety, and Death. Boston: Little, Brown. Richardson, V. and R. Sands. 1986–87. “Death Attitudes Among Mid-Life Women.” Omega 17:327–41. Ring, K. and E. E. Valarino. 1998. Lessons From the Light: What We Can Learn From the Near-Death Experience. New York: Insight/Plenum. Rychlak, J. F. 1981. Introduction to Personality and Psychotherapy: A Theory-Construction Approach, 2d ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Santrock, J. W. 1986. Psychology: The Science of Mind and Behavior. Dubuque, IA: William C. Brown. Schulz, R. 1978. The Psychology of Death, Dying, and Bereavement. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley. Servaty, H. and B. Hayslip, Jr. 1996. “Death Education and Communication Apprehension Regarding Dying Persons.” Omega 34:133–42. Shrut, S. D. 1958. “Attitudes Toward Old Age and Death.” Mental Hygiene 42:259–66. Solomon, S., J. Greenberg, and T. Pyszczynski. 1991. “Terror Management Theory of Social Behavior: The Psychological Functions of Self-Esteem and Cultural Worldviews. Pp. 93–159 in Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, vol. 24, edited by M. P. Zanna. San Diego, CA: Academic Press. Stroop, J. R. 1938. “Factors Affecting Speed in Serial Verbal Reactions.” Psychological Monographs 50:38–48. Tabachnick, B. G. and L. S. Fidell, eds. 1996. Using Multivariate Statistics, 3d ed. New York: HarperCollins. Templer, D. I. 1970. “The Construction and Validation of a Death Anxiety Scale.” Journal of General Psychology 82:165–77. ———. 1971. “The Relationship Between Verbalized and Nonverbalized Death Anxiety.” Journal of Genetic Psychology 119:211–14. Ullman, J. B. 1996. “Structural Equation Modeling.” Pp. 709–812 in Using Multivariate Statistics, 3d ed., edited by B. G. Tabachnick and L. S. Fidell. New York: HarperCollins.

DEATH, DYING, AND THE DEAD IN POPULAR CULTURE KEITH F. DURKIN

ulton and Owen (1987) have observed that for members of the generation born after World War II, individuals who generally lack firsthand experience with death, the phenomenon of death and dying has become abstract and invisible. Americans, like members of many other societies, attach fearful meanings to death, dying, and the dead (Leming and Dickinson 2002). Moreover, it is has frequently been suggested that the United States has become a “death-denying” culture. A number of scholars have documented the various ways in which Americans attempt to deny death (e.g., DeSpelder and Strickland 2002; Leming and Dickinson, 2002; Mannino 1997; Oaks and Ezell 1993; Umberson and Henderson 1992). For example, we have a societal taboo against frank discussions about death and dying. When we do refer to these topics, it is normative for us to use euphemisms, such as passed away or expired. Furthermore, in the United States death typically occurs in the segregated environments of hospitals and nursing homes, and we typically relegate the task of handling the dead to professionals, such as funeral directors. Although the United States is a death-denying society, Americans may be said to have an obsessive fascination with death and death-related phenomena. As Bryant and Shoemaker (1977) observe, “Thanatological entertainment has been and remains a traditional pervasive cultural pattern both in the United States and elsewhere, and has become very much a prominent and integral part of contemporary popular culture” (p. 2). For instance, death, dying, and the dead “regularly appear in various informational and entertainment media” (Walter, Littlewood, and Pickering 1995:581). Accordingly, the mass media have become a primary source of information about death and dying for most Americans. In this chapter, I explore the various manifestations of death, dying, and the dead in contemporary U.S. popular culture. This discussion is not intended as an exhaustive exposition of this topic; rather, I seek to address the more

prominent examples of this phenomenon. These include portrayals of death, dying, and the dead on television, in cinema, in music, and in products of the print media, as well as in recreational attractions, games, and jokes. Additionally, I explore the social import of the presence of these thanatological themes in popular culture.

TELEVISION Nearly every American household has at least one television set, and a large percentage have several. Death and dying are brought directly into homes via the medium of television. According to DeSpelder and Strickland (2002), in an average issue of TV Guide, approximately one-third of the listings “describe programs in which death and dying feature in some way” (p. 35). These topics appear in soap operas, crime dramas, mysteries, documentaries, and comedies. Many of the current top-rated shows, such as ER and CSI, prominently feature death and dying. The popular “reality” show Survivor deals with a type of symbolic death. In fact, death and dying are the most frequently appearing social topics even in religious television programming (Abelman 1987). Recently, the unique series Six Feet Under, the ongoing saga of a family that owns and operates a mortuary, has proven to be compelling for many viewers. Many people have expressed tremendous concern about the amount of violent death featured on U.S. television. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, by the time the average American reaches age 16, he or she has seen 18,000 murders on television (Kearl 1995). It has been estimated that violent death “befalls five percent of all prime time characters each week” (Gerbner 1980:66). Violent death is not limited to prime-time programming, however. The cartoons that are featured on Saturday mornings contain an average of 20 to 25 violent acts per hour, and many of these acts result in the apparent deaths of 43

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characters (Wass 1995). However, unlike in reality, cartoon characters have their deaths “reversed with no serious consequences to their bodily functions” (Mannino 1997:29). Death has also long been a mainstay of televised news programming, but with the advent of cable television and satellite broadcasting, death coverage has taken on a new dimension. The Gulf War of 1991 was a major news event, with live coverage of the battles as they occurred. An average of 2.3 million households tuned in daily to the O. J. Simpson trial, the so-called Trial of the Century (Durkin and Knox 2001). The funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales, was seen on television “by 31 million people in Britain and two billion worldwide” (Merrin 1999:53). The tragic terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, were a media event that transpired on live television: Every major network, as well as many specialized cable networks (e.g., VH1 and MTV) featured live coverage of the events as they unfolded. According to Nielsen Media Research, 80 million Americans watched television news coverage on the evening of September 11th. . . . In the days following September 11th, there was around-the-clock coverage of the subsequent reaction to the attack, the rescue efforts, and the eventual military retaliation. (Durkin and Knox 2001:3–4)

CINEMA Thanatological themes have traditionally been, and continue to be, an extremely popular element of the cinematic enterprise. For instance, death and dying feature prominently in westerns and war movies. There have also been many successful film dramas about dying, including Love Story, Dying Young, Stepmom, My Life, and Sweet November. Death has even been the topic of comedies, such as Weekend at Bernie’s and Night Shift. As Kearl (1995) notes, beginning in the 1970s, a popular motif “involved attacks on humanity by the natural order—frogs, bees, sharks, meteors, earthquakes, and tidal waves” (p. 27). A vast array of movies have featured “disastrous life-threatening phenomena such as diseases (e.g., AIDS, Ebola-like virus), massive accidents (e.g., airplane crashes, nuclear plant accidents) and natural disasters” (Bahk and Neuwirth 2000:64). Ghost movies (e.g., Truly, Madly, Deeply and Ghost) as well as thrillers such as Flatliners have used the near-death experience as a narrative focus (Walter et al. 1995). Many movies have a decidedly morbid focus. Young people appear to be particularly fascinated by films that feature violent deaths (Leming and Dickinson 2002). Zombie films such as Dawn of the Dead and Night of the Living Dead not only feature the undead but have scenes containing gruesome acts of violence and murder. The notorious serial killer Jack the Ripper has been featured in a large number of films, including Murder by Decree, A Study in Terror, and Man in the Attic (Schecter and

Everitt 1997). A number of recent films have portrayed the activities of murderers, including Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal, American Gothic, and Natural Born Killers. In the popular Faces of Death series, which appeared in video rental outlets in the mid-1980s, “actual death was displayed, with images of suicides, executions, and autopsies” (Kearl 1995:28). One specific genre of horror film, the slasher movie, has become especially popular in recent years. According to Molitor and Sapolsky (1993): The genre can be characterized as commercially released, feature length films containing suspense evoking scenes in which an antagonist, who is usually a male acting alone, attacks one or more victims. The accentuation in these films is extreme graphic violence. Scenes that dwell on the victim’s fear and explicitly portray the attack and its aftermath are the central focus of slasher films. (P. 235)

Slasher movies feature plenty of sex and large teenage body counts (Strinati 2000). Examples include Halloween, Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street, Slumber Party Massacre, and Motel Hell. In 1981, 25 slasher movies were ranked among the 50 top-grossing films of that year (Strinati 2000). The impact of slasher films has extended far beyond the cinema; for example, the mayor of Los Angeles proclaimed September 13, 1991, Freddy Krueger Day, in honor of the killer featured in the Nightmare on Elm Street film series (Lewis 1997).

MUSIC Historically, thanatological themes have been present in nearly all musical styles. For instance, folk songs about serial killers date back well into the 19th century (Schecter and Everitt 1997). Death-related themes are also present in many operas and classical musical pieces. These motifs have played a major role in the recording industry. Interestingly, one of the first recordings ever “produced for the Edison phonograph featured an actor reading the shocking confessions of H. H. Holmes, the notorious nineteenth-century “Torture Doctor” (Schecter and Everitt 1997:185). However, death became particularly prominent in the popular music of the so-called Baby Boom generation’s teenage years (Kearl 1995). In the 1950s, a musical genre often referred to as “coffin songs”—songs featuring themes related to dying and grief (e.g., “Last Kiss”)— became popular with young Americans (DeSpelder and Strickland 2002). The eminence of death-related motifs continues to this day. At times, this can assume remarkable configurations. For example, the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales, produced pop artist Elton John’s hit single “Candle in the Wind ’97” (Merrin 1999), which is a lyrically rearranged version of an earlier John song about the dead movie icon Marilyn Monroe. Moreover, a large number of musicians have died in tragic and untimely

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fashion. Some examples include John Bonham, Kurt Cobain, Jimi Hendrix, Buddy Holly, Janis Joplin, John Lennon, Bob Marley, Keith Moon, Jim Morrison, Elvis Presley, Bon Scott, and Ritchie Valens. The music that is popular with today’s young people frequently has a morbid element that emphasizes death’s destructive and catastrophic nature (Fulton and Owen 1987). Examples include songs about homicide, suicide, and extremely violent acts (Wass et al. 1988; Wass, Miller, and Redditt 1991). Many members of our society consider such topics to be particularly unsavory and antisocial, and, accordingly, a number of groups have been particularly vocal in their criticism of this music. For instance, as Wass et al. (1991) note, “A number of professionals, their representative organizations such as the American Academy of Pediatricians and the National Education Association, various child advocacy groups, including the Parent’s Music Resource Center, and others have suggested that such lyrics promote destructive and suicidal behavior in adolescents” (p. 200). The themes of death and destruction play an especially prominent role in two of the most popular styles of contemporary music: heavy metal and rap. Many heavy metal bands have names associated with death, such as Megadeath, Anthrax, Slayer, and Grim Reaper. Examples of heavy metal song titles include “Suicide Solution,” “Highway to Hell,” and “Psycho Killer.” The band Guns N’ Roses even recorded a cover version of the song “Look at Your Game Girl,” which was written by the infamous murderer Charles Manson (Schecter and Everitt 1997). In rap music, the violent lyrics of artists such as Snoop Dogg, Dr. Dre, Eazy-E, and Puff Daddy have generated a great deal of controversy. In fact, one of the most successful rap recording companies is named Death Row Records. Examples of rap song titles include “Murder Was the Case,” “Sex, Money, and Murder,” and “Natural Born Killers.” The song that rapper Eminem performed at the Grammy Awards in 2001, “Stan,” describes a murdersuicide. Rap music came under national scrutiny after performer Ice-T released the song “Cop Killer.” The murders of rap artists Tupac Shakur and Notorious B.I.G. in recent years have also served to enhance the deadly image of this style of music.

death and dying, often featuring these stories on their covers. Even comic books have featured the exploits of notorious serial killers (Schecter and Everitt 1997). Reports of death and dying are common in daily newspapers. The deaths of ordinary people are usually reported only in brief obituaries, unless a person has died in some sensational fashion. Newspapers report the deaths of public figures such as politicians, celebrities, and musical artists in far greater detail (Walter et al. 1995). For instance, the Seattle Times ran a front-page feature on the death of rock star Kurt Cobain, complete with photos of the suicide scene (Martin and Koo 1997). In general, newspapers tend to overemphasize catastrophic causes of death (Combs and Slovic 1979). As Walter et al. (1995) observe, those dramatic deaths that are “boldly headlined and portrayed in the news media are extraordinary deaths” (p. 594). The image of the burning World Trade Center towers was featured on the front pages of many newspapers on September 12, 2001. Newspaper depictions of death and dying are not always so explicit, however. When Umberson and Henderson (1992) conducted a content analysis of stories about the Gulf War that appeared in the New York Times, they found a striking absence of explicit references to death. Instead, the stories frequently employed governmentally inspired euphemisms such as “collateral damage” when discussing death. Moreover, the stories repeatedly quoted State Department and military spokespersons who talked about efforts to keep casualties to a minimum. One form of print media that scholars have traditionally overlooked is the supermarket tabloid. The weekly circulation of the six major tabloids (Star, Sun, National Enquirer, National Examiner, Globe, and Weekly World News) is about 10 million, with an estimated readership of about 50 million (Bird 1992). As Durkin and Bryant (1995) note, these publications are full of thanatological content. Articles about murders, accidents, celebrity health scares, and dead celebrities are common, as are stories about paranormal phenomena such are reincarnation, ghosts, and near-death experiences. Health advice regarding the prevention of life-threatening medical problems can be found in some tabloids. In fact, Durkin and Bryant report that the National Enquirer has “received an award from the American Cancer Society for medical stories that the paper provided” (p. 10).

PRINT MEDIA Dying, death, and the dead are principal themes in much of American literature (Bryant and Shoemaker 1977). Westerns, war novels, mysteries, and true-crime books are exceptionally popular with readers. Violent death is a ubiquitous theme in popular fiction (Fulton and Owen 1987). Books about hospitals and doctors are also fairly successful (Bryant and Shoemaker 1977). Death and dying are even featured in children’s stories (DeSpelder and Strickland 2002; Umberson and Henderson 1992). Newsmagazines frequently publish stories that deal with

RECREATION Aside from their presence in the media, dying, death, and the dead play an important role in the recreational activities of many Americans. As Bryant and Shoemaker (1977) note, many people show an “interest in, and morbid fascination with, facsimiles of the dead, the pseudo dead as it were” (p. 12). An example of this common fascination is the ever-popular wax museum. Also, the traveling museum exhibit of objects from King Tut’s tomb was a

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nationwide sensation. In fact, actual dead bodies have sometimes been used for sideshow exhibits. According to Bryant (1989): For many years carnival concessionaires have displayed various kinds of odd bodies and curious corpses . . . because the public was fascinated with such unusual exhibits. A particularly morbid type of display that was common to carnivals was the exhibition of deformed fetuses in jars of formaldehyde, euphemistically known in the trade as “pickled punks.” (P. 10)

In a somewhat similar vein, Bunny Gibbons, a sideshow exhibitor, displayed the “Death Car” of serial killer Ed Gein at county fairs throughout the Midwest (Schecter and Everitt 1997). Some scholars have adopted the term dark tourism to refer to “the presentation and consumption (by visitors) of real and commodified death and disaster sites” (Foley and Lennon 1996:198). For example, since 1994, one of the more popular tourist attractions in Los Angeles has been the Brentwood condominium where Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman were murdered (Schecter and Everitt 1997). Battlefields such as Gettysburg have traditionally been successful tourist attractions, as has the site of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy (Foley and Lennon 1996). During times of disaster, public safety officials often experience major problems in controlling curiosity seekers motivated by the chance to experience novel situations firsthand (Cunningham, Dotter, and Bankston 1986). Authorities have labeled this phenomenon convergent behavior (Bryant 1989). Cemeteries and burial sites are also popular tourist attractions. For instance, the Forest Lawn cemetery near Hollywood is internationally known as the “cemetery of the stars” (Morgan 1968). Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia has millions of visitors annually (Bryant and Shoemaker 1977). As Frow (1998) reports, Graceland, the former home and burial site of music legend Elvis Presley, “is the object of both everyday pilgrimage and especially intense commemoration during the vigils of Tribute Week, culminating in the candle-lit procession around Presley’s grave on the anniversary of his death” (p. 199). Merrin (1999) notes that when a telephone hot line was first opened for members of the public to order tickets to visit the grave of Princess Diana, it was “reported that up to 10,000 calls a minute had been attempted at peak times” (p. 58). Games, a popular form of recreation, frequently contain thanatological themes. War toys and board games featuring characters like Casper the Friendly Ghost are popular with children. Video games such as Mortal Combat and Duke Nukem feature vivid images of violent deaths (see Funk and Buchman 1996). Several million copies of the Ouija Board, which is touted as a means of communicating with the dead, have been sold (Bryant and Shoemaker 1977). As Schecter and Everitt (1997) report,

the thanatological themes in games can assume morbid dimensions: Though it is unlikely to become the next Trivial Pursuit, a board game called Serial Killer set off a firestorm of outrage when it was put on the market a few years ago. . . . [It] consisted of a game board printed on a map of the United States, four serial killer game playing pieces, crime cards, outcome cards, and two dozen plastic victims (in the possibly ill-advised form of dead babies). (P. 31)

JOKES Humor is a mechanism that allows for the violation of taboos regarding the discussion of death-related topics (Mannino 1997). A vast array of jokes deal with death, dying, and the dead. Thorson (1985) identifies two major varieties of death humor. The first is humor associated with the body. This includes jokes about cannibalism, funerals, undertakers, burials, and necrophilia. The second type, humor associated with the personality, includes jokes about suicide, homicide, memories of the departed, grief, executions, deathbed scenes, last words, and the personification of death. Some jokes about death, dying, and the dead involve what has frequently been referred to as gallows humor. This term originated “from the genre of jokes about the condemned man or helpless victim, and is often generated by the victims themselves” (Moran and Massam 1997:5). An excellent example is Freud’s classic anecdote about a man who joked on his way to the gallows. Currently, gallows humor is conceptualized as more of a philosophical posture than a specific repertoire of jokes (Van Wormer and Boes 1997). This type of humor is intentional (Thorson 1985) and tends to express “a cynical, morbid focus on death” (Sayre 2001:677). An especially violent and cruel strain of death humor spread through American popular culture in the 1980s (Lewis 1997) and is still popular today. AIDS jokes are the classic example of this type of humor, in which the common tactic is to “specify an outgroup and make fun not only of death but also of dying people” (Thorson 1993:21). Moreover, many jokes are told about particular murderers and accused murderers (e.g., Jeffrey Dahmer and O. J. Simpson). Additionally, a variety of jokes circulate in relation to disasters such as the crash of ValuJet Flight 592 in Florida and the destruction of the space shuttle Challenger (see Blume 1986). Americans have also created macabre humor surrounding the Ethiopian famine, the Gulf War, and the mass suicide of the Branch Davidians. Such jokes “invite us to be amused by images of bodily mutilation, vulnerability, and victimization” (Lewis 1997:253). Controversial by its very nature, this insensitive type of humor is particularly offensive to many people (Thorson 1993); their responses ensure a dialectic, which increases the humor’s entertainment value.

Death, Dying, and the Dead in Popular Culture– • –47

THE POSTSELF Many of the manifestations of death and the dead in U.S. popular culture deal with what has been termed the postself. This is especially true for deceased celebrities and other public figures. The postself is the reputation and influence that an individual has after his or her death. According to Shneidman (1995), this “relates to fame, reputation, impact, and holding on” (p. 455). The postself constitutes a form of symbolic immortality, whereby “the meaning of a person can continue after he or she has died” (Leming and Dickinson 2002:143). In essence, the deceased person continues to exist in the memories of the living (Shneidman 1995). On a cultural level, this functions symbolically to blur the bifurcation between the living and the dead (Durkin and Bryant 1995). As Frow (1998) observes, the fame of dead celebrities sometimes assumes a pseudoreligious dimension in contemporary society: “A small handful of stars and public figures experience this adoration that raises them beyond the human plane . . . [such as] Elvis, Rudolph Valentino, Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, James Dean, Kurt Cobain, Bruce Lee, Che Guevara, and Evita Peron” (p. 199). Perhaps the most prominent example of this phenomenon in recent years is Princess Diana, whose tragic and untimely death has resulted in what has been characterized as the “Diana grief industry” (Merrin 1999:51). The devoted can buy Diana dolls, books, plates, videos, stuffed animals, key chains, ashtrays, T-shirts, towels, mugs, spoons, stamps, posters, and more. Although this phenomenon has certainly been highly profitable for a vast array of entrepreneurs, some people find it particularly distasteful. For instance, British Prime Minister Tony Blair has condemned the sale of Princess Diana collectibles as the tacky exploitation of Diana’s memory (Merrin 1999).

DISCUSSION On the one hand, the contemporary United States is frequently described as a death-denying society. Numerous scholars have observed that recent generations of Americans lack the firsthand familiarity with death and dying that their ancestors had (e.g., Fulton and Owen 1987; DeSpelder and Strickland 2002; Leming and Dickinson 2002). Accordingly, many Americans express a great deal of death anxiety. On the other hand, many Americans also have an obsessive fascination with death, dying, and the dead (Oaks and Ezell 1993; Umberson and Henderson 1992). Nowhere is this paradox more apparent than in our popular culture. Television programming, movies, songs, the print media, games, jokes, and even recreational activities are fraught with thanatological content. This seeming contradiction may be read at several levels, in that there are differential interpretations. The most obvious, albeit superficial, interpretation is that the United States is not as much of a death-denying society as many

writers contend. A second explanation for the paradox is that our society is, indeed, a death-denying one, but our insulation from death causes us to crave some degree of information and insight concerning death, and we feed that craving through popular-culture depictions of death and dying. This situation would be not unlike the Victorian period in Great Britain and the United States, during which sexual Puritanism was an ideological mainstay of the value system, but nevertheless there was a significant demand for clandestine, salacious accounts of sex and sexual activity, such as smuggled “dirty” books from Europe. Another interpretation of the contradiction between the death-denying nature of U.S. society and the saturation of death themes in the American mass media is that the treatment of death as entertainment and humor is simply an extension of, or another configuration of, death denial. By rendering death into humor and entertainment, we effectively neutralize it; it becomes innocuous, and thus less threatening, through its conversion and ephemerality in the media. This is, perhaps, the more compelling explanation. Death is a disruptive event, not only for the individual who dies but for the larger social enterprise as well. Consequently, all societies must construct mechanisms to deal with death’s problematic impacts (Blauner 1966). As Pine (1972) notes, the “beliefs and practices of the members of a society toward dying and death are largely dependent upon that society’s social organization” (p. 149). Popular culture serves as a type of collective vision by which meanings are socially constructed, which in turn “greatly influences our norms, beliefs, and subsequent actions” (Couch 2000:25). It appears that the thanatological themes in U.S. popular culture function as a mechanism that helps Americans to deal with death. As Bryant (1989) notes, death, dying, and the dead “are traumatic and anxiety producing topics, and can be better confronted if they are socially neutralized” (p. 9). Such social neutralization can help to assuage the disruptive impact of death and dying for the individual. This can occur in three related ways. First, in the context of popular culture, death, dying, and the dead are frequently reconceptualized into forms that stimulate something other than primordial terror. These phenomena may be considered fascinating, entertaining, and even humorous, depending on the social context. Bryant (1989) observes that when death is camouflaged in such a manner, “individuals can more comfortably indulge their curiosity about, and fascination with, such concerns” (p. 9). For instance, a visit to Elvis Presley’s grave, to the site of the JFK assassination, to the spot where Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman were murdered, or to the Forest Lawn cemetery near Hollywood might be considered part of a vacation. Moreover, many individuals find it thrilling to be frightened by horror and death at the movies (Leming and Dickinson 2002). Also, newspaper accounts of violent or accidental deaths may engender some voyeuristic, albeit convoluted, pleasure “or some macabre enjoyment in the misfortunes of others” (Walter et al.

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1995:586). Similarly, many of the outrageous stories that appear in supermarket tabloids such as the Weekly World News and the Sun “appear to have no purpose other than catering to accident watchers” (Bird 1992:54). Second, appreciation of many of the types of thanatological themes found in our popular culture requires some detachment on the part of the individual. Like spectators at professional wrestling matches, viewers of horror movies are required to suspend disbelief (Weaver 1991). Children or adolescents playing violent video games must detach themselves from the depictions of primal carnage occurring before their eyes. The quintessential example of this phenomenon is thanatological humor. Humor functions as a type of defense mechanism, allowing people to cope with the fear and anxiety associated with death and dying (Moran and Massam 1997; Oaks and Ezell 1993; Sayre 2001; Thorson 1993). Enjoyment of this type of humor requires us to laugh at our own mortality (Thorson 1985). As Lewis (1997) notes, the appreciation of a so-called killing joke “calls for the adoption of a playful detachment from an act of violence or suffering” (p. 264). Finally, some observers have argued that the tremendous amount of exposure to death, dying, and the dead that we receive through our popular culture may make us more accepting of these phenomena (Oaks and Ezell 1993). This saturated environment of thanatological concerns may function to inure individuals to death and dying, thus diluting or counteracting their anxiety about these phenomena (Bryant and Shoemaker 1977). Durkin and Bryant (1995) speculate that “the inordinate amount of attention afforded to thanatological themes in the tabloids may actually help to desensitize the reader” (p. 11). Similarly, Wass et al. (1991) suggest that the ubiquitous death-related themes in popular music might help adolescents confront their anxieties about these phenomena, given that death and dying are seldom discussed in the home or the classroom.

CONCLUSION The United States is commonly characterized as a deathdenying society. Americans frequently attach fearful meanings to thanatological concerns, have taboos against frank discussions about death and dying, and relegate the task of handling the dead to professionals. Nonetheless, death, dying, and the dead occupy a prominent place in our popular culture. Thanatological themes appear frequently in television programming, cinema, the print media, jokes, and recreational activities. Dead celebrities also play an important role in our popular culture. These thanatological elements of popular culture function as a mechanism to help individuals deal with the disruptive social impacts of death and dying. They help us to redefine death as something other than a terror, and enjoyment of these themes requires some detachment on the part of the individual. It has also been argued that we may be more accepting of

death, dying, and the dead because of our frequent exposure to these phenomena through our popular culture.

REFERENCES Abelman, Robert. 1987. “Themes and Topics in Religious Television Programming.” Review of Religious Research 29:152–69. Bahk, C. Mo and Kurt Neuwirth. 2000. “Impact of Movie Depictions of Volcanic Disasters on Risk Perceptions and Judgements.” International Journal of Mass Emergencies and Disasters 18:63–84. Bird, S. Elizabeth. 1992. For Enquiring Minds: A Cultural Study of Supermarket Tabloids. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press. Blauner, Robert. 1966. “Death and Social Structure.” Psychiatry 29:378–94. Blume, Delorys. 1986. “Challenger 10 and Our School Children: Reflections on the Catastrophe.” Death Studies 10:95–118. Bryant, Clifton D. 1989. “Thanatological Crime: Some Conceptual Notes on Offenses Against the Dead as a Neglected Form of Deviant Behavior.” Paper presented at the World Congress of Victimology, Acapulco. Bryant, Clifton D. and Donald Shoemaker. 1977. “Death and the Dead for Fun (and Profit): Thanatological Entertainment as Popular Culture.” Presented at the annual meeting of the Southern Sociological Society, Atlanta, GA. Combs, Barbara and Paul Slovic. 1979. “Newspaper Coverage of the Causes of Death.” Journalism Quarterly 56:837–43. Couch, Stephen R. 2000. “The Cultural Scene of Disasters: Conceptualizing the Field of Disasters and Popular Culture.” International Journal of Mass Emergencies and Disasters 18:21–37. Cunningham, Orville R., Daniel L. Dotter, and William B. Bankston. 1986. “Natural Disasters, Convergence, and Four-Wheel Drive Machines: An Emergent Form of Deviant Behavior.” Deviant Behavior 7:261–67. DeSpelder, Lynne Ann and Albert Lee Strickland. 2002. The Last Dance: Encountering Death and Dying, 6th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill. Durkin, Keith F. and Clifton D. Bryant. 1995. “Thanatological Themes in the Tabloids: A Content Analysis.” Presented at the annual meeting of the Mid-South Sociological Association, Mobile, AL. Durkin, Keith F. and Kristy Knox. 2001. “September 11th, Postmodernism, and the Collective Consciousness: Some Sociological Observations.” Presented at the annual meeting of the Mid-South Sociological Association, Mobile, AL. Foley, Malcolm and J. John Lennon. 1996. “JFK and Dark Tourism: A Fascination With Assassination.” International Journal of Heritage Studies 2:198–211. Frow, John. 1998. “Is Elvis a God? Cult, Culture, and Questions of Method.” International Journal of Cultural Studies 1:197–210. Fulton, Robert and Greg Owen. 1987. “Death and Society in Twentieth Century America.” Omega 18:379–95. Funk, Jeanne and Debra D. Buchman. 1996. “Playing Violent Video and Computer Games and Adolescent Self Concept.” Journal of Communication 46:19–32. Gerbner, George. 1980. “Death in Prime Time: Notes on the Symbolic Functions of Dying in the Mass Media.” Annals of

Death, Dying, and the Dead in Popular Culture– • –49 the American Academy of Political and Social Science 447:64–70. Kearl, Michael C. 1995. “Death in Popular Culture.” Pp. 23–30 in Death: Current Perspectives, 4th ed., edited by John B. Williamson and Edwin S. Shneidman. Mountain View, CA: Mayfield. Leming, Michael R. and George E. Dickinson. 2002. Understanding Death, Dying, and Bereavement, 5th ed. New York: Harcourt College. Lewis, Paul. 1997. “The Killing Jokes of the American Eighties.” Humor 10:251–83. Mannino, J. Davis. 1997. Grieving Days, Healing Days. Boston: Allyn & Bacon. Martin, Graham and Lisa Koo. 1997. “Celebrity Suicide: Did the Death of Kurt Cobain Influence Young Suicides in Australia?” Archives of Suicide Research 3:187–98. Merrin, William. 1999. “Crash, Bang, Wallop! What a Picture! The Death of Diana and the Media.” Mortality 4:41–62. Molitor, Fred and Barry S. Sapolsky. 1993. “Sex, Violence, and Victimization in Slasher Films.” Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media 37:233–42. Moran, Carmen and Margaret Massam. 1997. “An Evaluation of Humour in Emergency Work.” Australasian Journal of Disaster and Trauma Studies 3:1–12. Morgan, Al. 1968. “The Bier Barons.” Sociological Symposium 1:28–35. Oaks, Judy and Gene Ezell. 1993. Death and Dying: Coping, Caring and Understanding, 2d ed. Scottsdale, AZ: Gorsuch Scarisbrick. Pine, Vanderlyn R. 1972. “Social Organization and Death.” Omega 3:149–53. Sayre, Joan. 2001. “The Use of Aberrant Medical Humor by Psychiatric Unit Staff.” Issues in Mental Health Nursing 22:669–89. Schecter, Harold and David Everitt. 1997. The A-Z Encyclopedia of Serial Killers. New York: Pocket Books.

Shneidman, Edwin S. 1995. “The Postself.” Pp. 454–60 in Death: Current Perspectives, 4th ed. edited by John B. Williamson and Edwin S. Shneidman. Mountain View, CA: Mayfield. Strinati, Dominic. 2000. An Introduction to Studying Popular Culture. London: Routledge. Thorson, James A. 1985. “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Morgue: Some Thoughts on Humor and Death, and a Taxonomy of Humor Associated With Death.” Death Studies 9:201–16. ———. 1993. “Did You Ever See a Hearse Go By? Some Thoughts on Gallows Humor.” Journal of American Culture 16:17–24. Umberson, Debra and Kristin Henderson. 1992. “The Social Construction of Death in the Gulf War.” Omega 25:1–15. Van Wormer, Katherine and Mary Boes. 1997. “Humor in the Emergency Room: A Social Work Perspective.” Health and Social Work 22:87–92. Walter, Tony, Jane Littlewood, and Michael Pickering. 1995. “Death in the News: The Public Investigation of Private Emotion.” Sociology 29:579–96. Wass, Hannelore. 1995. “Death in the Lives of Children and Adolescents.” Pp. 269–301 in Dying: Facing the Facts, 3d ed., edited by Hannelore Wass and Robert A. Neimeyer. Washington, DC: Taylor & Francis. Wass, Hannelore, M. David Miller, and Carol Ann Redditt. 1991. “Adolescents and Destructive Themes in Rock Music: A Follow-Up.” Omega 23:199–206. Wass, Hannelore, Jana L. Raup, Karen Cerullo, Linda G. Martel, Laura A. Mingione, and Anna M. Sperring. 1988. “Adolescents’ Interest in and Views of Destructive Themes in Rock Music.” Omega 19:177–86. Weaver, James B. 1991. “Are Slasher Horror Films Sexually Violent?” Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media 35:385–92.

THE DEATH AWARENESS MOVEMENT Description, History, and Analysis

KENNETH J. DOKA

he term death awareness movement refers to a somewhat amorphous yet interconnected network of individuals, organizations, and groups. This movement includes scholars, advocates, and counselors. It encompasses self-help networks such as the Compassionate Friends and professional associations such as the Association for Death Education and Counseling, the International Work Group on Dying, Death and Bereavement, and the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization, as well as their members, affiliates, and regional and state counterparts. Most hospices and palliative care units would identify with the death awareness movement, as would many funeral service organizations. Foundations such as the Hospice Foundation of American and the Project on Death in American Society are involved, as are varied institutes and interorganizational committees and task forces. Many large organizations with broad and diffuse memberships and goals may focus some attention on end-of-life issues and on research or education concerning dying and death; for example, the American Psychological Association has a specialized task force on end-of-life issues. A number of scholarly journals (such as Omega; Death Studies; Loss, Grief and Care; and Mortality) as well as newsletters (such as Journeys, Thanatos, and The Forum) focus exclusively on issues of dying, death, and loss. Groups and individuals involved in the death awareness movement host teleconferences, symposia, conferences, training sessions, and workshops; they also publish a plethora of literature annually that is aimed at audiences ranging from children to adults and that ranges in subject matter and style from inspirational to self-help to serious clinical and scholarly work. The individuals and groups involved in this amorphous and farreaching network—in reality a social movement—share a common focus (although not necessarily common goals, models, or methods); that focus is dying, death, and bereavement. 50

As a social movement, the death awareness movement had considerable success in the last half of the 20th century. From a small gathering of scholars at a 1956 professional meeting, thousands of college-level courses on the topics of death and dying are now offered. In the early 1970s, one hospice opened in Branford, Connecticut, outside of New Haven. Now more than 3,000 hospices serve almost every community in the United States. In this chapter, I explore and recount the history and trace the development of the death awareness movement. I also consider a more significant issue: Why in the past half century has there been such interest in dying, death, and bereavement?

BRIEF HISTORY OF THE ACADEMIC STUDY OF DEATH The death awareness movement has amorphous and numerous roots, but it is perhaps best to begin here with a review of the emergence of death as a field of academic study. Much of the work done in this field has been a theoretical basis for, an inspiration to, and a reflection of the movement’s organizational efforts. Although some very early literature, including religious, philosophical, and social science writings, considers the problem of death, death studies as an area of academic interest advanced considerably with the publication of Freud’s 1917 essay on mourning and melancholia. Freud’s scope in the essay is broad—his concern is to distinguish between melancholia, or depression, and normal expressions of grief. This work, in which Freud defines the central task of mourning as the individual’s relinquishment of emotional energy and the deceased, has long influenced conceptions of the mourning process. However, Freud’s concept of the central task of mourning as learning to detach emotionally has been challenged recently by work

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that affirms the many healthy ways in which bonds between survivors and the deceased can continue (see, e.g., Doka 1989; Attig 1987; Klass, Silverman, and Nickman 1996). Throughout the period between Freud’s essay on mourning and the pioneering work of the mid-1950s, a number of scholars did some excellent exploratory work on death and dying (for a complete sociohistorical account, see Pine 1977). Two of these should be noted in particular. Lindemann (1944) conducted research on the survivors of Boston’s Cocoanut Grove nightclub fire of 1942, which claimed more than 490 lives, as well as other groups of mourners and published the first clinical findings on acute grief. His conclusions that grief is a normal reaction to loss and a clearly identifiable syndrome with cognitive, physical, behavioral, spiritual, and affective manifestations set the tone for subsequent research on grief. In 1955, the British anthropologist Geoffrey Gorer published an essay titled “The Pornography of Death” ([1955] 1965). In that essay, Gorer became one of the first to suggest and analyze the reasons for modern society’s tendency to ignore or deny death. Pine (1977) characterizes the next period, 1958–67, as a decade of development. During this time, a number of influential works were published in a variety of fields, including medicine, nursing, philosophy, sociology, psychology, pastoral care, social commentary, funeral service, and theology. This was significant in that it firmly established the multidisciplinary nature of death studies. In a chapter of this size and mandate, I cannot do complete justice to the wide range of research published during this decade, but I want to mention here a few authors whose works are especially worthy of note, either because of their continued significance or because of their great heuristic value. Perhaps one of the most significant books of this era was Feifel’s edited volume The Meaning of Death, published in 1959. This book clearly established death studies as an academic discipline and offered scholars clear evidence of the wide range of issues encompassed by the study of death and dying. Whereas Feifel’s work was scholarly, another influential book of this era drew from the muckraking tradition. Mitford’s best-selling The American Way of Death (1963) was a scathing critique of both the funeral service business and contemporary funeral practice. It had far-reaching effects, spawning increased governmental scrutiny of the funeral service industry and generating research on the value of funeral rituals, the findings of which ironically tended to discount some of Mitford’s criticisms and conclusions. The American Way of Death also generated interest in memorial societies and led to the development of local associations that would offer or arrange for members to receive dignified funeral services at reasonable cost, sometimes in conjunction with specified funeral service firms. This movement represented an early attempt on the part of Americans to organize

collectively around areas related to dying and death and to gain a sense of control over the process. Some of these societies and associations came to play a significant role in the subsequent development of the death awareness movement. For example, William Wendt, a Washington, D.C., clergyman, organized a burial society that later spawned a significant grief center and played a role in the development of professional associations concerned with death and dying. Other work was also going on in this era. For example, Parsons (1963) published an article in which he challenged the oft-stated assumption that the United States is a death-denying culture, asserting that American patterns of death are actually active attempts at control. Saunders (1959) and Parkes (1959) began to do their work that would later underpin the work of St. Christopher’s Hospice. In fact, in this period two important things occurred: First, many of the principal models that would influence subsequent academic work were developed (see, e.g., Glaser and Strauss 1965, 1968); and second, many scholars whose work or teaching would become influential in the field, such as Fulton (1961; Faunce and Fulton 1958), began their work. Pine (1977) describes the decade spanning the late 1960s and early 1970s as a period of popularity for death studies. This is most evident in the work of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross. In her book On Death and Dying (1969), Kübler-Ross theorized five stages of dying, a theory that, although criticized by many subsequent scholars and unverified by research (see Corr 1993), became an overwhelmingly popular paradigm for understanding reactions to both dying and loss in general. Kübler-Ross’s popularity at the time was a result of many factors. She was a charismatic advocate with a folksy charm, and, as Klass and Hutch (1985–86) note, her message was one that rejected dehumanizing technology, embraced a normal death, and saw opportunities for growth even at the end of life—all of which resonated well with American culture in the 1960s. Kübler-Ross’s work had far-reaching effects. First, and most critical, it brought the study of death out beyond the boundaries of academia and into the realm of health care workers and the lay public. Second, by doing so, it created a context for many of the organizational efforts that would emerge or move ahead in this era, such as the proliferation of hospices. Third, it generated a great deal of academic interest, stimulating research and bringing the subjects of death and dying to the attention of many in the academic community. Moreover, it created a larger context for the works of others, such as Earl Grollman (1967), who, through their writings and presentations, continued to educate professionals and the public about death and dying. In summary, the 1960s provided a firm foundation for death studies to emerge as an established academic discipline with its own models, controversies, journals, and organizations.

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COMPLEMENTARY EFFORTS IN THE FIELD As the scholarly study of death proceeded in the last half of the 20th century, it generated and was supported by a number of other efforts. In this period, journals and organizations devoted to death studies began, as did academic courses. In addition, a range of grief- and disease-related self-help organizations and networks proliferated. The growth of hospice was also a significant development in this era (I discuss hospice in greater depth below).

Journals and Associations Among the predictable events that accompany the establishment of any academic field are the development of journals and the founding of professional associations. In 1967, Austin Kutscher, himself a widower seeking information on death and dying, developed the Foundation of Thanatology. The foundation convened a series of multidisciplinary symposia, some of which continue to the present. It also began publishing one of the first journals in the field, the Journal of Thanatology, in 1971. Although the journal did not survive, it demonstrated the need for a specialized journal focused on dying and death. Omega: Journal of Death and Dying, has survived. First organized as a mimeographed newsletter, by 1970 it was formalized into a journal coedited by Richard Kalish and Robert Kastenbaum. In 1977, Hannelore Wass developed a second journal, Death Education; in its original form, it focused on death education, but the focus was soon broadened and the journal’s name changed to Death Studies. Recently, the British journal Mortality and the new American journal Loss, Grief and Care (which has its roots in the Foundation of Thanatology) have emerged. It is interesting to note that none of these journals has yet developed a distinct point of view or a distinguishing theoretical perspective. In fact, all of these publications tend to share authors, similar topics, and even overlapping editorial boards. Both Omega and Death Studies are considered official journals of the Association for Death Education and Counseling. Naturally, given the multidisciplinary nature of the field, articles on death and dying are also published in academic journals associated with a wide range of other disciplines. Professional associations in the field of death and dying began with Ars Moriendi (literally, “art of dying”), a loose network of scholars brought together by John Fryer, a psychiatrist at Temple University. Although the early history of this group and the reasons for its demise are subject to varying interpretations, one likely factor was its members’ failure to agree on a vision of what the organization was to be. Some favored a group composed of leaders in the field who would come together to discuss common concerns and assist in setting standards for care of the dying and the bereaved. Others favored a broad-based professional association. Both visions were soon realized by other

organizations. The Forum for Death Education, begun in 1976 and now called the Association for Death Education and Counseling, became that broad-based professional association, whereas the International Work Group on Dying, Death and Bereavement emerged as a similar but more selective group, inviting prospective members to apply for membership. Again, reflecting the nature and history of the field, these two groups have many members and leaders in common. In addition, scholars in other fields have also formed interest groups concerned with death and dying within their own professional organizations, such as the Gerontological Society of America and the American Psychological Association.

Death Education Courses In the late 1960s, courses on death education began to be offered on college campuses. As Pine (1977) notes, the early chronology of these courses is not easy to establish, because the courses were offered by a variety of academic departments. By 1971, Green and Irish found that more than 600 courses related to death and dying were offered by colleges and universities across the United States. Five years later, Cummins (1978) found more than 1,000 such courses in the United States enrolling more than 30,000 students. In addition, thanatology content is found in the curricula of both secondary and primary schools, integrated into modules in a variety of subjects, including health science and literature. In some secondary schools, courses directly concerned with the topics of death and dying are offered as electives. Death education continues to consolidate. In addition to courses, many colleges and universities are now developing majors, certificates, and even master’s degree programs in grief counseling. The Association for Death Education and Counseling is now poised to establish a process for certifying death educators and grief counselors. Already, some members of the association who represent colleges and universities that have formalized programs have begun to discuss accreditation. These programs have been supplemented by academic centers such as the Center for Death Education and Research at the University of Wisconsin–La Crosse. Although this growth is impressive, recent events continue to suggest the tenuous existence of death-related courses in the curricula of universities and colleges. Many of these courses, as well as death education programs and centers, are still tied to individuals rather than to departments or colleges. When a given professor retires, courses or even an entire program may be retired as well. Two examples illustrate this state of affairs. First, the Center for Death Education and Research was able to survive the retirement of its director, Robert Fulton, but it was transferred from it original home at the University of Minnesota to the home institution of Fulton’s chosen successor, Robert Bendiksen at the University of Wisconsin–La Crosse. Second, although many younger leaders in the field of thanatology and palliative care

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received significant training through a thanatology option in New York University’s doctoral program in counseling, it is questionable whether the option will survive the full retirement of its founding professor, Dr. Richard Ellis.

Self-Help Networks Along with the growth of thanatology as a subject of academic study, there has been parallel growth in self-help movements associated with death and dying. Since the early development of Widow-to-Widow groups (see, e.g., Silverman 1986), some groups (such as Compassionate Friends, a group for bereaved parents and siblings) have focused primarily on bereavement support, whereas others (such as Mothers Against Drunk Driving and Parents of Murdered Children) have included bereavement support along with other functions, such as legal advocacy. Recent research has found that such support can be helpful to both those giving assistance and those receiving it (Lund 1999).

THE DEVELOPMENT OF HOSPICE The major organizational effort that has taken place in the death awareness movement is the development of hospice. The remarkable history of the hospice movement has been well described by several authors (see, e.g., Stoddard 1978). Hospice represents, perhaps, one of the most successful grassroots movements in the last quarter of the 20th century. Although this movement has its roots in religious orders such as the Knights Hospitallers and the Sisters of Charity, both of which focused on caring for the dying, Dame Cicely Saunders is generally credited with opening the first modern hospice, St. Christopher’s, outside of London in 1967. At St. Christopher’s, she tried to create a homelike atmosphere and a holistic, family-centered way to allow dying persons to live life as fully as possible, free from debilitating pain and incapacitating symptoms. St. Christopher’s Hospice became an exemplar in both research and practice, generating seeds that would grow throughout the world. Many of the pioneers who would influence the development of hospice and palliative care visited or trained there. In the United States, the spread of the hospice movement resulted in the establishment of Hospice, Inc., in Branford, Connecticut, in 1974. Branford also had a small home-care unit, but it was Dr. William Lamers, founder of a hospice in Marin County, California, who first focused on home care as both the heart and future of hospice. Lamers believed that the best way to offer patients a homelike environment was to treat them in their actual homes. He offered a model of hospice that freed interested individuals from fund-raising for new facilities, and this home-care model quickly spread throughout the country, sponsored by a range of groups, from churches and interfaith groups to junior leagues. Hospice in the

United States is thus very different from hospice in England, centering more on home care and heavily emphasizing psychosocial care and the use of volunteers (Connor 1998). The success of the hospice movement in the United States has been impressive. In 1974, the National Hospice Organization (NHO) was formed, and by 1978, there were more than 1,200 hospices nationwide (Connor 1998). In 1982, hospices became eligible for Medicare reimbursement, and this proved a further spur to growth. Current estimates place the number of hospice programs in the United States at more than 3,000, serving 700,000 persons annually (Miller et al. 2002). As Saunders and Kastenbaum (1997) note, the growth of hospice was a reaction to a number of trends. First, advances in technology-driven medicine focused on cure seemed to be abandoning those who were no longer responsive to treatment. Second, hospice resonated with two other themes of the era—anticonsumerism and return to nature. Both trends converged on the idea that individuals could create alternative, more natural organizations, that they could take control of their lives—and their deaths. The study of death, especially the popularity of books such as Kübler-Ross’s On Death and Dying (1969), increased awareness of the unmet needs of the dying and bereaved. Not everyone learned the same lesson at St. Christopher’s Hospice. Dr. Balfour Mount, a Canadian physician, was impressed by the hospice, but was also convinced that the lessons of St. Christopher’s need not necessarily lead to a new form of care; rather, those lessons could be applied even in the high-technology environment of the modern hospital. In his position at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal, he pioneered the development of a hospitalbased palliative care model. This model was successful, and in February 2000, the NHO changed its name to the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization to reflect these two different approaches to providing the dying with humane care.

CURRENT REALITY AND REACTIONS By the late 1990s, the death awareness movement had become relatively institutionalized. This is evident in a number of changes. For example, it has become routine for many funeral homes to offer after-care services ranging from information and referral to educational seminars to the sponsorship of counselors and therapy groups. Large-scale educational events concerning death-related topics are not uncommon, and television programs and films focused on death and dying (such as Tuesdays With Morrie and Bill Moyers’s On Our Own Terms) have received widespread critical acclaim and respectable audiences. Each year, the Hospice Foundation of America produces a major teleconference titled “Living With Grief,”

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hosted by TV journalist Cokie Roberts; this conference reaches more than 2,000 sites throughout North America and offers education to close to a quarter of a million professionals. It is now routine for government agencies to send crisis teams and grief counselors to sites of sudden and traumatic death and loss. In fact, President Clinton devoted part of his response to the shootings of 13 students and teachers at Columbine High School in 1999 to reassuring the nation that he had dispatched grief counselors to the site. Changes in our attitudes are also reflected in the mass media, where dying and death are no longer taboo topics. News programs such as 60 Minutes and Dateline frequently feature stories related to death and dying. In the aftermath of events such as the death of John F. Kennedy, Jr., or the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, it is not unusual to see, in both print and nonprint media, grief and trauma experts discussing common reactions to such events and offering advice. Topics surrounding death have even become part of our entertainment. One of the HBO cable television network’s highest-rated series is the critically acclaimed Six Feet Under, which follows the lives of the members of a family who live and work in a funeral home. This program frequently shows expressions of grief, funerals, and corpses. Naturally, such changes have generated various reactions. For example, in the aftermath of the shootings at Columbine, the popular press published a few critical pieces that challenged the value of grief counseling. There has also been a small reactive movement against death education in schools spearheaded by Phyllis Schlafly, perhaps best known for her activism against the Equal Rights Amendment in the 1970s. In 1982, Ron Rosenbaum led a scathing attack on the death awareness movement in an article published in Harper’s. According to Rosenbaum, the death awareness movement, led by Kübler-Ross, seeks to create a cult of the dead, romanticizing the process of dying and encouraging suicide. Rosenbaum’s piece mixed serious cultural criticism with personal attacks on Kübler-Ross, who, at the time Rosenbaum wrote his article, had begun to explore spiritualism. What Rosenbaum neglected to realize or to state was how distant the death awareness movement, at least within academia, had become from this former icon. Rosenbaum echoed Lofland’s (1978) earlier academic critique, in which she accused what she called the “Happy Death Movement” of offering a positivist view of death that romanticizes dying and overemphasizes emotional expressiveness as therapy for the dying and bereaved. It might be stated that although many of these reactions do speak to some of the strains of popular thanatology, they are based on vast oversimplification of the many approaches and rich theoretical debate evident within the death awareness movement. In any case, the movement’s place in academia, health care, self-help, and popular culture seems secure.

FACTORS UNDERLYING THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE DEATH AWARENESS MOVEMENT Beyond simply reviewing the chronology of the death awareness movement, it is interesting to speculate on some of the factors that have influenced the easing of cultural taboos concerning death and the emergence of this movement. In earlier work, I have identified four sites or factors that have facilitated increased interest in and awareness of death in the United States (Doka 1983). The first factor involves demographic changes: As the proportion and population of the elderly have increased, interest in the field of aging has intensified, and with the study of aging has come increased awareness and study of dying and death. The prolongation of the dying process has created new strains for medical staff, new ethical issues, and new forms of care, all of which have served to increase public awareness of and interest in the discussion and organization of dying and death. The second factor is historical. Many researchers have noted that the beginning of the nuclear age created totally new issues that complicated death and increased death anxiety. In the latter half of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st, other issues have been raised. We have become aware of dangers to the environment. We are aware of the ever-present threat of worldwide terrorism. We have seen the emergence of a new disease—AIDS— that has devastated communities in the Western world even as it decimates Africa and threatens other developing areas. Faced as we are with the possibilities of the nuclear death of civilization, new diseases, environmental holocaust, and random terrorism, death has become a critical social concern. Support for this perspective can be found in the case of the late Middle Ages, when the widespread devastation caused by bubonic plague was reflected in a preoccupation with death, as evidenced by art, religion, and popular thought (Boase 1972; Tuchman 1978; Aries 1981). The third factor associated with the apparent rise in death awareness is sociological and social psychological in nature. In its beginnings, the death awareness movement was aligned in goals with many of the social movements and trends of the 1960s. It asserted the rights and dignity of the dying. It proclaimed the naturalness of death. It denounced dehumanizing technology. It emphasized openness toward death and sharing with the dying. In short, its increasing popularity was aided by its identification with many social themes evident at that time. The fourth factor is cultural. The death awareness movement has filled a void in a secular society where many segments of the population previously found no significance in the culture’s understandings of death, making the topics of death and dying more acceptable and thus more meaningful. In our materialistic society, death has

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often been avoided or denied. The death awareness movement has been part of a broad trend toward the inclusion of spirituality and meaning making in individuals’ lives. It is probably no coincidence that the movement emerged at a time when many members of the Baby Boom generation began to contemplate their parents’ mortality as well as their own.

CONCLUSION I do not mean to suggest that the death awareness movement is merely a fad or a relic of the 1960s. Although a number of factors combined in that era to cause the movement to emerge and grow, it has demonstrated respectability and durability. It has become institutionalized. This should continue as the Baby Boomers age, given that, historically, the members of this generation have actively confronted the issues they face and compelled the larger society to face them as well. I do not mean to suggest, either, that the entities that make up the death awareness movement will remain always in their present forms. It will be interesting to see, for example, the ways in which the growth of palliative care as well as other changes in U.S. health care will affect the future of hospice. In addition, as Lofland (1978) notes, the tendency of many practitioners to emphasize emotional expressiveness as the heart of self-help groups and counseling has been challenged by critics both within and outside the field. In fact, there is a clear need for the careful evaluation of practice. There is a danger that untested and unevaluated approaches that lack theoretical depth, demonstrated by persons of dubious training, can do the movement great harm. Yet, even here, there are promising trends. As a field develops, consolidation of knowledge and moves towards certification usually emerge (Doka & Smith-Fraser 1986). As this book goes to press, the Association for Death Education and Counseling is on the verge of developing a certification process that will codify a body of knowledge and a uniform standard of practice. It is possible to predict that in the next few decades there will be intensified interest in death and dying and an increase in the growth of the death awareness movement. Part of this growth will come simply from momentum. The establishment of large self-help networks, hospices, professional associations, and other organizational efforts, as well as the development of certification and educational programs, suggests continued focus. In short, interest breeds more interest. Part of the growth in the movement, however, will be related to demographics. Members of the Baby Boom generation are now at the verge of moving into later life. As the Baby Boomers age, they will undoubtedly continue their characteristic way of confronting the issues they face and compelling the larger society to do so; this suggests that death will continue to be a topic of interest well into the 21st century.

REFERENCES Aries, P. 1981. The Hour of Our Death, translated by H. Weaver. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Attig, T. P. 1987. Grief, Love and Separation. In Death: Completion and Discovery, edited by C. A. Corr and R. Pacholski. Lakewood, OH: Association for Death Education and Counseling. Boase, T. A. 1972. Death in the Middle Ages: Mortality, Judgment and Remembrance. New York: McGraw-Hill. Connor, S. 1998. Hospice: Practice, Pitfalls and Promise. Washington, DC: Taylor & Francis. Corr, C. A. 1993. “Coping With Dying: Lessons That We Should Learn and Not Learn From the Work of Elizabeth KüblerRoss.” Death Studies 117:69–83. Cummins, V. A. 1978. “On Death Education and Colleges and Universities in the U.S. 1977.” Presented at the Forum for Death Education and Counseling, September, Washington, DC. Doka, K. J. 1983. “The Rediscovery of Death: An Analysis of the Emergence of the Death Studies Movement.” In Creativity in Death Education and Counseling, edited by C. A. Corr, J. Stillion, and M. Ribour. Lakewood, OH: Association for Death Education and Counseling. ———. 1989. “Grief.” Pp. 127–31 in Encyclopedia of Death, edited by R. J. Kastenbaum and B. Kastenbaum. Phoenix, AZ: Onyx. Doka, K. J. and D. Smith-Fraser. 1986. “The Emergence of Gerontology.” ASA Connection, July/August, pp. 1, 3. Faunce, W. A. and R. L. Fulton. 1958. “The Sociology of Death: A Neglected Area in Sociological Research.” Social Forces 36:205–8. Feifel, H. 1959. The Meaning of Death. New York: McGraw-Hill. Fulton, R. L. 1961. “The Clergyman and the Funeral Director: A Study in Role Conflict.” Social Forces 39:317–23. Glaser, B. G. and A. L. Strauss. 1965. Awareness of Dying. Chicago: Aldine. ———. 1968. Time for Dying. Chicago: Aldine. Gorer, G. [1955] 1965. “The Pornography of Death.” Pp. 192–99 in G. Gorer, Death, Grief and Mourning. Garden City, NY: Doubleday. Green, B. R. and D. P. Irish. 1971. Death Education: Preparation for Living. Cambridge, MA: Schenkman. Grollman, E. A. 1967. Explaining Death to Children. Boston: Beacon. Klass, D. and R. Hutch. (1985–86). “Elisabeth Kübler-Ross as a Religious Leader.” Omega 16:89–109. Klass, D., P. R. Silverman, and S. I. Nickman. 1996. Continuing Bonds: New Understandings of Grief. Washington, DC: Taylor & Francis. Kübler-Ross, E. 1969. On Death and Dying. New York: Macmillan. Lindemann, E. 1944. “Symptomatology and Management of Acute Grief.” American Journal of Psychology 101: 141–48. Lofland, L. 1978. The Craft of Dying: The Modern Face of Death. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage. Lund, D. 1999. “Grieving and Receiving Help During Later Life Spousal Bereavement.” In Living With Grief: At Work, at School, at Worship, edited by J. Davidson and K. J. Doka. Washington, DC: Hospice Foundation of America.

56– • –CONFRONTING DEATH Miller, G. W., J. R. Williams, D. J. English, and J. Keyserling. 2002. “Delivering Quality Care and Cost-Effectiveness at the End of Life: Building on the 20-Year Success of the Medicare Hospice Benefit.” Report distributed by the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization, Washington, DC. Mitford, J. 1963. The American Way of Death. New York: Simon & Schuster. Parkes, C. M. 1959. “Morbid Grief Reactions: A Review of the Literature.” Ph.D. dissertation, University of London. Parsons, T. A. 1963. “Death in American Society: A Brief Working Paper.” American Behavioral Scientist 6:61–65. Pine,V. 1977. “A Socio-Historical Portrait of Death Education.” Death Education 1:57–84.

Rosenbaum, R. 1982. “Turn on, Tune in, Drop Dead.” Harper’s, July, pp. 32–40. Saunders, C. 1959. “The Problem of Euthanasia.” Nursing Times, October 9, pp. 960–61. Saunders, C. and R. J. Kastenbaum. 1997. Hospice Care on the International Scene. New York: Springer. Silverman, P. R. 1986. Widow-to-Widow. New York: Springer. Stoddard, S. 1978. The Hospice Movement: A Better Way of Caring for the Dying. New York: Vintage. Tuchman, B. W. 1978. A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century. New York: Ballantine.

THE SPIRITUALIST MOVEMENT Bringing the Dead Back

CHARLES F. EMMONS

DEFINITIONS AND CROSS-CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE Although my central purpose in this chapter is to analyze the social functions of the spiritualist movement that began in the United States in the 1840s, it is appropriate that I first establish some generic definitions. These definitions will also help to provide some perspective on what is a controversial subject in Western culture by presenting it in cross-cultural context.

Spiritualism Taken broadly, the term spiritualism could refer to any religious worldview that considers living things to have souls or spirits (Tylor 1871; Lowie 1924). This does not necessarily privilege human beings as the only possessors of souls. In fact, the National Spiritualist Association of Churches (NSAC) of the United States explicitly changed the wording of its “Declaration of Principles” in 2001 to refer to “souls” rather than “human souls,” as the group wanted to avoid the implication that only humans have souls (Sharon L. Snowman, secretary, board of directors of the NSAC, personal communication, October 17, 2001). More particularly, however, the term spiritualism connotes a focus on contact with the spirit world. Means of contact might be through spirit mediumship but may also include related concepts, such as spirit possession, dreams, apparitions/ghosts, paranormal physical effects (moving objects and the like), ancestor worship, divination, and synchronicities taken to represent after-death communications. Reasons for the living to encourage such communication vary; they include not only information exchange but also healing and other physical benefits.

Shamanism Versus Mediumship On a world scale, the anthropological concept of the shaman has been used to refer to a religious specialist who

manipulates the spirit world in order to heal the sick (Eliade 1964; Nicholson 1987; Drury 1991). Spirit medium refers to a specialist who contacts spirits for information. However, sometimes shamans do mediumship as well, and the terms overlap in the literature. Before I address the cultural variations in the concept of spirit mediumship, it is worthwhile to comment on its cultural universality. Mediumship probably exists in some form and to some degree in virtually all societies. However, it tends to be more institutionalized in societies that venerate ancestors (Emmons 1982). In regard to the techniques used by spirit mediums, it is interesting to observe how similar they are cross-culturally. Mediums generally go into some type of altered state of consciousness, often into varying degrees of trance, bordering on or including spirit possession. Even if not in trance, they often use the help of spirit guides or “controls,” spirits who work with and for the mediums, contacting other spirits and passing on their information (Emmons and Emmons 2003). Mediumship can be analyzed from both conflict and functional perspectives. An observer taking the conflict perspective would emphasize the dynamics of inequality involved in the institution of mediumship, whereas one taking the functional perspective would emphasize the logic of mediumship within the cultural system. Another perspective is that of symbolic interaction, through which one might observe the face-to-face process of spirit medium interacting with client (sitter). One attempt to find a general conflict theoretical explanation for direct involvement with the spirit world on the part of the living is displayed in I. M. Lewis’s classic article “Spirit Possession and Deprivation Cults” (1966). Lewis writes, “Women and other depressed categories [of people] exert mythical pressures upon their superiors in circumstances of deprivation and frustration when few other sanctions are available to them” (p. 318). As we shall see later, this is a particularly useful interpretation for the activities of American spirit mediums, most of whom 57

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were women, during the spiritualist movement of the 19th century. However, it is also important to examine the functional relationship of institutions of spirit mediumship with the rest of a culture. In the Chinese case, mediumship is an information-gathering tool; one uses it to find out what one’s ancestors want in the afterlife (Emmons 1982). A Chinese person traditionally goes to a medium (e.g., a mun mai poh, “ask-rice woman”) with a cup of rice from his or her kitchen to identify the particular family. Through the medium, the individual may discover (nowadays in Hong Kong, for example) that his or her deceased uncle wants a Mercedez-Benz with a CD player and lots of money. The family member may promise to burn an offering of a paper-and-wood effigy of such a car and some “hell banknotes” in return for a positive outcome in the public housing lottery. Lineage members are thought to help each other in both directions across the divide between this world and the next. On a micro level, this institution may help alleviate the anxiety individuals may feel over their success, even in modern urban Hong Kong. In a broader, macro perspective, spirit mediumship and ancestor worship have been more prominent in areas of south China that have practiced largescale wet-rice cultivation, often managed by particular lineages or clans. Ancestor worship provides solidarity by inducing cooperation among people who share ancestors back as many as five generations. In other cases, spirit mediumship has had political, even revolutionary, significance. Lain provides a good example of this for another culture area—Zimbabwe in East Africa—in Guns and Rain (1985). Although the case that Lain describes is relevant to Lewis’s idea of deprivation cults, historically, powerful political leaders have consulted more powerful mediums than have people of lower status in Zimbabwe. The same is true for China, in that mediumship and ancestor worship seem to have trickled down from exclusively elite involvement initially to the eventual involvement of lower-status groups (Emmons 1982). For Native Americans, spirit mediumship had both personal and social movement significance, both of which can be seen in the life story of Black Elk (1988), who lived from 1863 to 1950. The Ghost Dance was a movement mainly among Plains Indians, from 1885 through 1890, in which spirits of the ancestors were to return and lead the people against white domination (Kehoe 1989). The influence of Native American culture continues into the present among white spirit mediums, many of whom claim to have Native American spirit guides. Not only are there variations in the meanings and functions of spiritualism across cultures, there are also significant changes within particular cultures over time (something to be aware of in the American case). For example, Morris (2000) shows that spirit mediumship in northern Thailand has been transformed through the forces of modernization in politics and mass media.

QUESTIONS FOR THE AMERICAN CASE This is a good point at which to reflect upon the general “social problems” that death causes, as a way of preparing for discussion of more specific questions about the nature of American spiritualism. Notice that this subsection of this volume is titled “Keeping the Dead Alive,” and that the subtitle of this particular chapter is “Bringing the Dead Back.” Why might it be important socially to keep the dead alive and to bring them back to communicate with the living through the services of a spirit medium? As I have noted above, spirit mediumship can be a political tool. Lewis’s (1966) theory of deprivation cults stresses the use of spirit possession and mediumship by subordinate groups as a means of undermining the authority of dominant groups. However, elites have also used mediumship as a source of supernatural power, as in ancient Greece when kings consulted the Oracle at Delphi, even if the mediums themselves were women of low status. Could some version of this conflict approach help to explain the American spiritualist movement? Another social reason for communicating with the dead is to provide continuity in the institution of the family. In many societies, the eldest members of a family or lineage have greater power than younger members and also provide a connecting link for solidarity among their descendants. In the Chinese case this was particularly significant as a part of ancestor worship in the context of wet-rice cultivation, but it continues as a cultural survival tool with practical functions in modern urban Hong Kong as well. Of course, American culture is quite different from Chinese culture; compared with Chinese, Americans have both less respect for elders and greater economic independence as individuals. Therefore, we should expect spirit mediumship to be less significant in the United States than it is in China and, when it exists, to be more oriented toward personal emotional concerns. In other words, we should expect American mediumship to focus on easing individuals’ fears of dying and of losing their loved ones to death. When I was doing participant observation research with a spirit medium in Hong Kong in 1980, I asked the medium to contact my aunt as an example. Returning several times for further sessions, I was recognized by some of the medium’s other clients (all Chinese women) in the waiting room. Not realizing that I knew the Cantonese language, and assuming evidently that I relied on an interpreter in the séance room, one woman in the waiting room laughed and said, “The Westerner’s here again to chitchat with his auntie!” Her gentle ridicule was based on a clear cultural difference: Chinese would normally use a medium only for practical reasons, not because they missed the company of their departed relatives. One other significant cultural characteristic is relevant to any examination of American mediumship: the dominance of science over religion and magic in Western societies. This is not to say that American society is

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completely secularized in all of its institutions. However, spirit mediumship is considered far less legitimate in modern Western societies than it is in others. This should lead us to ask how it is that spiritualism managed to flourish in the United States in the 19th century, and how it survived and even revived in the 20th and 21st centuries. (For a discussion of how spiritualism has been less condemned in Iceland than in other Western countries, partly due to its being more closely associated with a scientific attitude early on and partly due to special attitudes about religion among Icelanders, see Swatos and Gissurarson 1997.) Interrelated with the issue of scientific legitimacy is the phenomenon of the popular culture of the paranormal that thrives in the Western mass media. What should we make of the popular entertainment context of spirit mediumship today? Case in point: A sign posted at a “psychic fair” held by a Spiritualist church in a fire station states, “Readings are for entertainment purposes only.”

ORIGINS OF THE SPIRITUALIST MOVEMENT IN THE UNITED STATES Tracing the social history of American spiritualism is a complex matter, as would be tracing the history of any diffuse religious social movement. Throughout all of its changes over the past 153 years and more, spiritualism has always had multiple associations and meanings (essential sources on this subject include Braude 1989; Cross 1981; Moore 1977; Carroll 1997; Doyle [1926] 1975; Owen 1990; Lawton 1932). From a collective behavior perspective, the structural conduciveness (Smelser 1962) that provided fertile soil for religious social movements like spiritualism lay in the rapidly changing social climate of western New York State in the early 19th century. The Erie Canal, completed in 1825, brought economic development and a rapidly growing, mobile population to the area (Cross 1981:3–77). Not only spiritualism but several other religious and ideological movements grew to a significant degree out of western New York by 1850; these included Mormonism, Millerism (later Seventh-Day Adventism), abolitionism, and feminism. Spiritualists today trace the beginnings of their religion to an occurrence of alleged spirit mediumship in 1848 involving the Fox sisters in Hydesville, New York, near Rochester. To be sure, this was not the only or the earliest case in the region (for others, see Doyle [1926] 1975). Although the details are variously described in the literature, the stories agree on some basic points: Margaret Fox, age 14, and Kate Fox, age 11, heard rapping noises in the family’s cottage. Kate, attempting to imitate the sounds, clapped her hands and said, “Mr. Splitfoot, do as I do” (Doyle [1926] 1975:1:66). The mysterious sound followed with the same number of raps as the child’s claps. A code was worked out, and this led to a message that the spirit

was that of a peddler who had been murdered in the house for his money and buried in the basement. For our purposes, it need only be said here that the story spread as various Quakers, Universalists, and Swedenborgians promoted the sisters and their phenomena. The craze of spirit rapping and table tipping (putting hands on a table and waiting for spirits to move it) diffused rapidly within a few years, across not only the United States but Europe as well, and especially England. A confession of fraud by Margaret Fox in 1888 (which she retracted in 1889) provides to this day a foundation for the debunking of the Fox sisters’ claims, although the matter is much too complicated to warrant such an easy dismissal. As Cross (1981) points out, the Fox sisters helped create “a new religious enthusiasm” from what had been a “liberal, intellectual, somewhat rationalistic movement” in American Swedenborgianism (pp. 344–45). The spiritual ideas of Quakers, Universalists, and other “freethinkers” were also loosely connected in this emerging religious social movement. More specifically, however, Andrew Jackson Davis was to the ideology of spiritualism what the Fox sisters were to the phenomena and practice of spiritualism. Davis, born in 1826 in Orange County, New York, had a vision in 1844 in which he met the ancient Greek physician Galen and the prominent 18th-century Swedish scientist Emanuel Swedenborg, who also wrote extensively as a mystical/ spiritual philosopher (Davis 1859). From that point, Davis moved from giving psychic messages and diagnoses to actual healing. He would examine people and prescribe unusual remedies; for example, he recommended putting warm rat skins over the ears as a cure for deafness. In 1845, at age 19, he began to lecture in trance and to write books in language that was seemingly too sophisticated for someone with less than a year of formal education. George Bush, a New York University professor and America’s top expert on Swedenborg at the time, examined Davis and decided that he was an authentic marvel. Bush verified that Davis could dictate in Hebrew, Arabic, and Sanskrit, languages that Davis supposedly could not have known, but that Bush thought he might be channeling from Swedenborg or others (Moore 1977:11). A century later, social historian Whitney Cross (1981) took a less charitable view, referring to Davis as “a yokel from Poughkeepsie” and saying that “with Bush’s aid [he] in considerable measure plagiarized Swedenborg’s writings” (p. 344). Whatever the case, Davis became a major figure in the spiritualist movement, writing books about the spirit world and natural law, such as The Univercoelum and Harmonia, between 1848 and 1850 (Davis 1859:296–307, 420–36).

RADICAL CORRELATES OF SPIRITUALISM Throughout the 19th century in the United States, spiritualism became associated with several radical causes in opposition to dominant institutions and powerful groups,

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especially mainstream churches and patriarchy. These causes included the abolition of slavery, health reform, temperance, marriage reform, reform of attitudes toward sexuality and reproductive rights, women’s suffrage, and dress reform for women (Braude 1989). Of course, spiritualists were far from unified on these issues, but there was a tendency, especially for adherents of feminist causes, to accrete to spiritualism because Spiritualist churches and assemblies were among the few places in which women could have a voice. Interestingly, spiritualism can be seen as an old example of a “new” social movement, in that it was rather broad in its class base and promoted empowerment and consciousnessraising over a wide range of interconnected issues. If feminism today is a new social movement, then spiritualism in the 19th century is an even better example of such a movement. In fact, 19th-century advocates of women’s rights risked ridicule from moderates when they spoke to spiritualist groups, as Susan B. Anthony did several times in the 1890s at Woman Suffrage Day in Lily Dale, the Spiritualist camp located about 55 miles southwest of Buffalo, New York (Braude 1989:196). Unlike more moderate feminists who had to concentrate on restricted battles they had a chance of winning, such as suffrage, spiritualists tended to be all-purpose, noncompromising radicals. Focusing on the religious/spiritual core of spiritualism, the main issues that drew especially women to spiritualism in the first place had to do with death and the continuity of life after death. Those who rejected, for example, the idea of infant damnation (for babies who died unbaptized) sought comfort in more liberal Protestant theology, the rural cemetery movement (1850s), and the possibility of contact with the spirit world found in the emerging movement of spiritualism (Braude 1989:49–55). One of the ironies of this situation is that in the 1850s, when spiritualism was spreading in the United States and Britain, women found a voice in the movement that they did not have elsewhere. Spiritualist women were able to speak in public in a trance state at a time when women in general, even feminists, were not. Because the spirit was in charge, women trance speakers could not easily be accused of stepping out of their legitimate passive domestic roles. This practice resulted in both the spread of spiritualism through enthusiastic audiences and some loosening of the restrictive role of women (Braude 1989: 82–98). The downside was that the trance state fell under the medical definition of psychological abnormality. This was one of many ways in which spiritualism was labeled as deviant, part of the social control process mobilized against the spread of spiritualism as a religious social movement in the 19th century (Owen 1990:143–67). Even in the 20th century, until recently, anybody who spoke as if channeling another spirit entity was a good candidate for a diagnosis of multiple personality (or dissociative disorder).

SPIRITUALIST ORGANIZATION AND ANTIORGANIZATION Throughout the history of spiritualism in the United States, there has been a tension between contradictory tendencies for and against organization. To a great extent, spiritualists early on were reacting against established, male-dominated Protestant churches and did not wish to create their own dogmatic structures. Carroll (1997), however, argues that spiritualism before the Civil War was more organized than has been generally believed. The more spiritualists attempted to organize nationally in the 1860s and 1870s, the more conflict they generated over issues of the validity of spirit mediumship and the status of women in the movement (Braude 1989:164–91). Estimating the number of spiritualists in the United States at any given time is extremely difficult. Even defining what qualifies a person to be counted as a spiritualist is difficult. In 1932, the sociologist George Lawton stated that the Census of Religious Bodies in 1926 counted 50,631 enrolled members in 611 affiliated Spiritualist churches and societies, but that “no reliable index is available . . . of the number of independent” ones (pp. 143–56). Lawton estimated 10 to 15 nonenrolled for every enrolled member. The National Spiritualist Association of Churches, first convened in Chicago in 1893, headquarters located now in Lily Dale, New York, was the largest association of Spiritualist churches in 1926 and still is today. It counted 45,000 members in 334 churches in 1890, 41,000 members in 543 churches in 1926 (Lawton 1932:146), and 2,500 members in 112 churches and associations in 2000 (National Spiritualist Association of Churches 2001). However, in 2001 there were 22 Spiritualist organizations other than the NSAC in the United States with unrecorded numbers of member churches, in addition to many other independent churches. There is no way to test assertions that there were many millions of spiritualists in the United States in the 19th century. It is generally recognized that there was a decline in spiritualism from the 19th century to the 20th, punctuated by periods of greater interest at times of war, when more people attempted to contact relatives and friends who had died untimely deaths. Lawton’s estimate for 1926 would yield fewer than a million spiritualists, less than 1% of the U.S. population at that time. Of course, especially because of the opposition to formal organization among many spiritualists, it is necessary to consider forms of involvement aside from formal church membership. Spiritualist activities have included lectures, assemblies, summer camp meetings, psychic fairs (nowadays), classes and workshops, and home circles and séances, in addition to regular church services. Add to this the consumption of mass media on the subject (books, magazines, films, radio programs, and now popular television shows such as Crossing Over with John Edward).

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At the height of the spiritualist craze in the 1850s, table tipping and séances around the dining room table were the equivalent of popular board games. It appears that much of this activity was taken about as seriously as the use of Ouija Boards in the late 20th century—which is to say, for the most part, not very.

FUNCTIONS OF SPIRIT MEDIUMSHIP Allegedly, contacting the spirits of the dead has been the centerpiece of the spiritualist movement, although spiritual healing and philosophical development have been quite significant as well. One of the difficulties in attempting any sociological analysis of diffuse social movements such as spiritualism, however, is that it is even more problematic to characterize the involvement of individuals at the micro level. Whatever cultural themes apply as useful generalities at the macro level, there can be many variations on each theme and differences in value priorities within local minicultures. For much of the 19th century, these ethnographic details have been lost. However, data are available on recent mediumistic activity, based mostly on participant observation and ethnographic interviews (see Emmons and Emmons 2003; unless otherwise noted, the information about and quotations from interviews with mediums presented in the following subsections are taken from this work).

Proving the Continuity of Life “Proving the continuity of life” is the main purpose of spirit mediumship, as expressed by most mediums today. This is formally recognized in the “Declaration of Principles” of the National Spiritual Association of Churches: “We affirm that the existence and personal identity of the individual continue after the change called death . . . [and] that communication with the so-called dead is a fact, scientifically proven by the phenomena of Spiritualism.” In the 19th century, this principle was a reaction against the doctrine of infant damnation. Today mediumship functions as part of grief management, a salient theme in recent popular books about mediumship by George Anderson, James Van Praagh, and Rosemary Altea, in addition to books about after-death communications that do not necessarily involve spirit mediums. Although mediums believe it is appropriate to bring through messages of love and advice from the dead, there is generally a taboo against forecasting a person’s impending death. Mediums who feel that they are picking up such information either ignore it or encourage the living to visit or to give extra care to the person whose death is apparently imminent. A few of the 40 mediums interviewed for our study emphasized that mediumship helps people have a more positive attitude toward their own death. Spiritualist funerals provide good illustrations of the belief that death is a cause for grief but not a reason for fear or despair.

Helping and Healing Another very commonly stated function of mediumship is to “help people,” in the generic sense of providing guidance, counseling, and healing. Mediums frame this in a holistic perspective by saying, “It’s all about healing,” meaning that mediumship and hands-on healing, both of which are part of Spiritualist church services, are directed toward healing body, mind, and spirit. One restriction on the physical aspect of the healing function, however, comes from mediums’ fears of being accused of practicing medicine without a license. In his observations of the activities in the Spiritualist camp at Lily Dale, New York, in 1929, George Lawton (1932:337–43) recorded some very negative statements by healers and mediums about the medical profession. Such is not the case today. Instead, at public message services, mediums typically offer clear disclaimers before they bring forth any statements about the health of the living. For example, “I am not a doctor, and I cannot diagnose or prescribe. However, I think it would be a good idea for you to see your doctor to check on your liver.” Most mediums’ comments regarding health are positive, such as “I feel a lot of healing going on through this area,” or “Make sure you keep up that walking.”

Fortune-Telling Moving along a continuum from more spiritual to more secular functions of spirit mediumship, at some point helpful advice from the spirit world turns into “fortune-telling,” a derogatory label from a spiritualist perspective. This includes such things as information about relationships, career, and money. Especially when this type of advice is not taken very seriously, another function of mediumship enters: entertainment, in private readings and especially at public message services, where there is often some expectation that messages will be amusing for the rest of the “audience” (congregation). In their 1974 study of Lily Dale, sociologists Richard and Adato (1980:191) surveyed 57 visitors, only 4% of whom mentioned the death of a relative as a reason for their coming to Lily Dale, compared with 47% who mentioned seeking “guidance and knowledge.” It is difficult to know exactly what these respondents understood by “guidance and knowledge,” but these data tend to confirm our recent observations that visitors are more interested in “fortune-telling” or “practical magic” than they are in “proving the continuity of life.” People who go to Lily Dale for private readings and public messages are not necessarily Spiritualists (25% identified themselves as such in Richard and Adato’s study). When asked if they would like to ask questions, after the medium has already brought through some information, sitters are more likely to ask about their love lives and jobs than about dead relatives. Consequently, mediums often say that they do more mediumship on the platform

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(in public services) and more “psychic” message work in private readings. Spiritualist mediums, then, present an ideology in which “proving the continuity of life” is most important. However, many of their clients do not necessarily share a Spiritualist perspective or care about mediumship at all, and may frame the activity as psychic fortune-telling. In this sense, Chinese clients go to mediums for similar reasons, “practical” ones (such as getting rich with the help of their ancestors), although the Chinese clearly frame their actions differently—that is, in terms of the system of ancestor worship and spirit mediumship.

SUBCULTURES OF KNOWLEDGE As I have pointed out above, the concept of communicating with the dead is problematic in the United States today, with our modern, scientific, secular culture. Nevertheless, the practice of spirit mediumship has survived for more than 150 years and has been interpreted variously in different subcultures. In most of these subcultures, the key issue is, predictably, death, as well as the question mark that lies beyond it, what parapsychologists refer to as the issue of “survival.” In this section, I examine and compare four partly conflicting but overlapping knowledge subcultures: scientific debunking, social/behavioral science, parapsychology, and some spiritual perspectives. I approach these subcultures in order roughly from most scientific to most religious. (For a general analysis of debunking or “skepticism,” parapsychology, and contemporary spirituality—the “New Age” movement—see Hess 1993.)

Scientific Debunking In this discussion of scientific debunking, I refer especially to work by the Committee for Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP) and its journal Skeptical Inquirer. In contrast to members of the social/behavioral scientific subculture, considered next, debunkers are explicitly interested in the question of whether a particular paranormal phenomenon (in this case, a surviving soul or spirit) has an objective existence; they conclude that there is no evidence that it does. However, they are also likely to see paranormal beliefs as dangerously irrational; they do not consider that such beliefs may have positive social functions. It is more difficult to compare debunking with parapsychology and spiritual views. However, members of all three of these subcultures have acknowledged that, at least in some instances, there have been deceptive or fraudulent practices in mediumship. The authors of some articles published in Skeptical Inquirer have analyzed the “cold reading” techniques of mediums who apparently assimilate information from sitters through body language and conversational cues, or by asking “fishing” questions and

manipulating the conversation. Others have attacked the paranormal by attempting to demonstrate that particular phenomena can be produced through fraudulent means (such as by trick magicians).

Social/Behavioral Science I have discussed some aspects of the perspective of the social/behavioral science subculture above, including, for example, Lewis’s (1966) deprivation theory of cults and the treatment of mediumship associated with Chinese ancestor worship (Emmons 1982). These represent, essentially, conflict and functional theories of spirit mediumship. Although most social scientists would probably deny that they take any position on the truth status of mediumistic claims, there seems to be an implicit assumption in most of the sociological/anthropological literature that otherworldly experiences have only symbolic, socially constructed, rather than objective, reality (Howell 1989). Nevertheless, some anthropologists have written about their own paranormal experiences in the field. Psychologists have usually seen trance mediumship mainly in terms of multiple personality or dissociative disorder.

Parapsychology Parapsychology is unique in that it straddles science and the paranormal. It emerged as a field in the latter half of the 19th century out of the curiosity of scientists and spiritualists about mediumship. Moore (1977) discusses this history, including the 1882 founding of the Society for Psychical Research in London, a very prestigious organization that included eight fellows of the Royal Society (such as Alfred Russel Wallace) and literary elites such as Alfred, Lord Tennyson. In 1926, Arthur Conan Doyle (1975) wrote a sympathetic review of spiritualist mediumship and the controversies surrounding its investigation. Gauld (1982) provides an excellent more recent overview of this subject, which has received much less attention by parapsychologists in the past half century. For those mediums who do not appear to be frauds and who provide impressive evidential material, parapsychology offers essentially two explanations: telepathy and survival of the spirit. The thorniest theoretical problem arises when the concept of super-ESP (extrasensory perception unlimited by time or space and not dependent on mental telepathy) seems to account for everything that might be thought to come from contact with the spirit world. Gauld (1982) concludes that the super-ESP hypothesis seems unconvincing in a number of cases, and that there is “a sprinkling of cases which rather forcefully suggest some form of survival” (p. 261). Other modern parapsychologists have tended to be more dismissive of spirit mediumship as evidence for survival (Emmons and Emmons 2003).

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Spiritual Perspectives That there are spiritual perspectives on mediumship might appear to be obvious, given that spiritualists have long emphasized that mediumship provides evidence for the continuity of life. However, spiritualists have also been bothered by one of the problems noted by parapsychologists: How is one to know that a medium is not accessing information through some form of ESP (telepathy with the living or clairvoyance directly of present or past events) rather than through a spirit contact? Another problem for spiritualists is the possibility of unreliable, even deceitful, messages from the other side. Swedenborg, the intellectual ancestor of much spiritualist thought, wrote in 1748 that a person “must beware lest he believe them in anything. For they [the spirits] say almost anything” (quoted in Anderson 1993:289). Most mediums today de-emphasize the problem of visitation by evil spirits, yet they feel protected if they say a prayer and set their intention for only “the highest and best”; often, they ask for a “white light of protection” while doing mediumship (Emmons and Emmons 2003). Other challenges to spiritualist mediumship have come from other spiritual movements that have tried to distance themselves from at least part of what mediums were doing. Although spiritualists borrowed from the Transcendentalists, Emerson and Thoreau showed disdain for spiritualism, which Emerson referred to as the “rat hole of revelation” (see Moore 1977:25, 38, 52–54). Theosophy, an outgrowth of spiritualism in the late 18th century, represented an attempt to reform spiritualism and elevate its status, partly by encouraging the channeling of a higher class of spirits (Prothero 1993).

CONCLUSION Spiritualism is a virtually universal religious phenomenon that centers on contact with the spirit world through spirit mediums. It tends to be more institutionalized in societies that practice ancestor worship, but it can have a wide variety of functions and may be used as a source of supernatural power in politics. Spirit mediumship is especially problematic in Western societies such as the United States, due to the dominance of scientific rationality in these cultures. Spiritualism in the United States can be seen from a variety of perspectives and has had a diffuse set of meanings over its long history. Especially in the 19th century, it represented an array of radical impulses, both sacred and secular. On the sacred side, it rebelled against infant damnation and male patriarchy in formal churches. On the secular side, it overlapped feminism, abolitionism, and other movements. Attempts to explain and test spiritual mediumship can be categorized as falling within four subcultures: scientific debunking, social/behavioral science, parapsychology, and, of course, spiritual perspectives.

Peeling away some of the social/cultural elaboration of this religious social movement, what does spiritualism say about death? The central claim of American spiritualists is that mediumship shows evidence of “the continuity of life,” which is a denial of the finality of death. In the United States, this belief can help individuals and families with the grieving process when loved ones die. In other cultures, where the social organization of the wider community is more important than the grief of individuals, spiritualism may allow the dead to preserve social continuity, in terms of lineage solidarity, or give supernaturally sanctioned political power to either elites or deprived groups. Spirit mediumship seems anachronous in modern industrial societies. The American spiritualist phenomenon changed in the 19th century from craze to social movement to organized church. In the 20th century, its culture blended with New Age channeling, psychic phenomena, and fortune-telling, although Spiritualist churches continued to exist on a small scale. Within this larger, redefined context, mediumship can be expected to flourish in an alienated mass society that shows symptoms of spiritual revival and increased interest in the paranormal.

REFERENCES Anderson, Rodger. 1993. Review of Paul Beard, Inner Eye, Listening Ear: An Exploration Into Mediumship. Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research 87:287–91. Black Elk. 1988. Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Braude, Ann. 1989. Radical Spirits: Spiritualism and Women’s Rights in Nineteenth-Century America. Boston: Beacon. Carroll, Bret E. 1997. Spiritualism in Antebellum America. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Cross, Whitney R. 1981. The Burned-Over District: The Social and Intellectual History of Enthusiastic Religion in Western New York, 1800–1850. New York: Octagon. Davis, Andrew Jackson. 1859. The Magic Staff: An Autobiography of Andrew Jackson Davis. New York: J. S. Brown. Doyle, Arthur Conan. [1926] 1975. The History of Spiritualism, 2 vols. New York: Arno. Drury, Nevill. 1991. The Elements of Shamanism. Rockport, MA: Element. Eliade, Mircea. 1964. Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Emmons, Charles F. 1982. Chinese Ghosts and ESP: A Study of Paranormal Beliefs and Experiences. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow. Emmons, Charles F. and Penelope Emmons. 2003. Guided by Spirit: A Journey Into the Mind of the Medium. New York: iUniverse. Gauld, Alan. 1982. Mediumship and Survival: A Century of Investigations. London: Paladin. Hess, David J. 1993. Science in the New Age: The Paranormal, Its Defenders and Debunkers, and American Culture. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Howell, Julia D. 1989. “The Social Sciences and Mystical Experience.” In Exploring the Paranormal: Perspectives on

64– • –KEEPING THE DEAD ALIVE Belief and Experience, edited by George K. Zollschan, John F. Schumaker, and Greg F. Walsh. Dorset, Eng.: Prism. Kehoe, Alice Beck. 1989. The Ghost Dance: Ethnohistory and Revitalization. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston. Lain, David. 1985. Guns and Rain: Guerrillas and Spirit Mediums in Zimbabwe. Berkeley: University of California Press. Lawton, George. 1932. The Drama of Life After Death. New York: Henry Holt. Lewis, I. M. 1966. “Spirit Possession and Deprivation Cults.” Man 1:307–29. Lowie, Robert. 1924. Primitive Religion. New York: Boni & Liveright. Moore, R. Laurence. 1977. In Search of White Crows: Spiritualism, Parapsychology, and American Culture. New York: Oxford University Press. Morris, Rosalind C. 2000. In the Place of Origins: Modernity and Its Mediums in Northern Thailand. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. National Spiritualist Association of Churches. 2001. Yearbook. Lily Dale, NY: National Spiritualist Association of Churches.

Nicholson, Shirley, comp. 1987. Shamanism: An Expanded View of Reality. Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House. Owen, Alex. 1990. The Darkened Room: Power and Spiritualism in Late Victorian England. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Prothero, Stephen. 1993. “From Spiritualism to Theosophy: ‘Uplifting’ a Democratic Tradition.” Religion and American Culture 3:197–216. Richard, Michael P. and Albert Adato. 1980. “The Medium and Her Message: A Study of Spiritualism at Lily Dale, New York.” Review of Religious Research 22:186–97. Smelser, Neil. 1962. The Structure of Collective Behavior. New York: Free Press. Swatos, William H., Jr. and Loftur Reimar Gissurarson. 1997. Icelandic Spiritualism: Mediumship and Modernity in Iceland. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction. Tylor, Edward B. 1871. Primitive Culture. London: Murray.

REINCARNATION The Technology of Death

JANE DILLON

ccording to the social historians Joseph Head and Sylvia Cranston (1977), one-half of the world’s population believes in some form of rebirth, and as of 1981, according to a Gallup poll conducted in that year, 23% of Americans also claimed a belief in reincarnation. Today, few analysts of religious institutions would doubt the significance such beliefs hold for the contemporary experience. The importance of such statistics is demonstrated in the discussion of reincarnation and death that follows, which is based on sociological research that I conducted during a 13-year period at the University of California, San Diego (Dillon 1998).1 This qualitative ethnographic study was designed to focus on the meaning reincarnation has for Americans who believe deeply in this phenomenon and how a belief in reincarnation affects their daily activities of work, marriage, parenting, citizenship, social action, personal morality, and death. The data are based in part on extensive, in-depth interviews that I conducted with monastic and lay members of the Self-Realization Fellowship (SRF), one of the oldest and most firmly established “Eastern” religious groups in the United States.2 In the following sections, I present portions of these interview data to provide the reader with an overview of

the Western Yoga movement that brought the concept of reincarnation to America and the meaning of the reincarnationist worldview to people who have adopted it.3 In addition, I discuss the role of the reincarnationist perspective in the greater Western society.

THE REINCARNATIONIST PERSPECTIVE The concept of reincarnation has traversed the continents from Asia to Europe and the oceans from the Indian to the Atlantic. Mistaken for centuries as simply a core belief of the Hindu religion known as “transmigration of souls,” the representation of reincarnation as taught by Paramahansa Yogananda has attained authoritative status in the West with the universal appeal of Yogananda’s work. Fitting comfortably with Western scientific, religious, and philosophical traditions, Yogananda’s Kriya Yogic understanding of reincarnation has been widely accepted by millions of Westerners and is now being reintroduced to the peoples of India and Asia. Yogananda’s Self-Realization movement has gained significant attention in the West over the past eight decades and is currently experiencing phenomenal growth.4

1. Dr. Dillon may be reached by phone at (760) 415-4550, by e-mail at [emailprotected], or by mail at P.O. Box 144, Cardiff, CA 92007. 2. The Self-Realization Fellowship, a nonsectarian religious and humanitarian organization, was founded in the United States in 1920 by Paramahansa Yogananda, one of India’s most respected spiritual leaders. Yogananda has been widely acclaimed for his classic work Autobiography of a Yogi, which was first published in 1946. In 1977, the government of India honored Yogananda as one of India’s great saints with the issuance of a national stamp. In 1935, Mahatma Gandhi showed his deepest respect when he requested that Paramahansa Yogananda initiate him in the advanced scientific techniques of Kriya Yoga meditation. 3. The root cause of belief in reincarnation for the modern Western world is Yoga. See especially Leviton (1993), Isherwood (1962), Worthington (1982), and Feurerstein (1989). 4. Dr. Evans-Wentz writes in the preface to Yogananda’s Autobiography of a Yogi ([1946] 1994): “As an eyewitness recountal of the extraordinary lives and powers of modern Hindu saints, the book has importance both timely and timeless. To its illustrious author, whom I had the pleasure of knowing in both India and America, may every reader render due appreciation and gratitude. His unusual life document is certainly one of the most revealing of the depths of the Hindu mind and heart, and of the spiritual wealth of India, ever to be published in the West. . . . It has been my privilege to meet one of the sages whose life history is herein narrated—Sri Yukteswar Giri. A likeness of the venerable saint appeared as part of the frontispiece of my Tibetan Yoga and Secret Doctrines” (p. vii).

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Issues that are frequently raised regarding reincarnation include the meaning of this important concept, how those who believe deeply in reincarnation live out their daily lives and confront the normal processes of living and dying, the process through which one is reincarnated and the form taken, whether it is possible to recall one’s past lives, and the future of the reincarnationist perspective. To begin this discussion, I present several noteworthy points pertaining to reincarnation and death as a foundation for understanding the reincarnationist worldview. First, from a reincarnationist perspective, there is no death; there is only a transition to another life-form. The essential Self is eternal, part of Life Itself. As is known in the field of quantum physics, time and space are relative concepts, products of our perceiving what we see as one fixed reality from the perspective of our own particular fixed time and place. From a cosmic perspective on life, there is no separation, no division; all life “flows” in one continuum, one creation, within which are infinitely diverse multiple realities and multiple dimensions that take form on the physical plane. Death, as an end to Life, in such a system is simply a misnomer, the reflection of a misunderstanding of and about Life. Second, for those who believe in reincarnation, dying is not the economic enterprise or moneymaking business it has become in American culture. The law of reincarnation undercuts dominant Western ideology by claiming an interconnectedness, interviolability, and infinite extension of all life in the physical and other worlds for each and every individual life-form, thereby eliminating, at least theoretically, any basis for fear, denial, or confusion about death. From a reincarnationist point of view, the simple, at-home enlightenment experience that death and dying represent renders any elaborate material endeavors irrelevant. Third, within the reincarnationist system, reincarnation is not a belief, it is a law—the law of the evolution of human consciousness. Akin to the law of gravity, the law of evolution is also derived from the laws of magnetism that operate life in the physical world. Fourth, reincarnation is not merely an “Eastern” concept. Rather, it represents an idea that is fundamental to all the religions of the world and is found in some form in all cultures (Head and Cranston 1977). To Americans, however, reincarnation is somewhat of a novelty, having been introduced recently into the cultural mainstream during the 1960s, after centuries of repression throughout most of the Judeo-Christian Western world (Dillon 1991). Fifth, the law of reincarnation should not be confused with “New Age” philosophy, belief in the power of crystals,

past-life regression, or psychic phenomena. Rather, the basis of the concept of reincarnation is simply the idea that human life, which most religions teach is eternal, repeats itself (or reincarnates) many times throughout the course of its spiritual journey (Dass 1970). The concept and the reality of reincarnation are simple and obvious when one examines them without prejudice, as demonstrated by the extensive scientific evidence gathered by researchers such as Drs. Ian Stevensen (1974) and Raymond Moody (1975), who have documented and verified hundreds of cases of people, from adults to small children, who have been able to describe the details of previous lives they have lived, including information about people, events, and things still in evidence today. Sixth, reincarnation and karma are inextricably linked. They are corollary laws that effectively produce each other. In other words, one makes no sense without the other. Without reincarnation, an individual would have only one human lifetime—not enough time in which to fulfill his or her karma (that is, to reap all the good and bad consequences of the good and bad deeds—thoughts, words, and actions—he or she has produced). Conversely, without karma, reincarnation would be unnecessary, as there would be nothing to come back for—no pull, no magnetism, no desires. Seventh, the laws of reincarnation (evolution) and karma (cause and effect) are essential factors for understanding quantum physics and for explaining why units of energy behave in the manner observed. However, because reincarnation is dependent on a linear space-time continuum as it is currently understood, some quantum scientists have challenged the reincarnation concept based on an expanding knowledge of the cyclical, multidimensional, nonlocal, and nonseparative elements of life. For example, paleontologist Philip Savage (1999) proposes instead the idea of “transcarnation,” a system of multiple identities within multiple dimensions, existing all at the same time.5 Eighth, individuals can try to know about their past lives through intuition, meditation, hypnosis, and psychic experiences. The problem is that there is no reliable method for discerning whether what they learn or experience in seeking such knowledge is actually related to their past lives or some form of their own fantasies or delusional imaginations. Spontaneous past-life recollection or knowing is déjà vu, and sometimes instances of déjà vu can be very convincing to those who experience them. However, déjà vu experiences are completely subjective, usually rare, and generally only hint at the identity of the person during a previous lifetime.

5. Philip Savage (1999) explains his concept of transcarnation versus reincarnation: “Contrary to a very common mistake, Druids never really believed in reincarnation. The famous Druidic ‘metempsychosis’ differs from common reincarnational systems in the sense that, in the ancient Celtic paradigm, nothing moves in a linear fashion, but in circles and cycles. Druids, like the most advanced physicists today, didn’t believe in time as a separate, intangible and distinct dimension. Instead of a sequential succession of different lives, they believed in a multiple simultaneous super-existence. In this system, one may be a man and a woman in the same time. A human, an animal, a mineral and a plant as well. A drop in the ocean, a quark and a galaxy just the same. One lives now, before and later without separation. What one does (not DID) in the seventeenth century influences what one does (not WILL DO) one thousand years from now. In fact, the old Druidic system sounds very much like the theory of multiple parallel universes” (p. 54).

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Finally, although reincarnation is a satisfying and comforting system, being reborn repeatedly is actually not something to be desired; coming back forever and ever is not the goal. Breaking free of the physical phase of human existence—the “wheel of transmigration”—and moving up to a higher, nonphysical consciousness is the desirable and guaranteed result of all human evolution (MacGregor 1982).

DEFINING THE PROCESS OF REINCARNATION The overwhelming conclusion of Head and Cranston’s comprehensive research on the history of the reincarnation concept is that all major civilizations and religious systems that have ever existed in the world have contained some version of reincarnation within their cultural tool kits.6 For example, Hindus who base their teachings on the earliest known human records of the Vedas, the Upanishads, and the Bhagavad Gita cite many clear references to reincarnation in each of these sacred texts. Prominent philosopher and former president of India Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan claims an abundance of references to reincarnation even in the earliest Rig Veda. He writes, “The passage of the soul from the body, its dwelling in other forms of existence, its return to human form, the determination of future existence by the principle of Karma are all mentioned [in statements such as] ‘The immortal self will be reborn in a new body due to its meritorious deeds’” (quoted in Head and Cranston 1977:36). In the Upanishads, readers find many references to reincarnation; the translation of that text by Charles Johnston, professor at Columbia University, includes statements such as the following: “Through his past works he shall return once more to birth, entering whatever form his heart is set on” (quoted in Head and Cranston 1977:39). And in the celebrated Bhagavad Gita, the most famous part of the epic poem Mahabharata, which reports the Lord Krishna’s dialogue with his foremost disciple, Arjuna, a text studied by Western scientists (e.g., Oppenheimer), philosophers (e.g., Thoreau), and politicians (e.g., Hastings), students find not only innumerable references to reincarnation such as the one that follows, but also a full allegorical treatment of the doctrine itself.7 Such a man doth not perish here or hereafter. For never to an evil place goeth one who doeth good. The man whose devotion has been broken off by death goeth to the regions of the righteous, where he dwells for an immensity of years and is then born again on earth in a pure and fortunate family, or even in a

family of those who are spiritually illuminated. But such a rebirth into this life as this last is more difficult to obtain. Being thus born again, he comes in contact with the knowledge which belonged to him in his former body, and from that time he struggles more diligently towards perfection, O son of Kuru. (Quoted in Head and Cranston 1977:47)

Many scholars would claim that in the Orient, the acceptance of reincarnation is simply “in the air”; reincarnation is tacitly accepted, without the necessity for words or explanation (see, e.g., Polanyi 1966). Experts in Buddhism and Taoism, however, also find abundant references to the concept in the sacred texts of these religions. Edward Conze, writing of the “Buddhist scriptures,” comments: “The state of a Buddha is one of the highest possible perfection. It seems self-evident to Buddhists that an enormous amount of preparation over many lives is needed to reach it” (quoted in Head and Cranston 1977:61).8 About Taoism, Chuang Tzu writes in The Musings of a Chinese Mystic: “To have attained to the human form must be always a source of joy. And then, to undergo countless transitions, with only the infinite to look forward to—what incomparable bliss is that! Therefore it is, that the truly wise rejoice in that which can never be lost, but endures always” (quoted in Head and Cranston 1977:111). Head and Cranston (1977) document similar references to reincarnation in the Egyptian Book of the Dead, the Hermetic writings, the Persian Mithra, the writings of the Zoroastrians and the Manicheans, and also in the ancient Jewish traditions of the Essenes, the Kabala, the Zohar, and the Hasidics. They also note that widespread understanding of reincarnation by leading Western writers, scientists, philosophers, and religious advocates has been documented among the early Christians, the early Muslims, the ancient Greeks and Romans, and the Native peoples of the Americas, from the Middle Ages and on through the Renaissance, the Reformation, and the ages of Enlightenment and Science. In the following subsections I offer definitions of the concepts of reincarnation, karma, magnetism, and scientific meditation and explain their meanings through reference to authoritative Western sources.

The Law of Reincarnation Paramahansa Yogananda ([1975] 1990) defines reincarnation as the doctrine that human beings, compelled by the law of evolution, incarnate repeatedly in progressively higher

6. See Head and Cranston’s many publications on reincarnation: Reincarnation: The Phoenix Fire Mystery (1977), Reincarnation: An East-West Anthology (1961), Reincarnation in World Thought (1967), and Reincarnation: A New Horizon in Science, Religion and Society (Cranston and Head 1993). 7. The most recent translation and interpretation of this ancient text by Paramahansa Yogananda was published by the Self-Realization Fellowship in 1995. 8. In fact, the most well-known living embodiment of reincarnation is the most famous Buddhist of the modern world, His Holiness, the Dalai Lama of Tibet.

68– • –KEEPING THE DEAD ALIVE lives—retarded by wrong actions and desires, and advanced by spiritual endeavors—until Self-realization and God-union are attained. Having thus transcended the limitations and imperfections of mortal consciousness, the soul is forever free from compulsory reincarnation. [In Revelation 3:12 it is noted,] “Him that overcometh will I make a pillar in the temple of my God, and he shall go no more out.” (P. 479)

This law of reincarnation means that all people are souls, reincarnated on earth, made in the image of God, and therefore essentially already saved (one with God). It means that human beings are attached to the world through unfulfilled material desires that force them to reincarnate in the physical plane. Souls reincarnate in order to satisfy or transmute (renounce) these desires until they consciously choose, as their only desire, union with the Divine. Reincarnation is the mechanism of evolution (change in consciousness)—the technology of death—and humans almost always (with rare exceptions) reincarnate in human form. Eventually, all souls attain Self-realization and liberation from the delusory identification of self with ego. Reincarnationists understand that the reincarnated human soul is reborn again and again to the physical world in many different physical bodies, living in different physical environments and different social circumstances, depending on its karmic desires and needs accumulated over a very long period of time (i.e., hundreds, thousands, or perhaps even millions of lifetimes). Advanced souls reputedly choose their social and physical conditions at rebirth; less advanced souls are simply drawn to the conditions that satisfy the state of consciousness realized at the moment of previous physical death. The experience of life for the reincarnated human soul is largely determined by its own karma from that individual’s behavior in previous lives, combined with a certain degree of free will, depending on that soul’s stage of spiritual advancement. All human beings exist at a high stage of evolution because, unlike other life-forms, human souls are given the gift of free will, which is simply the capacity to choose to move forward (closer to the Divine) or backward (away from the Divine). Reincarnation represents the law of evolution, the process of the upliftment of all souls from delusion to final liberation, which requires that souls reincarnate in different forms at different states of consciousness in all three vibratory worlds. Reincarnationists view the system as a fair one in which all souls have certain things to learn and accomplish in each lifetime and all are given as many chances as they need or deserve to reincarnate until they “get it right.” Reincarnation also is seen as the only logical explanation for certain personal experiences, such as why individuals sometimes feel instantly comfortable with certain people and in certain places—they have been with those people or in those same places before. Reincarnation explains why individuals may have unusual or extreme fears, such as fear of flying or of motorcycles; a person who fears flying, for

instance, may have died in a plane crash in a previous life. Reincarnation also explains why some children are “born” with particularly developed skills or abilities (e.g., musical talent) or with unusually difficult personality traits (e.g., nasty temper)—they learned such skills or developed those traits in their recent past lives.

The Law of Magnetism The law of magnetism encompasses two forces: attraction and repulsion. Drawing from ancient Vedic teachings, Paramahansa Yogananda ([1946] 1994) explains that human souls were originally projected as rays from the formless, nondualistic Transcendent Divine. From that moment on, the sole purpose of the human soul has been to return to God through a process of attraction. Through the process of repulsion, Spirit created the three vibratory worlds of form: the causal world of thought, the astral world of light, and the physical world of matter. Through the process of attraction, all Life is drawn back to Spirit. Soul is the vibrationless image of Spirit manifest in the world. All aspects of the vibratory worlds, including the individual human being, are aspects of Spirit-in-form. Thus the underlying nature of all forms in all worlds is Spirit-in-form or vibration, that is, the Word of God—the Aum. Once it becomes a part of the vibratory worlds of Creation, the soul experiences delusion (maya) and eventually forgets its true identity and from whence it came (One with Spirit). Instead, the soul falsely identifies itself as separate from Spirit (which in reality it can never be) and engages in cycles of reincarnation. Through the process of Self-realization, or when the soul realizes its true identity of Self made in the image of “God,” the soul becomes liberated from its delusion and consciously experiences its true Self as participating in the nature of the formless Spirit (i.e., God as ever-existing, ever-conscious, ever-new Bliss). As Spirit (Iswara) is ultimately formless and vibrationless, so too is the soul, even in the worlds of vibration. Thus transcendence or Selfrealization occurs when the soul truly identifies with (realizes) its vibrationless Self instead of with its vibratory body or ego. The reincarnated soul seeks expression and happiness that it can ultimately attain only through reunion with Spirit, Self-realization. Thus the individual soul, regardless of in which body it resides, is seeking God (i.e., Self), whether consciously or not, and is therefore always on the spiritual path to God. When the soul realizes its true identity, thereby transcending the delusion (maya) that it is separate from God, the soul is instantly rejoined (as in “yoke” or yoga) with God. Practicing the scientific technique of Kriya Yoga is a process through which the realization of Self as one with Spirit is possible. Souls inhabiting and constituting the physical world are involved in a process of evolution and involution whereby individual and collective consciousness is lifted or lowered

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according to the stage, or yuga, in which the world exists at any particular moment. The particular yuga influences how worlds are constituted and experienced by their inhabitants. This physical world, for example, evolves through 24,000-year cycles that are divided into four yugas: Satya Yuga (the highest or Golden Ages), Treta Yuga (the next highest), Dwapara Yuga (second lowest), and Kali Yuga (the lowest or Dark Age). The earth is now in the beginning of the Dwapara Yuga, the atomic age of electricity, continuing upward as consciousness evolves to higher states (Yukteswar [1894] 1977). The physical world consists of four forms of matter: mineral, vegetal, animal, and human. These different forms represent fundamentally different vibrations of conscious energy. All are called soul (i.e., consciousness). Yogananda ([1946] 1994) refers to mineral forms of soul as sleeping consciousness, vegetal forms as awakened consciousness, animal forms as conscious consciousness, and human forms as self-conscious consciousness. The individual human soul evolves from existence as all other physical forms, which means it has lived in previous incarnations as animal, vegetal, and mineral forms. The individual human soul is the highest manifestation of God on the physical plane because it is self-conscious. Only the human soul has the conscious capacity to accomplish the purpose of all creation, which is to realize self-consciously its true identity as Soul, part of Spirit (Christ-consciousness). No other physical form has this potential for soul expression. Having evolved from these previous forms of consciousness, human souls are responsible not only for their own individual human evolution, but for the general evolution of the collective soul in all other forms, the collective animal, vegetal, and mineral evolution, including the evolution of Mother Earth Herself. Human souls rarely, if ever, revert through reincarnation to lower physical form unless they choose to learn specific lessons that emphasize the incomparable value of human incarnation. Such reversions take place only very occasionally and only temporarily. Reincarnation is the natural process through which the soul moves from one world to another on the journey back to Spirit (according to the laws of magnetism). Reincarnation from physical to astral bodies, and back again, takes place for the individual soul as many times as necessary and/or desired. Each incarnation marks the completion of some specific goal of the soul in the physical or astral world, a process that will eventually and inevitably lead to the attainment of Self-realization and Union with Spirit (Yoga).

The Law of Karma Karma represents the law of cause and effect, action and reaction, sowing and reaping. Derived from the law of magnetism that created the physical realms, karma draws all souls back to the physical world while directing all action in the social world. Karma is the fruit of one’s actions. It is Newton’s third law of motion applied to

the social world: For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction; for every thought, word, and deed there will be, in the future, an equal and opposite reaction. Karma and reincarnation represent corollary principles. The Encyclopedia of Religion defines karma as follows: Action, action-influence, deed. It is the dynamic manifestation of mental and physical energy in deeds, speech or thought, inevitably producing the good, evil or neutral effect, either immediately or in the future, according as the action is good, evil, or indifferent. The effect itself becomes the cause of further effect, making the self, in the case of an individual, a process of unceasing transformation from one life to another in the wheel of transmigration, and the world, in the case of the universe, a process of perpetual becoming. (Ferm 1945:119)

To receive the effects of one’s past actions, one must live long enough, perhaps through several lifetimes. And while living in the three vibratory worlds, souls forget their true identity as one with Spirit. Immersed in maya, or delusion, people develop desires that create more karma and thereby keep the cycles of reincarnation active until, through scientific techniques of meditation, the souls are freed from all desires except the desire to return to God. Some view karma as a cosmic bank account, with a plus or minus balance, all created by one’s own doing. Wherever one is in life, it is the result of one’s own thoughts, words, and deeds, both positive and negative—whatever actions the individual put into the vibratory ether. The law of karma is the program whereby human beings reap what they sow and thereby get exactly what they deserve. Some of this is considered good karma, but much of it is experienced as bad karma, hence the statement offered by many reincarnationists, “I don’t like karma.” How karma works depends upon individuals and their willingness to learn from their karmic situations, overcome the obstacles that karma brings, and eventually choose to do the right thing with the right attitude, thereby establishing either good or no karma for the future. As the Bhagavad Gita states, the goal is to act without concern for the fruits of action, without karma-creating attachment. One should perform an action only because it is the right thing to do; action performed for the fruits it produces (the results of action) represents attachment to things of this world and thereby creates more unfulfilled material desires that force the soul to reincarnate again and again. Statements such as “What goes around comes around,” “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,” and “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you” are all references to the law of karma, God’s Divine Law of Justice.

Scientific Techniques of Meditation Because believers in reincarnation understand this karmic process, they are highly motivated to take responsibility for their own actions, to change their behavior, and to do always what is right. According to the law of

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reincarnation, individuals have as many opportunities as necessary to succeed, to regain their true status as Sons of God. By acting only on the thought of pleasing God, the soul finds liberation from karmic desires and is thus released from the cycle of reincarnation. The way to achieve this goal is to employ scientific techniques of meditation. As one successful adherent notes: When you act for God, you are identified with Him. . . . Do the best you can and be not overly concerned with results. Leave the fruits in God’s hands. If you are doing your best, your actions are bound to produce good fruit. . . . Only God exists and every one of us is only His expression. Let us always be honest, sincere, truthful, humble expressions. Let us be sweet, fragrant, understanding, willing, devoted, dedicated, intelligent, serviceful expressions of God. That covers everything—but it is a big order, isn’t it? . . . The more you meditate and become anchored in the consciousness of God, the less importance you will give to externals. . . . As you go on practicing, those moments of utter stillness become longer. (Daya Mata 1990:69–75)9

By contacting God in the stillness of meditation, one becomes more truly the soul expression of God, moving progressively closer to final liberation, at which point all remaining karma is burned up, the cycle of reincarnation is completed, and, through the law of magnetism (the force of attraction), the individual returns to Spirit, from whence she or he came. Self-realization, through successful meditation, brings final liberation from the laws of reincarnation and karma in all spheres of creation. The members of the Self-Realization Fellowship whom I interviewed explained that Kriya Yoga meditation is the scientific way—the fastest, surest, and most tested path—to realize that the soul is made in the image of God and already one with Spirit. Scientific meditation on God is a practice that requires control of the physical body and mind. Kriya Yoga meditation is the science of life-force control, and its techniques produce observable, measurable, and replicable effects on human beings. Results of Kriya Yoga meditation include the freedom to choose right action with the right attitude that leads to happiness, security, and satisfaction. Observable effects of the successful practice of Kriya Yoga include breathlessness and unblinking eyes, accompanied by feelings of peace, love, calmness, expansion, joy, bliss, and ecstasy, along with visions of light and experiences of nonphysical sound (i.e., the Aum vibration). One monk explained: To operate God’s laws, the key to the meditation part is Kriya, because as we begin to practice Kriya Yoga we begin to feel the internal operation of the law of magnetism and we begin to feel those forces inwardly that we are learning about outwardly. You feel it in your spine and in your whole body. . . . You feel the whole power of it operating inside you.

For example, through the practice of Kriya Yoga, the Kriyaban learns to interiorize his or her consciousness so that he or she can, at will, shut out the distracting delusory messages brought by the senses and instead concentrate the consciousness directly and solely on the vibration of God in creation (on the Word or Aum). The successful Kriyaban eventually experiences a state of complete and ultimate “breathless” stillness in which the presence of God as Bliss can be felt (i.e., a state of conscious Ecstasy). This personal experience of the presence of God within is the purpose of Yoga meditation (Yoga meaning union with God). As one interviewee said: Actually, the soul is the presence of God within you. What you want to do in meditation is try to uncover that state of consciousness. That’s why you sit there, and the more you sit there, then the worldly consciousness begins to erode and the soul consciousness comes to the fore. That’s why Yogis meditate for years to get to that point. At times, without great faith, it seems useless for you sitting with your eyes closed. Sooner or later, that darkness and that restlessness starts to dissipate and other things come into view. It takes a long time.

The highest states of consciousness for the Yogi, where the soul is able to experience oneness with God, are called samadhi. These states of Yogic samadhi correlate with the Christian state of Ecstasy, the Buddhist state of Nirvana, and the general state of consciousness referred to as Enlightenment. The universal characteristics of all these states are unending Joy, Light, and Bliss Consciousness. To bring the advanced scientific techniques of the ancient Kriya Yoga tradition to the West was the specific mission of Paramahansa Yogananda, who was sent as the representative of his sacred lineage of Self-realized Masters. Students may receive these techniques, with Yogananda’s blessings, directly through the organization he founded, the Self-Realization Fellowship.

WHO AM I IN THE SYSTEM? Paramahansa Yogananda ([1929] 1981) concludes his poem Samadhi with these words: “A tiny bubble of laughter, I Am become the sea of mirth itself.” The meaning of such Soul-identity, as many SRF followers have learned, is complex. Until human beings realize themselves as Soul, they go through innumerable life experiences or lessons that eventually bring them to their knees before the Divine Presence. However, during this process, those who believe in reincarnation have a framework that provides them with the satisfaction and comfort they seek to identify who they are. For example, the monks of the Self-Realization Fellowship Monastic Order provide fascinating accounts of their personal experiences “on the path” to their own

9. Sri Daya Mata has been president of Self-Realization Fellowship since 1955. The utter stillness she refers to in the practice of Kriya Yoga scientific meditation techniques is that cited in the Bible: “Be still and know that I am God” (Psalms 46:10).

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long-awaited soul liberation. One monk, Brother T, related in an interview: [Some years before I entered the monastic order in the 1970s], I was trying to approach an understanding of life and death and couldn’t accept the premise that there was nothing after life; that all there is is what you get and after that there’s a void, nothing. I also couldn’t accept any belief unless it was part of a total worldview. And I know after taking that [college] class I realized I wanted a belief and worldview that would leave no questions unanswered. That would answer everything and everything had to fit. So I went shopping around and I became depressed. . . . All of a sudden, I started going into moods. Horrendous moods. I used to be carefree and free about life and not caring very much and very irresponsible. When I started approaching the subjects of life and death and realized how important it was and I wasn’t getting answers, I started every now and then slipping into a “blue funk,” . . . being so depressed. It was amazing because I would slip out of it and go back to my normal state and your consciousness would make excuses and you’d go back to having a good time and all of a sudden you’d get this funny feeling like things just aren’t right . . . and sink down again and boy, you’d just hit the bottom. . . . After I got in the ashram, I looked back objectively on what I had gone through and couldn’t believe that I was able to make it. . . . [There have been] so many forces to keep me involved [in worldly attachments]. I had somehow, . . . suffered through it. After the ashram, I looked back and couldn’t believe how I was able to . . . hang on. . . . I saw clearly that my seeming indifference in the world was actually a raft that took me across all these involvements and relationships and everything to get into the ashram. . . . I don’t have to doubt now . . . I know that when I’m talking to people and doing counseling as a monastic, I have a sense of understanding of what people are going through. I know the attachments and the process of breaking the attachments. . . . I’m fortunate . . . I know very specifically what I decided and why, and what the results were and why I came to those conclusions and there is a very powerful current of feeling behind that to back it up. . . . The logic, the reason, and the feeling going in the same direction. And I’ve made sure those forces continue to go in the same direction.

Another monk, Brother J, noted: I’m more myself. I’m more natural, more concerned. I feel more for others. I still see the injustices, but I know why they are there. I still feel the pain, but I understand the reasons behind it, the social reasons. I’m not saying the law of karma [should keep people from trying]. People [should] also try to help them[selves and others] and free themselves from the pain [in] which social conditions exist. So [I] don’t just observe them from a detached standpoint. I will also participate to help them because it makes more sense now. I know now why they are here and why they need help if they can accept it. . . . When I took the brother vow [in the 1960s], . . . it is written as part of the vow: “[From now on] your only goal in life is to become Self-realized.” That’s it. And a second [goal], very closely, [is] to help others to obtain their own realization. For me, [there is] nothing bigger [and truer] than that. . . .

I share what I found . . . because it leads you to what I have. It leads me, so it should lead you. . . . Things come up [sometimes] and make you lose that Joy. But you know it is still there and you know it comes and goes. And when you know the ups and downs, you become more mature, you know what I mean? A person matures with age. Similarly, spiritually, you grow more mature on the spiritual path. So nothing shocks you [or disturbs you]. You understand. Everything’s okay. You know where you are, where you are going. Everything makes sense. There’s nothing to worry about. So you grow more in that state of consciousness [and Joy comes by itself].

Brother B made the following observation: Having finally overcome bouts of sadness and doubts, I never felt sad, even though I had difficulties. . . . You see, when you feel the bliss, you see the problem and then you work at it. In other words, the sadness comes when we allow the problem, the trouble, whatever anyone says, to enter our being. But if you keep it at a distance, keep it right there, you are not affected. You see, I used to practice in the early days [the 1940s and 50s], . . . being in a plastic cylinder, a Lucite cylinder. I could see out and others could see me. But, anything negative hit the cylinder and fell to the floor. I did not allow it to penetrate me or disturb me. So I practiced that and that helped to avoid being hurt by any negative remark or situation. . . . I don’t feel anything but what I feel inside, bliss. I don’t let [other people’s] problems penetrate me. I know what the problems are. I give them the advice they need and that’s all. And I pray for them of course, [but] I don’t allow it to penetrate me. . . . They usually say [they feel my love] and they feel so much better in every way. I don’t try to [express love] or anything. That’s up to God. I talk to them. And yes, sure, what I feel [the bliss] of course, has to come out. . . . I’m just the instrument [of God].

Past Lives For people who desire to learn of their past lives, there are methods of investigation, such as intuition, meditation, hypnosis, and psychic readings. Yogananda ([1975] 1990) always cautions against paying too much attention to past lives, however, hinting that if God wanted us to know what we did before, He would make it easier for us to find out. Moreover, a great deal of pain can be associated with our past lives (as with our present lives), which suggests it may be preferable not to remember. Yogananda also points out that although many people might like to fantasize about their “glorious” pasts as famous historical figures, most people previously experienced ordinary and perhaps ignoble lives, immersed in the darkness of the lower age (the Kali Yuga) that immediately preceded the age in which they now exist. Yogananda cautions particularly strongly against using any form of hypnotism to learn about past lives, owing to the danger an individual faces in allowing someone else to control his or her conscious mind. In scientific meditation, which is central to soul liberation, the person must always consciously maintain the highest level of awareness, never relinquishing control of his or her mind to someone else.

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Nevertheless, one male interviewee related how he had attempted to confirm the truth of reincarnation through hypnosis with a trusted colleague when they were new to the SRF in the early 1950s. Eventually this effort proved to be beneficial, but the pain this man experienced was considerable, as he relived a particularly violent death on a Viking ship during the Middle Ages. He was convinced, however, by this and other firsthand subjective experiences under hypnosis, that reincarnation is real, and he felt this knowledge was worth the effort and the pain he had to go through: I talked with my friend. I said, the only way I can feel happy about the tapes of some regressions is to test it myself. They’re fantastic. People speaking in foreign languages and stuff, but it still bothers me . . . because I don’t know those people. Maybe they’re making it up. Maybe the hypnotist is giving the suggestions to say those things. I’m not completely happy with this. The only way I can be satisfied that this is genuine would be if I could play both those roles. If I could hypnotize people and get these things where I know there’s no monkey business. . . . So my friend had me under hypnosis and he started jumping me ahead then about every 5 years. He’d hit an event and then go forward. Everything was going fine until one time we were in a sea battle with another Viking boat and I was fighting and had my leg cut off. . . . It bled a lot, obviously. Then they took the sword and heated it and cauterized the wound to stop the blood flow because I lost so much blood. But I died about a day later and they dumped me overboard. But the fascinating thing was when that happened, I was living it. . . . Did I feel the pain? I screamed at the top of my lungs. AHHHHHH! Then I went into shock. Can you imagine my friend? The first time he was successful with the regression, I’m dying on him. For a while he was a little panicky. . . . Then . . . , fortunately, he had enough common sense to know what to do. He moved me ahead another 5 years. . . . Well, I was up in the astral, of course. So, everything was cool up there.

Although curious about their past lives, these men, who were scientists by profession, were interested primarily in validating the reality of reincarnation. Because many SRF teachings assume the laws of reincarnation and karma, they felt a personal need to verify the reality of the laws with their own experiments.

MEANING OF REINCARNATION IN DAILY LIFE AND DEATH How one finds the purpose of one’s current incarnation, the effects reincarnation has on one’s life, how one’s present life will affect the future, and the importance of reincarnation as a part of one’s worldview—all of these are critical

issues for the individual “seeker.” To document the meaning of reincarnation from the believer’s point of view, I employed the folk model methodology.10 My purpose was to analyze the interview data to determine the effects of a deep belief in reincarnation on individuals’ daily lives as they conducted the normal activities of raising children, engaging in personal relationships (including marriage and divorce), working to support their families, and managing everyday responsibilities. In the following subsections I address several of these issues, describing how people who believe in the laws of reincarnation and karma conduct their daily living and experience dying. My intention was to interview “ordinary” members of the SRF who had practiced Kriya Yoga meditation techniques for at least 10 years, because I knew that such members would necessarily believe deeply in reincarnation and yet not necessarily represent any official position of the organization. My purpose was to assess the meaning of the reincarnationist perspective in the everyday lives of ordinary people. Those interviewed represent a cross section of the mainstream American population: male and female; young and old; Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish; lower-, middle-, and upper-class status; levels of education ranging from high school graduate to professional and graduate degrees; immigrants and individuals who can trace their families on American soil back to the Revolutionary War; artists, musicians, carpenters, teachers, architects, doctors, CEOs, and surfers. Although the SRF membership includes significant percentages of blacks, Asians, and homosexuals, all of the members with whom I conducted in-depth interviewees are white and heterosexual.

Child Rearing Reincarnationists believe that the soul has experienced many lives. When the soul is drawn to rebirth in the physical world, it chooses a specific time, place, gender, and family depending on the lessons desired or needed. The child born is thus on a specific course, with obstacles or karma to deal with. Parents are equally responsible for guiding and training their children by providing love, care, and discipline as well as by demonstrating appropriate moral and spiritual behavior. For the study interviewees, children represent a priority, with the parents serving as God’s channel. Life is an educational experience, children are souls, and the highest role of parents is to teach children about God and assist them in developing spiritual consciousness. Because parents and their children are drawn together, children and parents alike receive appropriate training in partaking of the karmic lessons of life. Of course, as children bring with

10. Bennetta Jules-Rosette and I developed the powerful comparative methodology we call the folk model based on Hugh Mehan’s work on constitutive theory and the politics of representation and Roy D’Andrade’s work on the folk model of the mind. See Jules-Rosette (1978), Mehan (1986), D’Andrade (1984), and Dillon (1989).

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them the seeds of “good” and “bad” tendencies that distract them from the purity of soul expression, the parents’ role is to assist in the achievement of the child’s spiritual goal. As one parent indicated, “A father is not a judge or a disciplinarian; karma and reincarnation will take care of that. It is the parents’ duty to teach reality—karma, the law of cause and effect—because life will do this eventually, but with much less mercy.” Regarding the behavior of parents toward their children, another interviewee stated: Be a friend. Don’t scold or accuse, or get angry and holler. Be interested. Talk calmly and lovingly with your arms around [your children] and assume they want to do the right thing. The parents’ attitude is the most important. Don’t blame or scold. You have to save the person’s face.

Relationships For believers in reincarnation, all human relationships are formed on a spiritual basis; each is a relationship between souls, and these are between equals, eternal, and eventually find fulfillment in merging with Spirit. Current friends were happy together in past lives; current enemies were enemies in the past. Social situations are designed for the individual’s spiritual progress. For this reason, friends and enemies find themselves together again until all karmic binds are resolved and relationships are ended in harmony. Differences in social situations are based on karma and provide the infinite variety of relationships, cultures, and lifestyles needed and desired by all souls involved. Friendship is the foundation for spiritual relationships; the highest friendship is between spiritual master and disciple. According to this worldview, each world of vibration is fundamentally social, meaning that people (reincarnated souls) are always and by necessity in relationship (in community) with other reincarnated souls, from this life and past lives, in this and other worlds. Within each social sphere, people act in different roles and for various purposes, always moving toward or away from the spiritual goal of eventual liberation. Until all souls have achieved final liberation, there will be social worlds in which people can evolve and develop spiritually, through relationships with others. The underlying essence of all relationships is spiritual, manifesting only on the surface as physical, emotional, psychological, sexual, economic, political, or social. All relationships are important to pursue. Karma guarantees that as one treats others, so one will be treated. It is prudent, therefore, to use one’s power wisely lest that same power be used against oneself. The law of karma also guarantees that by promoting love, peace, harmony, and kindness, one can guarantee the same in return. Because the nature of the physical world is duality, souls, which are as One, are temporarily distinct and differentiated in social relationships. When souls reincarnate in the physical world, outward differences are apparent and

particular roles are circumscribed. Social circumstances vary depending on the needs and desires that draw the souls to reincarnate. Hence the varieties of people, things, places, cultures, lifestyles, forms of government, and relationships that exist represent distinctions that people either favor or disfavor.

Death For reincarnationists, death is not an end, nor is it destruction. Death is a very important moment that signals a new role for the everlasting soul. Death represents an intermediate state prior to another reincarnation. One’s experience at death depends on one’s state of consciousness at the time of death. Thus death is simply another phase of life in which the individual changes from one form of existence to the next in order to work out karma. Therefore, there is no “death” at all, only the evolution of the soul, Life. The SRF members I interviewed expressed the belief that at the event called death, the soul withdraws from the physical body and is born into a body of light, the astral world of light. The soul remains in the astral world until desires draw the soul back for another incarnation into a physical body. In the astral world, individuals work as they did on earth; they meditate, serve, sleep, work, and travel with the same goal of assessing their lives and determining how to continue to learn “lessons” according to their karmic desires and purposes. The soul also works out karma on the astral plane and thus can be very active, including spiritually active, seeking God and serving His work. For most people, however, the astral world provides a time of rest and even deep sleep. In this state, the soul is not particularly aware or conscious of itself (comparable to the lives of most spiritually unadvanced people currently on the physical planet), until, as one interviewee stated, “some little desire you didn’t satisfy draws you back right away.” Desires that bring people back may be as minor as an addict’s desire for a cigarette or a drug, for which the individual needs the physical, material world for satisfaction. The soul is then drawn to parents and to the environment that best serves these needs and desires. Thus, as one man put it, “we are building our next life right now.” All is a continuum, and karma is the law that ensures that the soul evolves according to desires and choices made in the past and present. However, it is willpower, in spite of karma, that allows for soul freedom. In this view, the soul is architect of its own destiny and can change things at any moment by exercising willpower with determination and attunement with God’s will. For advanced souls, death is joyous and something to look forward to. For others, there may be regrets or trepidations about their ability to let go of limitations completely. For all, however, death is actually life, and for most people life will continue in much the same way it has in the past, with another (or many other) rebirth(s) in the physical world.

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A person’s consciousness at the moment of death determines the future life of the soul. This means that whatever state of consciousness one is in at the moment of death continues into the soul’s experience in the next world. Those thoughts, or state of consciousness, at death also determine where in the astral world the soul will be born. The astral world, like the physical and the causal worlds, has many planets (or “mansions”; see Cox 1988). To which of these the individual will traverse is dependent on the level of consciousness at the time of death, as well as the individual’s karma. Parts of the astral world of light are permeated with bliss and calm, filled with love and joy experienced among people who remember one another. Other parts are darker (in lesser light), with less desirable experiences that are sometimes referred to as hell. For most, the soul is happier in the astral world than it was in the physical world. Individuals existing on the darker planets experience sleep, torment by their own negative states of consciousness, unhappiness, or unawareness, depending on how they lived their lives in the physical world. In turn, the manner is which one lives one’s present life often determines one’s state of consciousness or thoughts at the time of death. This is because an individual’s consciousness does not change at death; no one is made into an angel just by dying. (Angels, and saints, are made in this life on earth through conscious effort at realization of the Self as soul.) Thus the ability to hold on to the thought of God at the moment of death is important for the next life of the soul. This ability is cultivated and secured through the longtime habit of meditation, which prepares one for a high spiritual consciousness at the time of death. For these reasons, those who believe in reincarnation engage in what some observers may see as extraordinary spiritual effort. One interviewee described death as “a graduation day,” noting that even though you have passed, it is also a reminder to get busy and stay busy. If you graduate, you will reincarnate into a more spiritual environment earlier in the next life, such as being drawn to parents who meditate. The goal for people who expect to return again to the physical world is to return to a better environment, where they hope for peace, less violence, greater joy, less tragedy, more success, less discouragement, good habits, and less temptation; they also hope to serve as better examples than they have in their present lives. They aspire to learn spiritual principles, to learn to meditate, and to “find” God sooner in their next lives. For those I interviewed, the fear of death does not exist. Rather, they expressed an acceptance of death, including the death of loved ones. Not denying their own sadness and loneliness at loss, these people spoke of letting go of others, of lovingly allowing them to move on. One mother stated she and her husband hope to assist their children to live without the fear of death. If they succeed, these parents believe, their children will have a much greater chance to be happy. If they do not succeed, the kids may be miserable and attached to their bodies, which will require them

to reincarnate again and again. One nun remembered the death of her father: I cried and cried. My father had cancer which spread to his lungs. I had to accept it. I prayed and supported him on the phone and I was able to visit him. Then he died a couple years later. My mother waited [and then died]. There was a great joyous feeling of upliftment and joy. I cried and went to [my spiritual mentor] for comfort. She said, “Now he knows there’s a loving God.” I was ill and couldn’t go to the funeral, but I talk to them and they get these feelings. I want them to be happy. They were good people.

Another interviewee talked about when her mother passed away: I was emotional. The phone rang and I burst into tears. She had been ill. My only thought was to be with Dad. I didn’t even think of Mother. I went home and did the arrangements. I was actually happy; I was the only one. I stayed with Dad a month. The neighbors were so loving and my sister was so sad—she had regrets. I knew where my mother was. I cried out of sentiment, not sadness.

For reincarnationists, the purpose of death is the evolution of the soul; it is an opportunity to broaden the individual. To understand the importance of death is to understand life in the world of duality: Life is sweet and death a dream. In reality, neither actually exists. Only God is, and God is Bliss Consciousness. In Autobiography of a Yogi ([1946] 1994), Yogananda writes about his posthumous encounter with his revered spiritual master, Sri Yukteswar. In this intense and loving dialogue, Yogananda learned some extraordinary details about the astral and causal worlds, in which Sri Yukteswar was now playing an integral role: The earth-liberated astral being meets a multitude of relatives, fathers, mothers, wives, husbands, and friends, acquired during different incarnations on earth, as they appear from time to time in various parts of the astral realms. He is therefore at a loss to understand whom to love especially; he learns in this way to give a divine and equal love to all, as children and individualized expressions of God. . . . The span of life in the astral world is much longer than on earth. A normal advanced astral being’s average life period is from five hundred to one thousand years, measured in accordance with earthly standards of time. . . . The astral world is free from unwilling death, disease, and old age. These three dreads are the curse of earth, where man has allowed his consciousness to identify itself almost wholly with a frail physical body requiring constant aid from air, food, and sleep in order to exist at all. Physical death is attended by the disappearance of breath and the disintegration of fleshly cells. Astral death consists of the dispersement of lifetrons, those manifest units of energy which constitute the life of astral beings. At physical death a being loses his consciousness of flesh and becomes aware of his subtle body in the astral world. Experiencing astral death in due time, a being thus passes from the consciousness of

Reincarnation: The Technology of Death– • –75 astral birth and death to that of physical birth and death. These recurrent cycles of astral and physical encasement are the ineluctable destiny of all unenlightened beings. Scriptural definitions of heaven and hell sometimes stir man’s deeperthan-subconscious memories of his long series of experiences in the blithesome astral and disappointing terrestrial worlds. . . . Man as an individualized soul is essentially causal-bodied. (P. 407)11

A Universal Theodicy For most people, the fear of death can be more terrifying than the experience of dying itself. Because death is a universal human condition, all religious philosophies and theologies include some version of a theodicy—that part of the doctrine that explains, for better or for worse, the ultimate questions of suffering and dying. According to sociologist Peter Berger (1969), a theodicy is religion’s attempt to make a pact with death: The world of sacred order, by virtue of being an ongoing human production, is ongoingly confronted with the disordering forces of human existence in time (i.e. suffering, evil, chaos, and death). . . . Therefore every human society is, in the last resort, men banded together in the face of death. The power of religion depends in the last resort upon the credibility of the banners it puts in the hands of men as they stand before death or, more accurately, as they walk, inevitably, toward it. (P. 51; emphasis added)

Both Berger and Max Weber (1978) categorize the various theodicies proffered by the religions of the world. Berger (1969) does so in terms of their degree of rationality, or, in his words, “the degree to which they entail a theory that coherently and consistently explains the phenomena in question in terms of an overall view of the universe” (p. 54). Weber (1978:519–22) categorizes theodicies based on how believers psychologically relate to death in the physical world: 1. Justice will eventually prevail in the world. 2. Never mind, it will be better in heaven. 3. Retribution in this world or another is exact and inevitable. 4. Try to mollify God and improve one’s chances through good works.

theodicies are those systems that include the concepts of karma and reincarnation. Of retribution, for example, Weber (1978) states: The most complete formal solution of the problem of theodicy is the special achievement of the Indian doctrine of karma, the so-called belief in the transmigration of souls. This world is viewed as a completely connected and self-contained cosmos of ethical retribution. Guilt and merit within this world are unfailingly compensated by fate in the successive lives of the soul, which may be reincarnated innumerable times. . . . Each individual forgets his own destiny exclusively and in the strictest sense of the word. This thirst for life is the ineradicable basis of individuation and creates life and rebirth as long as it exists. Strictly speaking, there is no sin, but only offenses against one’s own clear interest in escaping from this endless wheel, or at least in not exposing oneself to a rebirth under even more painful circumstance. The meaning of ethical behavior may then lie . . . in improving one’s chances in his next incarnation or—if the senseless struggle for mere existence is ever to be ended—in the elimination of rebirth as such. (Pp. 524–25)

One of the most significant implications of the reincarnationist worldview is, thus, the rather substantial and comprehensive banner it provides in the face of death (Eliade 1954). For example, the reincarnationist theodicy that explains suffering, evil, and death is proven to be extraordinarily satisfying for those who believe it, especially in their greatest time of need, such as when a loved one dies. Believers describe feelings of love, connectedness, and joy, whereas nonbelievers experience sadness, regret, and fear. Reincarnationists also describe feelings of psychological peace and assurance in the idea that they, and all others, will attain liberation (salvation) of the soul from further incarnations, constituting a particularly significant personal religious experience (James [1902] 1961). These people know they are already liberated, if they would but realize it. They know that eventually all souls will be called back to Spirit. Until then, people will reincarnate over and over, according to their attachment to karmic desires, until they “learn” all the lessons their souls have chosen for them, and until they finally find God by realizing the Self within.

CONCLUSION

5. Judgment Day will take care of everyone once and for all.

Noteworthy for this discussion is that both theorists argue that the most rational, convincing, and comprehensive

Reincarnationists hold a worldview that offers legitimation for certainty, surrender, acceptance, detachment, and joy when they are faced with the inevitable experiences of

11. Note that Yogananda also provided a dramatic demonstration of the incorruptibility of life by death in his own passing in 1952. According to a notarized statement by the mortuary director at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Los Angeles: “The absence of any visual signs of decay in the dead body of Paramahansa Yogananda offers the most extraordinary case in our experience. . . . No physical disintegration was visible in his body even twenty days after death. . . . Our astonishment increased as day followed day without bringing any visible change in the body under observation. Yogananda’s body was apparently in a phenomenal state of immutability. . . . The physical appearance of Yogananda on March 27th, just before the bronze cover of the casket was put into position, was the same as it had been on March 7th. He looked on March 27th as fresh and as unravaged by decay as he had looked on the night of his death” (quoted in Yogananda [1946] 1994:478).

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chaos in life, including so-called death. In a practical sense, implications of the reincarnation theodicy also mean that those who believe in reincarnation are less likely than others to support the traditional Western death industry (which includes hospitals, doctors, priests, funeral directors, grief counselors, cemetery monuments, hospice, and drugs). As the transformation of knowledge to include a reincarnationist worldview takes place in the Western world, Western institutions will begin to reflect a newly defined spiritual context, one that is structurally based on a knowledge of the scientific laws of reincarnation and karma. Knowledge systems, whether classified as scientific, religious, or social, ultimately rest on belief—belief in “sacred” texts, teachers, and experience. Given the substantial literature on the transformation of knowledge, particularly the work of Kenneth Gergen (1982), Michael Polanyi (1958), and Thomas Kuhn (1962), the task for Western society becomes the restructuring of human institutions so that they befit reincarnated souls, rather than simply physical beings or even saved souls who transcend to heaven and those unsaved souls who, forever, descend to hell. Indeed, by redefining universal human experiences such as death, afterlife, and evolution, the emergent reincarnationist worldview may lead to a new paradigm, a spiritual humanism that represents a historical point of convergence between the currently opposed and dominant salvationist (one-life, one-afterlife) and secular-humanist (one-life, no-afterlife) perspectives in Western culture, science, and religion.

REFERENCES Berger, Peter L. 1969. The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion. Garden City, NY: Doubleday. Cox, Harvey. 1988. Many Mansions: A Christian’s Encounter With Other Faiths. Boston: Beacon. Cranston, Sylvia and Joseph Head. 1993. Reincarnation: A New Horizon in Science, Religion and Society. Wheaton, IL Theosophical Publishing House. D’Andrade, Roy G. 1984. “Cultural Meaning Systems.” In Culture Theory: Essays on Mind, Self and Emotion, edited by Richard A. Shweder and Robert A. LeVine. New York: Cambridge University Press. Dass, Ram. 1970. The Only Dance There Is. Garden City, NY: Anchor. Daya Mata, Sri. 1990. Finding the Joy Within. Los Angeles: Self-Realization Fellowship. Dillon, Jane. 1989. “A Folk Model of Life and Death for the Self-Realization Fellowship.” Presented at the annual meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, Salt Lake City, UT. ———. 1991. “Reincarnation and the Council of Constantinople: A Study of Early Christian Belief.” Presented at the annual meeting of the Pacific Sociological Association. ———. 1998. “The Social Significance of a Western Belief in Reincarnation.” Ph.D. dissertation, Department of

Sociology, University of California, San Diego. Available from UMI Dissertation Services, Ann Arbor, MI. Eliade, Mircea. 1954. Cosmos and History: The Myth of the Eternal Return. New York: Harper. Ferm, Vigilius, ed. 1945. The Encyclopedia of Religion. Secaucus, NJ: Poplar. Feurerstein, George. 1989. Yoga: The Technology of Ecstasy. Los Angeles: J. P. Tarcher. Gergen, Kenneth J. 1982. Toward Transformation in Social Knowledge. London: Sage. Head, Joseph and Sylvia Cranston, eds. 1961. Reincarnation: An East-West Anthology. Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House. ———, eds. 1967. Reincarnation in World Thought. Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House. ———. 1977. Reincarnation: The Phoenix Fire Mystery. New York: Julian. Isherwood, Christopher, ed. 1962. Vedanta for Modern Man. New York: Collier. James, William. [1902] 1961. The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature. New York: Penguin. Jules-Rosette, Bennetta. 1978. “The Politics of Paradigms: Constructing Theories of Consciousness and Society.” Human Studies 1:92–110. Kuhn, Thomas. 1962. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Leviton, Richard. 1993. “Celebrating 100 Years of Yoga in America.” Yoga Journal, May/June. MacGregor, Geddes. 1982. Reincarnation: A Christian Hope. Totowa, NJ: Barnes & Noble. Mehan, Hugh B. 1986. “Oracular Reasoning in a Psychiatric Exam: The Resolution of Conflict in Language.” In Conflict Talk: Sociolinguistic Investigations of Arguments in Conversation, edited by Allen D. Grimshaw. New York: Cambridge University Press. Moody, Raymond A. 1975. Life After Life: The Investigation of a Phenomenon—Survival of Bodily Death. New York: Bantam. Polanyi, Michael. 1958. Personal Knowledge: Toward a PostCritical Philosophy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ———. 1966. The Tacit Dimension. Garden City, NY: Anchor. Savage, Philip. 1999. Journey Into the Absolute Elsewhere. Encinitas, CA: Unit. Stevensen, Ian. 1974. Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press. Weber, Max. 1978. Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology, 2 vols., edited by Gunther Roth and Claus Wittich. Berkeley: University of California Press. Worthington, Vivian. 1982. A History of Yoga. London: Penguin. Yogananda, Paramahansa. [1929] 1981. Whispers From Eternity. Los Angeles: Self-Realization Fellowship. ———. [1975] 1990. Man’s Eternal Quest. Los Angeles: SelfRealization Fellowship. ———. [1946] 1994. Autobiography of a Yogi. Los Angeles: Self-Realization Fellowship. ———. 1995. God Talks With Arjuna: The Bhagavad Gita, Royal Science of God-Realization (The Immortal Dialogue Between Soul and Spirit: A New Translation and Commentary), 2 vols. Los Angeles: Self-Realization Fellowship. Yukteswar, Swami Sri. [1894] 1977. Kaivalya Darsanam: The Holy Science. Los Angeles: Self-Realization Fellowship.

HOSTS AND GHOSTS The Dead as Visitors in Cross-Cultural Perspective

CLIFTON D. BRYANT

ll societies must confront the problems of death. The immediate and practical problems that death poses include the physical processing of the dead and the social processing of the death (grief, bereavement, and so on). The secondary problems are related to anxiety about death itself, which affects the members of the society, and to the need for an appropriate relationship between the living and the dead. In this connection, all societies project onto the dead some degree of animation. Furthermore, just as there is a social covenant among the living, there is a covenant between the living and the dead. As John Honigmann (1959), an anthropologist, notes: Also the remembered dead might be included within a society’s limits. Living members credit the dead with ideas, poetry, and paintings. Among the deceased are the sources of inherited debts and the men who built the irrigation ditches or cleared the fields from which people still prosper. Communities that intercede with ancestors for health, rain, and prosperity strikingly show their awareness of the common interests that unite living and dead. (P. 23)

In maintaining relationships between the living and the dead, societies tend to apply one of two different socially constructed premises: They may elect to consider the dead as totally separated from the living and keep the dead alive only in a symbolic fashion, or they may consider the dead to be only substantively separated from the living and keep them alive in a literal sense.

deceased persons, as well as through preservation of the artistic efforts of the deceased, such as music, artworks, and movies. Americans also keep the dead alive symbolically through elaborate socially contrived communication systems, or “death messages” (Bryant 1976), and community-level ceremonial behavior involving the dead (Warner 1959). Among those societies that elect to conceptualize the dead as being only substantively separated from the living and work to keep the dead alive in a literal sense (at least for short periods of time) are Mexico and China. In these two societies, not only do the living sometimes keep the dead alive literally, but the dead also periodically visit the living. Many societies around the world, both today and in the past, have traditions of entertaining visits from the dead from time to time. For example, during the ancient Celtic (Irish, Scottish, Welsh) festival of Samhair (celebrated on November 1 and the progenitor of modern-day Halloween), the souls of those who had died during the preceding year returned briefly to the land of the living (Brandes 1998a:370–71), and during the annual festival of bon (Festival of the Dead) in today’s Japan, the spirits of the dead also return briefly. The Mexican festival known as the Days of the Dead and the celebration of Ghost Month in Chinese culture offer particularly colorful examples of visitation by the dead; I examine these two traditions in turn below.

THE DAYS OF THE DEAD IN MEXICO THE LIVING AND THE DEAD The United States is an example of a society that culturally attempts to keep the dead alive symbolically. This is accomplished through the physical immortality of products and artifacts associated with memorializing the deceased, such as buildings or structures named for

The Mexican culture is a culture of hospitality. Visitors to the home are warmly welcomed, and the dead are as warmly welcomed as the living. The dead visit only periodically, however—only once a year, during a series of holy days known collectively as los Días de Todos Muertos, or the Days of the Dead. The Days of the Dead 77

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take place over the course of three nights and two days. Many behavioral scientists have devoted extensive investigative efforts to this religious festival (e.g., Brandes 1998a, 1998b; Green 1972; Garciagodoy 1994). The Days of the Dead begin on the night of October 31, which is known as Allhallows Eve (in the United States, this night is known as Halloween), and continues through the following two days and nights: through All Saints’ Day on November 1 and All Souls’ Day on November 2. The celebrations that take place during these days and nights are a cultural blend or amalgamation of traditional Spanish Catholic festivals, as practiced historically in many Catholic countries around the world, and rituals and beliefs from Mexico’s pre-Spanish period (Green 1972:245). Certain elements of the Days of the Dead celebrations, especially the iconographic symbols of skulls, skeletons, and other thanatological representations, are believed to derive from various pre-Spanish sources, including Aztec, Toltec, and Maya sculptures, carvings, and other death-related representations, as well as the death-related religious rituals of Mesoamerican Indians (Brandes 1998b:186, 189–94). The iconography of the Days of the Dead also has origins in early Christian art, with its “skeletal representations of death in the abstract” (Brandes 1998b:199). All Saints’ and All Souls’ Days are celebrated throughout the Roman Catholic world, including Mexico. These religious holy days have their roots in Catholic masses that originated as early as the 11th century to honor all of the saints and all of the souls in purgatory (Brandes 1998a:360). By the early 16th century, Roman Catholics in Spain and other parts of Europe had established a tradition of observing All Saints’ and All Souls’ Days by “visiting cemeteries, presenting offerings of flowers, candles, and food to deceased relatives; and soliciting or begging in ritualized form” (Brandes 1998a:362). The Days of the Dead as observed in Mexico are essentially similar to these Roman Catholic celebrations, with certain elements of Mexico’s pre-Spanish culture blended in; in recent times, some aspects of traditional U.S. Halloween celebrations have come to be included in the mix as well. The Days of the Dead are celebrated throughout most of Mexico and in parts of Central America. The most elaborate Days of the Dead festivities are generally found in the traditional Indian areas of Mexico, such as in the valley of Oaxaca and on the island of Janitzio in the state of

Michoacán (Green 1972:245). The Days of the Dead are also observed to some extent in those parts of the United States with large Latino populations, such as Southern California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. In Louisiana, which has a very large Catholic population, All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day are celebrated; in fact, All Saints’ Day is a legal holiday in that state.1 During the Days of the Dead, the living reserve their time for their dead visitors; this is a period of great religious and familial reverence, an opportunity for family members—living and dead—to rebond. It is a signal rite of intensification, and Mexican families eagerly anticipate the festival each year. All Saints’ and All Souls’ Days have historically held a place of importance in Roman Catholic celebrations almost equaling that of Christmas and Easter (Brandes 1998a:360). In Mexico, the Days of the Dead festival is one of the most important of the year, as well as one of the most expensive to celebrate. For some time in advance of the occasion, families clean and prepare their homes, acquiring and storing special foods and other materials for the celebration; this might include the purchase of all new dishes to please the deceased relatives who will come to visit (Green 1972:245). An involved sequence of events and activities occurs during these celebration days. As noted above, the rituals begin on the night of October 31, Allhallows Eve, when the family assembles in the home and makes final preparations for visits from deceased family members and more distant relatives. An altar is set up, and a variety of special foods are prepared and placed on the altar along with alcoholic beverages, tobacco, and various delicacies, such as sweets. Larger households may set up separate altars for dead children, with the alcohol and tobacco omitted but toys added to the small fruits and other foods placed there (Green 1972:245–46). Among the special foods a family is likely to prepare for this occasion are chicken dishes, chilies, fruits, moles, tamales, hot chocolate, atole (a gruel made of sweet corn), and breads, especially pan de muerto, or “bread of the dead,” a special bread prepared only for the festival that often features a cross or a winged angel molded out of white dough (Day 1990:69; Green 1972:248–49).2 Family members do not eat any of the foods placed on the altar, as these offerings are for the dead. Sometimes families spread trails of fresh marigold petals from outside the house leading into the interior and up to the altar, in order to assist the dead in finding their

1. Although All Saints’ Day is “on the books” as a legal holiday in Louisiana, state offices are not automatically closed. Instead, the governor must declare them closed, and that does not happen every year. The current governor has not closed public offices for All Saints’ Day during his tenure, but Edwin Edwards, a former governor, occasionally did so. Banks remain open on All Saints’ Day in Louisiana, as do other private businesses, for the most part, although some local shopkeepers, especially in small towns, may not open for business. Although the Catholic Church observes both All Saints’ and All Souls’ Days, neither is designated a Holy Day of Obligation, which means the faithful are not required to attend mass on these days. All Saints’ Day is set aside to recognize publicly those heroes of the church who have been officially designated saints of the church. All Souls’ Day is likewise set aside to recognize publicly those who have died in the faith and are saved but publicly unrecognized as saints. Theologically, all the saved are saints, whether or not the church declares their sainthood (Jerome J. Salomone, personal communication, October 18, 2002). 2. At one point in time, family members saved the water that was used to wash the bodies of their deceased kin before they were dressed and laid out for their funerals; at some later date, this water was mixed with flour to make pan de muerto.

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way home (Greenleigh and Beimler 1991:69). The family members prepare to stay up all night to greet their ghostly visitors. The spirits of the dead tend to be quite punctual in their arrival (in contrast to the relatively relaxed attention to time commonly encountered in Mexican culture). Promptly at 4:00 A.M. (early on All Saints’ Day), the spirits of deceased children arrive; these spirits are known as angelitos (little angels). The family members recite the names of remembered dead children and light tiny candles, one at a time, for each child (Green 1972:246). (The label of angelitos derives from Roman Catholic belief that when baptized children die without mortal sin, they do not have to pass through purgatory but instead go directly to heaven and become angels; Marino 1997:37.) The angelitos leave the home a few hours later, at 8:00 A.M., at which time the family members extinguish the tiny candles and remove them from the altar (or from children’s altar, if there is a separate one). The deceased children’s visit is over. That morning, the family attends mass at the local church (Green 1972:246). Later in the celebration, during visits to the cemetery, family members light candles and place them, along with flowers, sweets, and toys, on the graves of the dead children (Marino 1997:43). In the afternoon on November 1, All Saints’ Day, the family prepares to welcome other deceased relatives into their home. The adult spirits also arrive punctually, at 3:00 in the afternoon. The family members say the name of each deceased relative and light a candle (this time a full-sized candle) for each. The next morning at 8:00 A.M., the dead guests leave (Green 1972:246). On that morning, which is All Souls’ Day, the churches hold three masses. During the day, families visit the cemeteries where their close family members and other relatives are buried. They may put flowers and other offerings (such as lighted candles and toys) on the graves and pray. Some families may totally cover the graves of loved ones with marigold petals (Greenleigh and Beimler 1991:88). Priests may visit the cemeteries, sprinkle the graves with holy water, and say prayers for the dead (Green 1972:246). These activities go on into the evening. This is a time of family togetherness and personal closeness with the dead. Finally, on the night of All Souls’ Day, with religious commemoration completed and their responsibilities to the dead concluded, families move about the village, visiting at the homes of other families, praying at their altars and offering gifts (called muertos) of food from their own altars and receiving similar gifts of food from neighbors. Sometimes groups of men, wearing masks or costumes, may go about from house to house singing hymns of praise, known as alabanzas, for which they may receive gifts of food from the altars of the households they visit (Green 1972:246). This tradition is not unlike that of Christmas carolers going door-to-door, singing and receiving snacks in return (it also bears a resemblance to the American custom of trick-or-treating on Halloween).

Although celebrants may eat the food that has been set out on the altars or may give the food away as gifts as soon as the spirits leave, it is said that this food does not have as much taste as it might normally have, because the spirits of the deceased have eaten it. In spite of this, however, the food is eaten. Usually, families do not dismantle their home altars until November 4. Two other dates and attendant events are connected to the Days of the Dead but are not technically components of the festival. On October 27, some families hang bread and jugs of water outside their homes as offerings to those spirits who have no surviving relatives to prepare altar offerings for them. In some villages, the custom is instead to gather such offerings and place them in a corner of the village church (Greenleigh and Beimler 1991:21–22). There is also concern about the spirits of deceased individuals who died by accident, murder, or other violent means. These spirits are considered to be possibly malignant, inasmuch as they may have as-yet unpardoned souls. Offerings of food and beverages are set out for these spirits on October 28, but they are usually placed outside the home, to keep the spirits from coming inside (Greenleigh and Beimler 1991:22). Although the Days of the Dead festival serves functionally as a rite of intensification, reuniting both living and dead members of a family into a cohesive whole, at least for a short time each year, it also has the latent function of neutralizing or mediating the fear of death. For adults, the fact that the dead visit their living families each year gives promise, if not evidence, of existence beyond the grave. If the dead are able to visit, then death does not have absolute finality. Many of those who celebrate these holy days hold a very sincere belief that the spirits of the dead are genuine and do, indeed, return each year to visit. Others, perhaps those of more sophisticated religious ideology, interpret the Days of the Dead on a more symbolic level. The simple observance of these holy days and the symbolic return of the dead for a short visit each year tends to reify Christian theology and reinforces the eschatological belief in spiritual life after death and ultimate resurrection. For children, the Days of the Dead may serve to desensitize, to lessen their fear of the dead (and even of death itself). The Days of the Dead festival is a time of faith, family, and celebration. When the dead take on the form of benign visitors, it is difficult to fear them. During this time, heightened spirituality mingles with pleasurable activities and stimulating dramaturgical involvement. To outsiders, the iconography of the Days of the Dead may appear grotesque. Traditional sweet foods associated with this celebration include candies made in the shapes of skulls, skeletons, and other death-related objects. One popular delicacy is a small confection made in the shape of a coffin. Some of these candy coffins even have plastic windows in the top through which bodies with skull heads can be seen. Some are rigged with strings that, when pulled, cause the lids to open and the corpses inside to sit up. Intended as gifts for children, these various candy items

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sometimes have individuals’ names inscribed on them (Brandes 1998b:182). In addition to candy skulls and skeletons, there are a variety of Days of the Dead toys and decorations featuring death-related items and themes. These include papier-mâché skeletons, and cardboard articulated skeleton marionettes. Also popular are small figurines (not unlike the toy soldiers that are popular with children in the United States and Europe) that represent ordinary persons, but with one special characteristic—they are either skeletons or have skull faces. These calavera (skulls and skeletons) toys are made of clay and are Sugar Candy Casket to Be Given to Children as a Treat During the Days of quite fragile; they are intended Figure 1 the Dead only as amusing frivolities for the children and not as SOURCE: Clifton D. Bryant collection. enduring keepsakes. Walkup (2001) describes these toys as United States as evidence that Mexicans really are different follows: from mainstream Americans. (P. 182) Calavera toys and papier-mâché skeleton figures depict specific professions, musicians, brides and grooms, bicycle riders and other subjects from everyday life. There are rich traditions in Mexican folk art that incorporate calaveras in many ways. (P. 23)

Other types of toys and decorative items are also associated with the Days of the Dead, such as larger humorous but macabre sculptures and figurines depicting skeletal figures engaged in all sorts of activities (a skeleton riding a motorcycle, for example). The production of candy skulls and skeletons as well as other types of death-depicting, but humorous, statuary, miniature figurines, and other varieties of toys and decorative items has become something of a cottage industry in some areas of Mexico and has brought a certain notoriety to this festival. Tourists from the United States, especially, often travel to various communities in Mexico to experience especially colorful Days of the Dead celebrations. Some tour companies plan excursions in which tourists visit several different communities, even stopping at cemeteries so that the tourists can photograph the villagers lighting candles and placing offerings on the graves. The artifacts of the Days of the Dead, with their macabre iconography, have also piqued the interest of collectors. As Brandes (1998a) observes: Day[s] of the Dead figurines have awakened tourists’ interest in the holiday[s]. Among foreigners, they invariably appeal to the collectors’ instinct. They are transported back to the

Many craft artisans now produce high-quality artifacts of this variety especially for sale to tourists. Beyond the toys and sweets, during the Days of the Dead skeletons and skulls appear on signs in store windows and in newspaper ads and articles. The entire panoply of Days of the Dead iconography has been enhanced and magnified by the commercialization and growth of popular culture that now surrounds the festival. In recent years, the Days of the Dead festival, particularly in urban areas and among the middle-class population in Mexico, has experienced a significant infusion of elements and symbolism from American Halloween traditions. Some Mexican children in the cities now go about in costume on Allhallows Eve, carrying boxes or other receptacles and begging for their “Halloween” (Halloween candies or coins). Many of the decorations in urban areas are also Halloween artifacts from the United States, such as plastic jack-o’-lanterns and manufactured costumes for children’s (Brandes 1998a:372–73). These changes have not been without controversy. As Brandes (1998a) notes, “The rapid penetration of Halloween symbols into Mexico increasingly evokes Mexican nationalistic sentiments, embodied in a campaign to preserve the country from U.S. cultural imperialism” (pp. 359–60). He goes on to report that “all over Mexico today, there appears evidence of formal and informal resistance to the Halloween invasion from the North” (p. 375). In rural areas, however, the Days of the Dead festival retains a high degree of cultural purity.

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Although the seemingly macabre death-themed iconography of the Days of the Dead festival may give some outsiders the impression that the Mexican people are fixated on death or that death-oriented themes are central in Mexican culture, most authorities assert that this is not the case. “On the contrary,” Brandes (1998a) observes, “no special Mexican view of death, no uniquely morbid Mexican national character, has yielded this mortuary art. Rather, specific demographic and political circumstances originally gave rise to it, and commercial interFigure 2 Operating Room With Calavera (Skeletal) Surgical Team and Other Calavera ests have allowed it to flourish” (Skeletal) Figurines, Intended as Children’s Toys for the Days of the Dead (p. 214). Like other writers, SOURCE: Clifton D. Bryant collection. Brown (1993) characterizes the festival as “really . . . more of a celebration of life than of death” (p. C9). She goes on Christian eschatology of eternal life in another form to quote the comments of a museum curator who said: “To triumphing over death. Most important, it subjectively me, the Days of the Dead subconsciously lends itself to our keeps the dead alive, for if the dead come home to visit, times [alluding to urban violence and the AIDS epidemic]. then, indeed, death does not portend the annihilation of It gives you an opportunity to feel good about someone’s self with absolute finality. life, beyond mourning. It gives you a chance to affirm life by recognizing death” (p. C9). Walkup (2001) also contends that “los Días de los GHOST MONTH IN CHINESE CULTURE Muertos is not in any way somber, morbid, or macabre” (p. 24). She compares the celebration activities of this fesIn Chinese culture, the dead have historically been considtival with the practices of creating an impromptu memorered to be only substantively separated from the living, ial by the side of the road where a loved one has died in an and, accordingly, the dead are kept alive literally, in the automobile wreck or leaving flowers in a public place to form of ghosts.3 Actually, ghost is not the appropriate term. honor a dead celebrity, such as Princess Diana. Some writThe Chinese term guai, which translates literally as ghost, ers have even expressed a bit of envy toward Mexicans for is used to refer to a “devil” or “evil spirit.” In China, all their Days of The Dead. As Day (1990) reflects: disembodied spirits are known generically as leng or ling wun (Cantonese, as used in Hong Kong), and there are The fastidious may regard all this as grotesque. The pious may three major categories of such spirits (or souls) (Emmons call it pagan. But there is nothing barbaric about the Day[s] of 1982:30; for a detailed discussion of Chinese spirits, see the Dead in Mexico, even if one considers its terrifying Aztec Emmons 1982:chap. 3). These include deceased ancestors, ancestry. It occurs to me that we might have something to ghosts (or guai, who are the spirits of deceased persons learn from a people who have learned to be on such easy who have no relatives to worship them and care for their terms with death. (P. 72) otherworldly needs), and gods. Gods are considered to be in the same generic category as ghosts and ancestral spirIn short, for many, the Days of the Dead are life affirmits, because most of them are assumed to have once been ing, not death embracing. To celebrate in this fashion is, on mortals who lived virtuous lives and subsequently became the one hand, to confront death openly and honestly and to deities after death (not unlike saints in the Catholic be aware of its inevitability and its presence in the midst of Church; see Tong 1988). Taking into account, then, all of life. On the other hand, celebrating the Days of the Dead is the dead, worshipped, uncared for, and deified, the residual a form of wholesome death denial in that it reifies the

3. I gathered many of the observations and comments included in this discussion of Ghost Month during my fieldwork and through informal interviews during the Ghost Month celebration while I was living in Taiwan in 1987–88 and teaching at National Taiwan University as Visiting Fulbright-Hayes Professor.

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number of leng to be reckoned with is considerable—a “host of ghosts,” as it were. Concerning Chinese eschatology, Crowder (2003) explains: The gods and spirits are subject to negotiations like people in society because the Chinese spirit world is modeled to mirror the material one. Heaven and its pantheon of gods are organized like China’s imperial government headed by the emperor and his bureaucracy of civil servants, and it must be approached systematically. Gods and spirits, having human responses and needs, require offerings to sustain their existence. Even beggar spirits must be paid off to leave the deceased alone at funerals. Because life in the spirit world requires the same items as life on earth, ritual money and paper replicas of houses and goods are burned at funerals for the deceased’s spirit.

Because of the profusion of leng or ghosts component to Chinese eschatology, Chinese expend a significant amount of energy on the social behavior necessary to participate in the interactive interface with the deceased and to maintain the appropriate relationship between the living and the dead. In this regard, various rituals and practices that serve as interface mechanisms for the maintenance of the relationship between the living and the dead are part of Chinese culture (see Tong 1988).

The Family Altar Chinese who are of religious persuasion have in their homes (and often in their places of business) family altars that they use for worshipping ancestors and gods. Some have two altars, one for ancestors and one for the gods. Such altars are often family heirlooms, passed down from generation to generation. Religious worship in Chinese culture is quite varied and includes, among the major nonWestern faiths, Taoism, Buddhism, and Confucianism. Beyond these there are numerous folk and local patron gods, sea gods, and, in some places, animistic deities. For example, it has been estimated that throughout the island of Taiwan, more than 250 gods or deities are worshipped. (For an in-depth discussion of the pantheon of Chinese gods, see Tong 1988.) Many Chinese are polytheistic in their worship and, depending on their preferences, have effigies or figurines of several gods on their altars. Usually also found on family altars are ancestral tablets, on which are recorded the names, titles, and death dates of deceased forebears. Some families have generic or general tablets for family ancestors who have passed from memory. As part of the worship of both gods and ancestors, families place incense pots with burning joss sticks on their altars, along with periodic offerings such as food, drink, and flowers. On several days of the month, more ritualized kinds of offerings are made, and a more formalized set of worship rites is observed on special occasions, such as particular holidays. For recently deceased relatives, 4.

families may engage in more personalized and elaborate worship rites on their death dates, perhaps offering the favorite foods of the deceased, along with cigarettes or wine. On Chinese New Year, as well as on some other occasions, families may offer whole feasts on their altars, complete with bowls, cups, and chopsticks. On Chinese New Year, each member of the family, in order of status, kneels before the altar in a show of reverence and respect for the dead. Ghosts (of the uncared-for variety) are also worshipped at family altars, as I will discuss below. Some families also worship particular gods on a regular basis, whereas they worship others only on special occasions, such as the gods’ birthdays (see “Ghostly Taiwan” 1987). The primary interface of the living and the dead in Chinese culture, then, is in the home, with the family altar at the center of the interaction. Beyond this, the worship of the dead spreads to clan ancestral halls, where altars are also maintained, and to neighborhood temples as well as larger temples, which may be dedicated to one or more particular gods.

Burnt Offerings Chinese eschatology differs somewhat from Western eschatology in that it includes an automatic dimension to the afterlife. This exigency confronts the soul of the deceased individual within the first week after death, in its journey through the yin world. During this time, the soul reaches the first obstacle on its journey, the Gate of the Demon, and finds it necessary to bribe the gatekeeper! The existence of the dead in Hades has an economic counterpart in the world of the living—it costs money. The dead must have food and drink. They require houses in which to live, clothing, and all of the other things that are needed in life. These things must be supplied by the living, and it falls to the offspring of the deceased to assume this responsibility. The family’s economic responsibilities to the dead begin at the time of coffining and burial. Relatives may place special “spirit money” or “ghost money” (fake money produced and sold just for this purpose) in the coffin so that the deceased will have funds available for bribes and other expenses on the journey to the netherworld, or Hades.4 As noted above, the family is also obligated to supply the deceased with the home and furnishings, as well as other supplies, he or she will need in the next world. Chinese communities have special stores where families can purchase paper effigies of all of the kinds of items their deceased loved ones will need. These include paper houses as large as trunks, gardens surrounded by walls with large gates, furniture, automobiles, clothing, and recreational items, such as radios, television sets, cameras, and even board games. Such stores also carry specialized items reflecting their particular communities, such as paper livestock and agricultural tools in rural areas for deceased farmers, and paper boats in coastal areas for fishermen. Nothing is omitted; there are

Some of this money is placed in the sleeve of the corpse’s garment and later retrieved to be given to the grandchildren.

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Figure 3

Ghost (or joss) money for the dead. The upper four bills are contemporary and from Chinese areas such as Hong Kong, Singapore, and Chinatown in San Francisco. Some ghost (joss) money is printed to resemble ancient money for long-deceased ancestors. The bottom left bill is a chit for new clothes for deceased ancestors at Chinese New Year. The bottom right is an offering to the god Kuang Kung for protection.

SOURCE: Clifton D. Bryant collection.

even small figures representing servants available to go with the paper houses. At the time of the funeral, usually the evening after the funeral or the next morning, the family of the deceased burns the paper house and all of the other paper items, thus sending them to the deceased so that he or she will be well housed and equipped in the next world. Presumably all of these things last indefinitely, as families do not seem to burn (and thus send) any additional or replacement items at subsequent dates. After the funeral and burial, the family’s subsequent economic responsibilities to the dead can be discharged with the burning of special types of ghost money at particular times and the making of food and drink offerings in the appropriate context. Beyond these offerings to deceased ancestors, it is also considered necessary to make similar offerings to assorted gods and wandering ghosts, as well as to various spirit soldiers, at culturally determined intervals and on specific occasions (see “Ghostly Taiwan” 1987). The spirit soldiers are the minions of a particular god (Kuang Kung), who, it is believed, sends them to protect the homes (or businesses or villages) of the living. The soldiers have to be fed and paid—thus the need for food

offerings and sacrifices of ghost money. Offerings of food to gods and ancestors are generally made inside the house, usually on the family altar, one portion offered to the gods and one to the ancestors (sometimes there are separate altars for gods and ancestors). The various figurines of the gods worshipped by the family are placed on the altar, as well as the ancestral tablets listing the names and death dates of remembered deceased ancestors (as noted above, there may also be a general tablet for unremembered ancestors) (Jochim 1986:171). Usually, on the first and fifteenth days of the month families make offerings to both gods and ancestors in the form of food, flowers, wine, and the like. They may also make more elaborate offerings, accompanied by formal rites, on special dates, such as the death dates of relatives, the birthdays of gods, Chinese New year, and other publicly celebrated occasions and festivals. Offerings for the gods are presented facing outward, and offerings for ancestors are presented facing inward. Offerings for ghosts are presented outside of family homes (or businesses). If such an offering is for ghosts in general (such as during Ghost Month), it is placed in front of the house or place of

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business. If it is for a single “offending” ghost who is causing the family misfortune, it is placed on the ground outside the rear of the house, as if it were left there for a beggar.

The Hungry Ghost Month Perhaps the most significant of all of the festivals of the dead in Chinese culture is the Hungry Ghost Month. In all Chinese communities outside of mainland China, Ghost Month, as it is popularly known, is a major celebration.5 It is observed during the entire seventh lunar month, which generally begins sometime in August and ends sometime in September. To understand the meaning of Ghost Month, it is necessary to examine Chinese eschatology. In Chinese culture, death is not the final annihilation of self, but an alternate, spiritual form of existence. Upon death, the soul of an individual must undertake an arduous, 7-week journey through the yin world or “otherworld” (Lip 1985:11–22). During this journey, the soul passes through various “gates” and “courts” where it faces trials and judgments in regard to the deceased’s conduct in life on earth. The soul ultimately reaches Hades, the abode of the dead, and lives under the rule of Giam-lo-ong (in Mandarin, Yen-b-wang), the main deity of the underworld (“Ghostly Taiwan” 1987). In Hades, souls or spirits have lives not unlike those on earth. They require food and drink and money, all of which must be provided by the living; as described above, it is the responsibility of the deceased’s living relatives to supply these needs. During the seventh lunar month, the gates of Hades are opened and the ancestral spirits are free to visit earth and roam about during a sort of “vacation.” The spirits, although free to roam, are monitored by Ta Shih Yeh, who is the netherworld’s superintendent of visiting ghosts (Tourism Bureau n.d.:47). Such spirits are of two varieties: cared-for ghosts and uncared-for ghosts. The cared-for spirits are those deceased individuals who have living relatives who make offerings of food and drink to them and send them gifts of paper money, thus providing for their needs. Those spirits with family ties are generally “quite good natured and spend their time partaking in the simple earthly pleasures of eating and drinking” during Ghost Month (Tourism Bureau, n.d.:44). It is the second category of deceased spirits—the uncared-for ghosts—that are potentially harmful. It is only this category of spirit, or lin, that can appropriately be termed ghosts, or, more correctly, kui (although all spirits of deceased individuals may popularly be generically aggregated under the term ghosts). The uncared-for spirits are called hungry ghosts because, having no living descendants, they have no one to supply them with food, drink, or money in Hades; they are thus deprived, or hungry. Such

ghosts may be malicious or at least mischievous and are likely to go about causing trouble—teasing humans and, in some cases, causing them harm. If the hungry ghosts are displeased or angry, they can be particularly malevolent and may bring serious misfortune or even disaster on the living (see “Ghostly Taiwan” 1987). The most dangerous of the hungry ghosts are the spirits of individuals who died in accidents, through suicide or homicide, or as the result of other “unnatural” causes. The spirits of persons who die in these ways do not go straight to Hades. Rather, they are placed in a special limbo or purgatory where they must remain until they can lure someone else into an accident or unnatural death, at which time they report this fact to Giam-lo-ong and can enter Hades. The ghost of the newly dead victim, in effect, takes the place of the spirit that was formerly in limbo. Accordingly, it is assumed that these ghosts are actively trying to entice others into dangerous situations where they might accidentally be killed. Only the foolhardy would place themselves in potentially dangerous situations during Ghost Month; for example, many will not go swimming for fear that they might somehow be trapped underwater and drown. Motorcycle racing on the streets of Taipei, which is a widespread and dangerous pastime of many youths during most of the year, is significantly reduced during Ghost Month. During Ghost Month, the malevolent ghosts are believed to be desperately trying to promote accidents, and it is an ominous time for all. As Jochim (1986) notes, “In fact, this is a month during which no tradition-honoring Chinese would think of opening a business, buying a house, scheduling surgery, or getting married—for it is without qualification the most inauspicious time of the year” (p. 138). With the profusion of ghosts, or lin, both “cared for” and “uncared for,” returning to the world of the living for a visit, Ghost Month is a time of general anxiety. Although some authorities assert that the returned spirits of the deceased are invisible (Jochim 1986:138), others speak of the visiting spirits as assuming human form (e.g., Tourism Bureau, n.d.:46). When they appear as humans, it is widely believed, they resemble the living in every way save one—their feet do not touch the ground. As they walk about, they hover a fraction of an inch off the ground. During Ghost Month, many Chinese spend an inordinate amount of time looking down at the feet of other pedestrians as they walk along the street. The principal activities of Ghost Month involve the presentation of offerings and sacrifices to the dead. Among the offerings are food, money, and entertainment. Special attention is given to the hungry ghosts. Tables are set up outside homes and places of business with offerings of food and wine for the hungry ghosts. These offerings are

5. In the People’s Republic of China, especially during the Mao years, religious practice was suppressed or at least discouraged, and with the dilution of traditional religious beliefs and behaviors, adjunct practices, such as those related to funerals, other aspects of death, and ancestor worship, tended to decline, if not largely disappear, among significant proportions of the population. Ghost Month is not generally celebrated in that country today, and many, if not most, young people in the cities are not familiar with it.

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located outside homes or businesses so that the ghosts will not go into the houses or stores and cause any trouble or harm. Also, families want to keep hungry ghosts from coming into their homes because the ghosts are likely to steal the offerings for deceased ancestors from their family altars, or otherwise interfere with the families’ paying the proper respect to their ancestors and the gods (see “Ghostly Taiwan” 1987). The offerings of food and wine for the hungry ghosts are sometimes quite elaborate, with several courses of food and various delicacies laid out. Some families may even serve up for the spirits whole pig carcasses suitable for large feasts. Usually these carcasses are only partially cooked, and after they have served their purpose as “ghost” fare, they can be further cooked for family consumption. The offerings for the hungry ghosts might also include fruit, flowers, cigarettes, burning joss sticks, and bundles of ghost money (Jordan 1985:35–56), which is burned at some point to deliver it to the ghosts for their vacation use. The offerings to the hungry ghosts serve both as a kind of protection against ghostly mischief or harm and as a kind of altruistic gesture to the unfortunate dead, out of a sense of compassion (Jochim 1986:138). During Ghost Month, families also honor their deceased ancestors with special offerings of food, wine, flowers, and cigarettes, usually placed on their family altars. The offerings of food during this period often consist of entire meals, laid out with dinnerware and chopsticks. Joss sticks are burned constantly, and ghost money is sent to ancestors through burning. Families might make such offerings to their ancestors only on specific dates during the month, but many do so on a more frequent basis. Beyond the offerings of food and drink and the sacrifices of ghost money to the spirits, during Ghost Month Chinese operas and puppet shows are performed on street stages to entertain the visiting ancestor spirits and ghosts. The living also find these performances enjoyable, so there are invariably big audiences (living and dead) to watch them. In another custom of Ghost Month from earlier times (perhaps still practiced in some places even today), merchants would test the money they earned during this period by putting it in a bowl of water. If it sank, it was real, human money; if it floated, it was money from a ghost (Tourism Bureau, n.d.:46). Ghost Month reaches a climax toward the middle of the lunar month, when various specific activities occur. One of these is the festival of the “worship of good brothers,” held on the 15th day of the month (“Ghostly Taiwan” 1987:9). This is also the date of the Chung Yuan Festival, a Buddhist celebration marking the end of the annual mediation period for monks and nuns. On this date, certain temples become locations for elaborate feasts for the visiting ghosts. The feasts feature large assortments of food and drink, with delicacies of every variety. Large hogs are sacrificed to be added to the fare. The temples are decorated with lanterns and other lights so the spirits will not get lost

on their way. Lanterns and candles are also floated on bodies of water to appease the ghosts of those who have drowned there as well as to warn the living of the presence of the water so they will not become drowning victims. Vast amounts of ghost money are burned for the use of the spirit visitors. Frequently encountered at such temple celebrations are effigies of the god Tai-sai-ia (in Mandarin, Taoshih-yeh), who serves as a representative of the netherworld at the feasts and also supervises the ghostly visitors (“Ghostly Taiwan” 1987:29). At the temples, priests offer prayers for the deceased and conduct special religious rituals. Families may engage priests to say prayers or conduct rituals for their ancestors; some honor specific ancestors by paying for the ancestors’ names to be placed in a temple for a period of time. As noted above, Ghost Month is a time of anxiety for many individuals because of the possibility that hostile ghosts might visit misfortune upon them. It is also a time of festivities and feasting, inasmuch as the living can enjoy the special theatrical performances as well as the dead, and can enjoy the food after the spirits of the dead have had their fill. This period also gives the living an opportunity to indulge in altruism; that is, much as many Americans enjoy the satisfaction of giving to the poor at Christmastime, the Chinese “give” to the uncared-for ghosts during Ghost Month. They are also often more generous with their ancestors than usual during this time. For example, one woman told me that her family laid out extra food offerings for her deceased grandfather during this period because he had been gregarious in life, and they assumed that he might well bring guests home with him when he visited during Ghost Month. Perhaps most important, Ghost Month’s annual reenactment of dead ancestors and hungry ghosts visiting the living reinforces the notion of the continuity of the family, even in death, and the symbolic immortality of the individual. Inasmuch as the dead survive in the memories and ritualistic behaviors of the living, death itself is not so much to be feared. Even the sad plight of the hungry ghosts serves as reinforcement for the fabric of social life, for the message, as Jochim (1986) notes, is very clear: “The worst possible fate for anyone, living or dead, is to be cut off from the network of support and obligations that constitutes the Chinese family system” (p. 172). The activities of Ghost Month are directed at remembering the dead and including them in the social fabric, as well as at eliciting amity on their part. All of these structured patterns of conduct address the special needs of the deceased and conform to the traditional obligations of the living. Such activities are social and reciprocal in nature, in that the living are motivated by love and respect for the dead as well as by the expectation of benevolence on the part of the dead. By engaging in such behavior, the living attempt to ensure some indirect control over their own lives and destiny, maintain social contacts and bonds with the dead, and perpetuate a symbiotic social structure involving both living and dead in which the deceased continue a worldly existence after a fashion, thereby diluting

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their own anxiety about death. The living regularly and purposefully interact with ghosts and, in doing so, effectively “deal with the dead.” Through this interaction with the dead, the notion of an existence after death is reified and the prospect of death is rendered less frightening, inasmuch as ghostly interaction with the living implies the probability of a postself presence.

CONCLUSION Many societies reanimate their dead, at least periodically. As I have discussed in this chapter, such reanimation may assume a configuration of formalized visits to the living. Such visitation rituals are particularly colorful and especially meaningful in Mexican and Chinese cultures. In both instances, the festivals or celebrations involving visits from the dead serve as rites of intensification, providing for the reinforcement of bonding between the living and the dead, thereby reifying the solidarity of the family, including members past and present. These celebrations also function as a means of placating or rewarding the dead. The dead may have unfulfilled needs that can be met only by the living, thus the living must attend to their obligations to the dead ritualistically. The efforts of the living are not totally altruistic, however, inasmuch as there is an expectation of reciprocity—that the dead may be persuaded to help in meeting the unfulfilled needs of the living. By annually reenacting the dramaturgical rituals of host and ghost, the living gain reassurance in regard to the validity of their religious eschatology. If the dead can come back from the netherworld to visit the living and enjoy the benefits of even a brief sojourn, then the living can expect similar opportunities and fulfillment in the future after they die. By entertaining the dead as visitors, the living mitigate their own fear of death and anticipate continued inclusion in the family circle after their earthly demise.

Crowder, Linda Sun. 2003. “The Taoist Chinese Way of Death.” In Handbook of Death and Dying, vol. 2, edited by Clifton D. Bryant. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Day, Douglas. 1990. “A Day With the Dead: In Mexico, the Living and the Dead Celebrate Together.” Natural History, October, pp. 67–72. Emmons, Charles F. 1982. Chinese Ghosts and ESP: A Study of Paranormal Beliefs and Experiences. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow. Garciagodoy, Juanita. 1994. “Romancing the Bone: A Semiotics of Mexico’s Days of the Dead.” Ph.D. dissertation, Department of Spanish, University of Minnesota. Available from UMI Dissertation Services, Ann Arbor, MI. “Ghostly Taiwan.” 1987. Taiwan Grapevine, August, pp. 9, 29. Green, Judith Strupp. 1972. “The Days of the Dead in Oaxaca, Mexico: An Historical Inquiry.” Omega 3:245–61. Greenleigh, John and Rosalind Rosoff Beimler. 199l. The Days of the Dead. San Francisco: Collins. Honigmann, John J. 1959. The World of Man. New York: Harper & Row. Jochim, Christian. 1986. Chinese Religions: A Cultural Perspective. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Jordan, David K. 1985. Gods, Ghosts, and Ancestors: Folk Religion in a Taiwanese Village, 2d ed. Taipei: Caves. Lip, Evelyn. 1985. Chinese Beliefs and Superstitions. Singapore: Graham Bash. Marino, Daniela. 1997. “Prayer for a Sleeping Child: Iconography of the Funeral Ritual of Little Angels in Mexico.” Journal of American Culture 20(2):37–44. Tong, Fung-Wan. 1988. “Vibrant, Popular Pantheon.” Free China Review 38:9–15. Tourism Bureau, Ministry of Communication, Republic of China. n.d. Festivals and Folk Arts: Taiwan Republic of China. Taipei: China Travel and Trade. Walkup, Nancy. 2001. “Teaching Sensitive Cultural Traditions.” School Arts, November, pp. 23–25. Warner, W. Lloyd. 1959. The Living and the Dead: A Study of the Symbolic Life of Americans. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

ADDITIONAL READINGS REFERENCES Brandes, Stanley. 1998a. “The Day of the Dead, Halloween, and the Quest for Mexican National Identity.” Journal of American Folklore 111:359–80. ———. 1998b. “Iconography in Mexico’s Day of the Dead: Origins and Meaning.” Ethnohistory 45:181–218. Brown, Patricia Leigh. 1993. “Designs for a Life-Affirming Celebration in Mexico.” New York Times, November 4, pp. C1, C8–C9. Bryant, Clifton D. 1976. “Death Messages: Symbolic Interactional Strategies for Research on Communication Between the Living and the Dead and Dying.” Presented at the annual meeting of the Southern Sociological Society, April, Miami, FL.

Green, Judith Strupp. 1969. Laughing Souls: The Days of the Dead in Oaxaca, Mexico. Balboa Park, CA: San Diego Museum of Man. Hernandez, Joanne Farb and Samuel R. Hernandez. 1979. The Days of the Dead: Tradition and Change in Contemporary Mexico. Santa Clara, CA: Triton Museum of Art. Kelly, Patricia Fernandez. 1974. “Death in Mexican Folk Culture.” American Quarterly 26:516–35. Scalora, Salvatore. 1995. “Celebrating the Spirits’ Return.” Americas (English ed.), September/October. Stepanchuk, Carol and Charles Wong. 1991. Mooncakes and Hungry Ghosts: Festivals of China. San Francisco: China Books and Periodicals.

GHOSTS: THE DEAD AMONG US CHARLES F. EMMONS

FRAMING GHOSTS Problematic is the first word to say about ghosts in modern Western society. As Buse and Stott (1999) state in the introduction to their edited volume Ghosts: Deconstruction, Psychoanalysis, History, “It is safe to say that to be interested in ghosts these days is decidedly anachronistic” (p. 1); they also note, “It is now frivolous to believe in ghosts” (p. 3). Of course, they go on to argue the importance of the ghost concept in theoretical realms, language, literature, and history. Nevertheless, they take for granted that the Reformation dismissed (for Protestants) the notion of ghosts returning from purgatory, and that the Enlightenment made the very idea of ghosts seem irrational to most moderns. Whether ghosts are frivolous on any level is debatable, as we shall see. How seriously we should take ghosts, and how they represent the dead or people’s ideas about the dead, are questions that depend importantly on how we frame the idea of “ghosts.” Among the possible frames are normal science, parapsychology, comparative cultural studies, folklore analysis, collective behavior research, literary analysis, and mass-media and popular-culture studies.

THE VIEW FROM NORMAL SCIENCE Because ghosts are defined as returning spirits of the dead, they fall under the perspective of surviving consciousness, or the soul, a topic considered paranormal or religious and therefore either denied or ignored by mainstream science. Currently, the most important social control agent of normal science in the United States is the Committee for Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP), which publishes the magazine Skeptical Inquirer. Articles about ghosts are not common in this publication, in contrast to articles debunking spirit mediums, which appear frequently. Perhaps this represents CSICOP’s greater concern about living people (mediums) whom the

organization considers to be fraudulent performers of the paranormal. One example of a skeptical treatment of ghosts may be found in Kastenbaum’s 1995 book Is There Life After Death? (pp. 109–39), in which the author, a clinical psychologist, plays the dual roles of “advocate” and “critic.” In his role as critic in a chapter titled “No Chance of a Ghost,” he presents a number of mundane explanations for ghost reports: fraud, illusion, hallucination, wishful thinking (need-determined perception), and mental illness. Then, postulating for the sake of argument that some ghost experiences may be paranormal, he argues that they may represent telepathy or some other form of ESP rather than survival of the spirit. In this discussion Kastenbaum reveals his parapsychological bent; CSICOP would not ordinarily grant the slightest possibility of anything “paranormal.” So clearly, for normal science, the presence of a “ghost” represents a mistake, an illusion, or evidence of some form of deficiency in experience, not something to be taken seriously by educated and enlightened people.

PARAPSYCHOLOGY AND APPARITIONS Parapsychology, a field that began in 1882 with the founding of the Society for Psychical Research in London, focuses largely on spirit mediumship (see Emmons 2003) but is also concerned with ghosts or apparitions (the latter term avoids the assumption that such perceptions are caused by “real” ghosts). Parapsychology may be described as a scientific perspective applied skeptically (ideally) to allegedly paranormal psychical events not accepted in normal science. Since J. B. Rhine influenced parapsychology to move largely into the laboratory in the 1930s and 1940s, studies of spontaneous forms of psychic phenomena (known as PSI) have waned. The field has placed more emphasis on experiments concerning extrasensory perception and psychokinesis (PK) and less emphasis on studies of spirit mediums, apparitions, and hauntings. (For discussion of 87

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theoretical developments in the study of apparitions, see especially Tyrrell 1963; Rogo 1974; Rhine 1981; Emmons 1982. For recent studies of apparitions and hauntings, see Maher 1999, 2000.) As in parapsychological studies of spirit mediumship, the stickiest issue in the study of apparitions has been the survival hypothesis, the idea that souls or spirits are responsible for the phenomena. Parapsychologists have generally explained ghosts as nonphysical, mental dramatizations of ESP images. But are these images sometimes sparked by telepathy from the dead, or do they appear only through telepathy and clairvoyance among the living? There are also physical effects in hauntings, such as moving objects and electromagnetic disturbances, that are generally separate from whatever apparitions may also occur in such places; this raises the issue of whether the agents of paranormal physical effects are living (a “poltergeist focus”) or dead (Maher 2000). To outsiders, it may seem strange that survival is such a contested issue. After all, both ESP among the living and communication with the dead qualify as “paranormal” or outside the confines of phenomena recognized by normal science. However, parapsychologists have attempted to stretch the boundaries of normal science to include the study of PSI, an as-yet unmeasured force that is postulated as the cause of measurable paranormal effects. ESP is seen as analogous to normal perception; PK is seen as analogous to normal motor activity. Survival of the spirit, however, postulates the existence of a consciousness that escapes death and exists independent of the physical body. This viewpoint reveals that mainstream parapsychology is attempting to join mainstream science, in which the material world is all there is, and mysterious (but real) forces are merely considered to be beyond our ability to measure using current scientific instruments. In this sense there is really nothing “paranormal.” Seeing ghosts as personalities who have escaped physical death goes beyond Western science and into the realm of spirituality or religion, which scientists see as a nonrational, even irrational, survival of pre-Enlightenment thinking. This seems to leave ghosts out in the cold as far as science—even the parascience of parapsychology—is concerned. It would appear that we need to move on to social science for an analysis of the importance of ghosts in the real world. However, before we abandon the ontological question (the question of whether ghosts are “real”) altogether, it is fair to say that the survival hypothesis is still suspended in parapsychology, even if most parapsychologists are loath to embrace it for fear of seeming unscientific. It is also important to say that there are some impressive data supporting the interpretation that many apparition experiences do not have mundane explanations (including, for example, hoax, illusion, hallucination). Such “evidential cases” are essentially of two types: those in which multiple witnesses who are uncontaminated by mutual influence report the same strange events (given that it is unlikely that multiple persons would have the same hallucination

independently) and those in which witnesses provide paranormal information (such as details of a death that the witness of an apparition could not have known about). In my own study of ghost experiences in Hong Kong and China, I found apparently frequent evidential cases as well as many common features of the apparition experience between China and the West in spite of cultural differences (Emmons 1982). Thus the dismissal of questions of the existence of ghosts as “frivolous” may be rather cavalier. It would be fair to say that parapsychology has collected some interesting data about apparition experiences that are not easily discounted. However, even if adherents of normal science generally recognized such experiences as worthy of study, there would still be a shortage of testable “paranormal” theory at this point. Hess (1993) provides a more general discussion of these issues, explaining the conflicts among the knowledge subcultures of normal science, parapsychology, and the New Age. Goode (2000:117–37) reinforces the point made here that mainstream parapsychologists cling to the model of the scientific method and prefer to explain PSI as normal. However, normal science rejects parapsychology partly because parapsychology fails to provide either consistent replication or material theoretical explanation for PSI, and partly because it is labeled as a deviant science (which isolates its work from the normal scientific community).

GHOSTS IN COMPARATIVE CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE Having crossed the divide between natural science and the social sciences, I can now safely discuss the social importance of ghosts scientifically without fear of being ridiculed as “frivolous.” This is typical of academic boundary maintenance regarding matters nonrational. Whereas religion has been out-of-bounds to science since the late 19th century, with parapsychology representing heresy, social scientists have been assigned the task of understanding religion and other nonrational pursuits as socially constructed natural phenomena. This means that we can take up the topic of ghosts as socially constructed dead people among us. What are they doing here, and what social roles do they play? Answers to such questions are complex and varied. First of all, there is cross-cultural variety, with the elements connected nonetheless by some interesting cultural universals. Ghosts—that is, the returning spirits of dead humans—are commonly if not universally thought to have emotional ties to concerns in their predeath existence. Such concerns might include unfulfilled social expectations, violent death, and improper burial, but they may also involve more positive attachments to surviving relatives and friends (especially when the living need them). From a sociological perspective, one might characterize these

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attachments in terms of social norms and social control. For example, suicide violates social norms, and those who commit suicide may end up wandering about as ghosts. Dying before one’s time or in a socially inappropriate way violates expectations. The violation may also be on the part of the living—for example, murderers or people who fail to bury the dead with respect may be haunted by ghosts acting as agents of social control. The dead among us have important jobs to do. (This is not to deny that they may play trivial roles as well, a point I return to in a later section.) For those who are inclined to think of ghosts as trivial or frivolous, either because of childhood memories of Casper the Friendly Ghost or due to ridicule from normal science, I offer a comparative perspective on ghosts from a nonWestern culture that takes ghosts seriously and for granted: China. In traditional China, as in other complex societies, there is no single, simple view of ghosts. Different beliefs, based on principles of yin and yang, ascribe to individuals anywhere from 2 to 10 different souls or soul elements (Emmons 1982:16–17). If the nature of the soul is not crystal clear, neither is the nature of the place souls go to after death. Chinese religion is an eclectic, tolerant mix of animism, Taoism, Buddhism, and Confucianism. Consequently, the Chinese heaven and hell are conceived of as consisting of various numbers of levels, annexing, for example, the Buddhist Western Paradise to the ancient concept of Supreme Heaven. The influence of Buddhism also adds reincarnation to the system, confusing some spirit mediums as to whether they can contact people’s dead relatives in the other world if they died long ago and have since returned as other, living humans. All of this eclecticism tends to blend a variety of phenomena, so that in China, “ghost stories” may include miscellaneous gods, demons, fox fairies (who change into beautiful women), and other elements. As China’s dominance spread Chinese culture elsewhere in East and Southeast Asia, local folklore was also added to the mix; in Japan and Korea, for example, ghost beliefs are very similar to those in China. One thing is certain: Among Chinese, ghosts are commonly thought to return to earth, especially during the Hungry Ghost Festival (Emmons 1982:23–26). Throughout the entire seventh lunar month, Chinese believe that hungry ghosts wander the earth in search of nourishment, especially those who have no one to worship them properly or who have died violent deaths. During this festival, food and entertainment are provided for all (living and dead), and people set out food and burn paper effigies of money and material goods (in modern Hong Kong, these goods might include automobiles) for their own ancestors on the eve of the full moon, the fifteenth day of the seventh lunar month. This festival is only the high point of a general system of ancestor worship in which Chinese burn incense and set out food and other items, sometimes on a daily basis, on a family altar (Emmons 1982:19–20). Chinese ghosts are

most important as relatives who can improve the health and financial success of their descendants in exchange for proper worship. In the past, ancestor worship was most significant among commoners in those parts of south China that practiced wet-rice cultivation, because this system supported the solidarity of the lineages or clans that tended the fields as corporate entities. In a 1980 random-sample survey of urban Hong Kong residents, I found that an amazing 72% still practiced at least some ancestor worship (Emmons 1982). Some 53% of those practicing ancestor worship said that they believed in ghosts, compared with 43% of those who did not practice. It is somewhat surprising that the percentage believing in ghosts was not higher, given that ghosts are a central part of ancestor worship, both in China and in other cultures of the world. One possible reason the percentage reporting belief in ghosts was not higher may be that it is considered unlucky to discuss the subject. When asked whether they believed in ghosts, some of the individuals who were surveyed responded with remarks such as “Oh! Why do you ask me about such things?!” Seeing a ghost may be considered an omen of one’s impending death. And, of course, improperly worshipped spirits come back as agents of social control to haunt the living who have done them wrong either before or after their death. In Chinese crime fiction, apparitions and clairvoyant dreams often provide the living with information that brings the murderer before the magistrate (Emmons 1982:22). Complex belief sets about ghosts and various types of beings that we might attempt to categorize as ghosts are not confined to China and the rest of Asia. In the West, ancient Greece and Rome borrowed ghost concepts from other cultures, creating both cultural diversity and fluid categories of ghosts (Johnston 1999; Felton 1999:xiii). As in Japan, the Greeks and Romans also tended to blend the supernatural exploits of human ghosts with those of the gods. Moreover, there was diversity of opinion in ancient Greece and Rome about the existence of ghosts. According to Felton (1999), “Some ancient Greeks claimed to see ghosts, whereas others, such as the Epicureans, were highly skeptical, trying to find material explanations for such phenomena” (p. xiii). This parallels the modern United States, with its variety of religious and secular views of ghosts, including the debunking perspective of CSICOP and normal science. At any rate, ghosts were popular characters in Greece and Rome, especially in classical theater productions (Felton 1999:xiii–xvii). Among the great variety of folk beliefs about ghosts in ancient Greece and Rome was the belief that ghosts would stay away from living people with freckles (Felton 1999:5). This seems to have been based on the Roman belief that freckles had negative magical value. The Greeks and Romans also apparently thought that ghosts were to be found at crossroads (a belief that is still part of modern lore). Iron was believed to provide protection from ghosts and to be useful for imprisoning them; this may be the foundation for the notion that ghosts drag chains behind

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them. Some Greek and Roman spirits appeared at midday, often to deliver supernatural warnings (Felton 1999:6–7). However, they were more likely to appear at night, especially at midnight, a time associated with death and dreams. The reasons for the dead to return as ghosts in ancient Greece and Rome were similar to those in modern Western folklore. These included to extract revenge or punish the living, to reward and comfort the living, to complete unfinished business (e.g., to locate wills or treasures for the living), and to request proper burial for themselves (Felton 1999:8–12). Anthropologists have tended to frame the discussion of ghosts and spirits in Native American societies within the framework of shamanism (see Emmons 2003). For example, Algonquian shamans known as “flyers” portrayed a mythical bird that communicated with and sometimes became possessed by the spirits of the dead (Burland 1970). However, accounts of Native American ghosts have also been interpreted in terms of social control functions and spiritual causes of illness (Henderson 1981). Honigman (1945) has reported on Navajo and Sarsi beliefs about ghosts visiting people just before death and guiding their relatives to the land of the dead, as well as characteristics of ghost experiences (e.g., the appearance of whirlwinds and balls of fire, whistling and tapping sounds).

GHOST FOLKLORE AND COLLECTIVE BEHAVIOR Of course, there is an overlap between a cross-cultural perspective on ghosts and the study of ghost folklore. In this section, I focus on some of the literature on ghost folklore and on collective behavior studies of rumor. Rumor and folklore perspectives are useful to combine in the study of ghosts because they can both be contrasted with firsthand ghost reports, which are of interest to parapsychologists (and “ghost hunters”). In folklore studies it is generally not an issue whether the content of the lore is “true” or not. However, it is worth noting whether the people who relate the lore assume that it is true. Ghost stories told as if true are ordinarily referred to as legends as opposed to tales, which tellers and listeners assume to be at least somewhat exaggerated for dramatic effect. Montell (1975:90), for example, found that only 3 of 175 tellers of ghost narratives in his Kentucky study indicated disbelief in ghosts. These legends came out of a “cultural matrix” in which parents and grandparents told ghost stories to frighten children into obedience, and ghost stories were part of community entertainment. Common elements in these ghost legends included night or darkness, hills, roads, houses, graveyards, and horses (as sensitive to ghosts) (pp. 90–92). Purposes for the ghosts’ returning included their being upset at improper burial or postmortem disturbance of the grave site or grave robbery, their desire for retaliation or revenge or to expose guilty

parties, their need to search for or reveal hidden money, and their desire to look in on family or friends (pp. 93–94). Note the similarities between these reasons and those mentioned above for Greek and Roman ghosts. In contrast to the Appalachian traditional ghost lore pattern described by Montell, Ellis (2001:117–41) discusses ghost stories collected at a Pizza Hut in central Ohio in the late 1970s. Instead of being told uniformly as if they were true, these “fast-food ghost” narratives involve combinations of “amazed” and “rational” intonations that allow for varying interpretations of experience, including suspended judgment about a rational view of the world. The social context allows for safe contemplation of these possibilities. Another approach to ghost lore is the literary/historical analysis of a large body of related material. Bennett’s article “The Vanishing Hitchhiker at Fifty-Five” (1998) provides an example of this approach. As Bennett notes, more than a half century of analysis has failed to discover the origin of the “vanishing hitchhiker” stories. In fact, these stories are now more widely distributed and varied than ever before. The basic story involves a ghost who appears in corporeal form on the highway on the anniversary of her or his death and gets a ride from or gives directions to a stranger passing by in a car or carriage. Only later, upon returning to the spot where he or she last saw the direction giver or dropped off the hitchhiker, does the driver learn from someone that the individual had died previously, often by suicide or some other unnatural means. This motif also overlaps with other centuries-old motifs about road ghosts, “token-leaving phantoms” (e.g., the ghost leaves a sweater in the driver’s car), ghosts who give directions, and ghosts who roam because they died unsatisfactory deaths. Analysts in the social/behavioral science tradition are likely to look for social and psychological functions in folklore. For example, Tangherlini (1998) examines Danish legends about ghosts in which ministers deal with threats from ghosts. These legends illuminate the role of the minister and the level of respect that ministers enjoy in the community. They also underline the extent to which Danes commonly believe that ghosts represent a supernatural threat instead of being benevolent. Alan Dundes (1998) gives a fascinating psychological interpretation of “Bloody Mary in the mirror” rituals, in which “prepubescent” girls stand in front of mirrors and look for the apparition of “Bloody Mary.” There are many variants, but Dundes argues that they all center on a symbolic fear of first menstruation. In my own work, I have explored ghost stories in Hong Kong in terms of both folklore and the related collective behavior process of rumor (Emmons 1982). My basic motivation for examining Chinese ghost lore and rumors was to contrast these with firsthand reports (also collected in the study). A cross-cultural comparison between the Chinese firsthand ghost reports and those gathered in the West in the parapsychological literature indicated great

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similarities, both in the lack of physical features and in terms of “abnormal features of perception” (such as the ghost appearing transparent, lacking color, or lacking feet). These data, along with the presence of evidential cases (with multiple witnesses and paranormal information), gave cross-cultural support for the parapsychological theory that the apparition experience is a form of ESP rather than anything physical and is not always merely the product of hallucination. In contrast, the folklore and rumor ghosts did have physical features, and stories about them showed evidence of fictitious elaboration through group communication processes. Folklore motifs about ghosts, both Chinese and Western, involve both malevolent and benevolent returns (Emmons 1982:94–108). Some Chinese examples of the malevolent include the avenging ghost of an unjustly executed man and the ghost who sucks the breath of the living. Some benevolent ones (found in both Chinese and Western lore) are the dead mother who returns to suckle her child and the ghost who comes back to give counsel. The most significant difference between Western and Chinese ghost folklore lies in the lack of Western examples involving ancestor worship. For Chinese, the tendency is to fear visits from the dead, because they tend to be associated with hungry ghosts who are restless because they have not been receiving satisfactory ancestor worship. If you take care of your ancestors properly, they tend to stay in the underworld. Nevertheless, both Chinese and Western ghosts often act as agents of social control. Having the capacity to perform physical effects may violate the parapsychological theory of apparitions, but it makes ghosts more convincing moral agents in folklore. They punish deceitful sweethearts, spouses, and kin; they accuse or kill their murderers; and they guard buried treasures or prevent thefts. The grateful dead reward those who have buried them properly and tend their graves (in China), honor the brave, and sometimes pay howdy calls to deserving relatives. Relatively recent Hong Kong folklore about ghosts (from the past half century) includes Japanese-occupation ghosts who haunt buildings known to have been under Japanese control during World War II. Probably second most popular are ghosts in hospitals, problematic places for Chinese in regard to death, even in healthier modern times. Cinema ghosts are also popular, especially in movie-theater bathrooms. Other categories include ghosts in live theater or Chinese opera, water ghosts of drowning victims, and ghosts who push people in front of cars. Right in front of one elementary school, a second grader received minor injuries from being knocked down by a car. Some of the children at the school attributed the accident to ghosts, because it happened during the Hungry Ghost Festival (Yu Lan Jit). One girl explained that such things happen during the Yu Nan Jit (“Run-Into-Disaster Festival”). (For fuller discussion of Hong Kong ghost folklore, see Emmons 1982:98–108.) Many of these recently formed legends, or at least certain variants, are very close to rumors, having spread as

“true” accounts among relatively small numbers of people. In my 1980 study, I traced one such ghost legend or rumor from several tellers back to the source (Emmons 1982:109–16). Several students related versions of a story about ghosts in a high-rise building on the campus of Hong Kong University. All of these versions emanated from one professor, who had told his class about the elevator ghosts. He actually intended the story as a folktale (which he made up, based loosely on previous reports about the elevator), and it contains elements typical of fictitious stories about apparitions (physical effects on the operation of the elevator and a very long conversation between the ghost and a living occupant of the elevator, something very rare in firsthand accounts). In one version of the story, the ghost in the elevator is a student who had wanted to emigrate to Canada and who had committed suicide when forced to leave school due to bad grades. The students who heard the professor tell the original story, and subsequent spreaders of the rumor, took it to be true. As a rumor, it went through all the classic changes: leveling (becoming shorter), sharpening (with essentials remaining), and assimilation (modification to fit the attitudes of the teller as well as cultural expectations). This ghost legend assimilated by taking on typical concerns of Hong Kong college students: the pressure to succeed in college, suicide due to failure, and emigration to North America.

THE GHOST AS LITERARY DEVICE If ghosts in folklore often carry cultural meaning, demonstrating common concerns and acting as supernatural agents of social control, it is not surprising that they are used in like manner in literature. In both folklore and literature, ghosts can also have entertainment value. There are, after all, many uses for the dead. Among the best-known examples of ghosts in Western literature are those in Shakespeare’s plays, especially Macbeth and Hamlet. As Rogers (1949) notes, “Occultism in the Shakespeare plays . . . is always presented as the truth” (p. 179). Just as in traditional Chinese literature, Shakespeare’s ghosts never turn out to be mere hoaxes or hallucinations uncovered at the end to appease rationality. They are integral to the pieces in which they appear and usually reinforce moral principles. Supernatural warnings and sanctions are also prominent in Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, in which Scrooge sees the ghost of his partner Marley punished for greed and becomes resocialized in time to avoid a similar fate. If we choose, we can agree with the initially skeptical Scrooge that his visions are due merely to indigestion and conclude that his guilty conscience has transformed him in his dreams. Smith (2001) discusses the ambiguity in Washington Irving’s “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.” Although the story strongly implies that Brom Bones perpetrated a hoax in order to frighten his rival, Ichabod Crane, we are left

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with the possible interpretation that it really was the Headless Horseman who spirited Crane away. In spite of the cultural prejudice against a “childish” or “primitive” belief in the supernatural in Irving’s time, stories that allowed for the possibility of ghosts were more exciting and popular. Writers also use ghosts as a literary “trope”—that is, in a metaphorical, nonliteral sense. Johnson (1999) provides good examples of this in his discussion of the “specter of Communism” (Marx and Engels) and the metaphorical uses of ghosts in the novels of Breton and Bataille.

MASS MEDIA AND POPULAR CULTURE Not all of the written forms of popular culture about ghosts stress their social control function, but many do. For example, in a group of 14 ghost stories in six American comic books collected in 1979, all 14 stories involved moral justice in the outcomes, all 14 ghosts in the stories were malevolent or conflict oriented, and in 8 of the stories the ghosts performed some type of physical effects. In one, for example, a phony psychic composer writes a piece of music supposedly channeled from the spirit of Beethoven. The ghost of Beethoven himself returns on the night of the work’s concert premiere and brings down the concert hall’s chandelier, which lands on the perpetrator of the fraud and kills him (Emmons 1982:95–97). Another comic-book ghost genre involves nonmalevolent ghosts; Casper the Friendly Ghost is the best known of these (Emmons 1982:96). Casper floats and flies and does minor physical effects; he can dive under the ground but can also be captured and confined under “ghost-proof” glass. The magical, fantasy adventures in which he becomes involved are neither moralistic nor malevolent; they are only humorous. By contrast, ghosts in some of the popular literature in Hong Kong tend to be presented for shock value more than for humor or for purposes of teaching morality. Of course, we should not take the moral lessons offered by the products of U.S. popular culture too seriously; they tend to be inserted because they suit the producers’ ideas of poetic justice or for their disclaimer value (so that the producers can avoid complaints from moralists). Even in humorous Hong Kong ghost comics, the ghosts look horrible—they are never cuddly, like Casper. Hong Kong films also sometimes feature farcical, horrible-looking ghosts. There is also a ghost genre of cheap pulp fiction for adults, short stories in which the most common motif is sexual intercourse between a living male and a female ghost who appears real, even beautiful, at least on the night before the morning after. This is the traditional Chinese “fox fairy” motif. Another aspect of the popular culture of ghosts is popular belief in ghosts. As noted earlier, in my survey of Hong Kong in 1980, I found that more than 50% of those interviewed said that they believed in ghosts (Emmons

1982:274). The traditional centrality of ghosts in Chinese culture, especially in relation to ancestor worship, makes this relatively high figure understandable. In comparison, a Gallup poll in 1978 found that only 12% of adults surveyed in the United States believed in ghosts (Emmons and Sobal 1981:304) Unfortunately, there are no longitudinal data available to allow us to explore changes in the rates of belief in Hong Kong since 1980. In the United States, however, the Gallup Organization has asked the same question about ghost belief in subsequent years, and the data reveal steady increases: up to 25% in 1990, 28% in 1991, 33% in 1999, and 38% in 2001 (Newport 1999; Newport and Strausberg 2001). It is difficult to know how much of this change is due to the general upsurge in belief in life after death in the past few decades, but the Gallup data show very little difference in ghost belief by how important religion is to the respondent (Newport and Strausberg 2001). In fact, the 1978 Gallup data showed that belief in the paranormal tended to be higher among people who claimed to have no religion at all; of those with no religion, 23% said that they believed in ghosts, compared with 12% of all respondents (Emmons and Sobal 1981:304). Gallup data also show increases in the proportions of Americans who believe in most other paranormal phenomena in the past decade: haunted houses, from 29% in 1990 to 42% in 2001; mental communication with the dead, from 18% in 1990 to 28% in 2001; witches, from 14% in 1990 to 26% in 2001; extraterrestrials visiting Earth, from 27% in 1990 to 33% in 2001 (Newport and Strausberg 2001). However, the proportions of those who say they believe in ESP and related phenomena have shown no increase, for the most part, and the proportion of those saying they believe in possession by the devil declined, from 49% to 41%, over the same period. One might suspect, although it is difficult to demonstrate, that increased belief in the paranormal among Americans is related to the popularity of television shows and films that involve such subjects. One indirect indication that this may be the case is that belief tends to be much more frequent among younger people, the same group that makes up the main audience for media culture. For example, in the 2001 Gallup poll, 46% of 18- to 29-year-olds stated belief in ghosts (38% of all ages), and 58% of them believed in haunted houses (42% of all ages) (Newport and Strausberg 2001). Belief drops off dramatically over age 50 (29% of those over 50 report believing in ghosts, and 32% believe in haunted houses). However, even 29% of the older group believing in ghosts is a very high figure compared with the 12% overall who said they believed in 1978 (Emmons 1982:274). Of course, in 1978 those people who are now over 50 were 23 years younger, many of them in their 20s and 30s and consuming media about the paranormal by then. One example of current popular media representations of ghosts may be found in Mark Nesbitt’s series of five collections of ghost reports and stories titled Ghosts of

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Gettysburg (1991, 1992, 1995, 1998, 2000). Before the publication of the first of these books in 1991, there was very little discussion in the media of ghosts in Gettysburg, in spite of the general belief in American culture that ghosts haunt scenes of violent death. Since the mid-1990s, several television programs based largely on Nesbitt’s books have aired nationally; some of them have played on cable stations dozens of times. McAdams (2000) discusses the phenomenon of the Travel Channel’s including programs about the paranormal, one of which is titled Places of Mystery. According to McAdams, Travel Channel executives made the decision to run programs on hauntings (including one about Gettysburg) and aliens based on their concern about ratings. If it seems odd to categorize certain forms of the paranormal as travel, it is worth noting that those who program the Travel Channel recognize that real travelers watch little television, but armchair travelers like to see places of fantasy and mystery vicariously. Real tourism also features trips to haunted places. Nesbitt runs his own “Ghosts of Gettysburg Tour,” and other enterprises have arisen to offer similar kinds of experiences. “Ghost tours” may be found in many historic places, including battlefields. The subject of allegedly haunted property intersects with another institution aside from tourism: real estate. According to an article in Hotel & Motel Management, New Hampshire law requires the seller of any hotel in that state to disclose the presence of any known ghosts to prospective buyers. The Seller’s Property Information Report form used by the New Hampshire Association of Realtors asks, “Are you aware of any supernatural occurrences that may affect the value of the property? If yes, explain” (quoted in Marshall 2000). Whether the popularity of hauntings in the mass media makes such property more or less valuable is an empirical question. At this writing, perhaps the most widely publicized debate about the paranormal in popular media centers on the Harry Potter books written by J. K. Rowling. Some fundamentalist Christians have condemned the books for providing children with information about the occult that might socialize them into communicating with ghosts and performing witchcraft (Breznican 2001). A Gallup poll conducted in 2000 found that only 7% of adults familiar with the Harry Potter book disapproved of them; 52% approved, and 41% no opinion. However, 12% of conservatives disapproved of the books, compared with only 2% of liberals (Jones 2000). Clearly, the individuals on the two sides of this debate are operating from different frames. Some fundamentalist Christians see ghosts and other paranormal phenomena as real and dangerous, as being of the devil. In contrast, many people who are involved in spiritualism or new spirituality (the New Age) see the paranormal as real but substantially good. Interviews with Rowling (Breznican 2001) and with children who have read the books tend to

support the frame that the Harry Potter stories are fantasy and not to be taken literally. The debate over Harry Potter, however, highlights the question of how seriously people take the paranormal, ghosts included. In modern America, Halloween provides the prime example of pop-culture paranormal. Over the millennia, Halloween has transformed from a harvest festival during which the spirits of the dead were understood to return, analogous to the Chinese Hungry Ghost Festival (Emmons 1982:23–26), to mainly a junk-food festival for children. In polls conducted in 1985 and 1999, 69% of American adults surveyed said that someone in their families would be giving out treats on Halloween. However, 12% said that they were opposed to celebrating Halloween on religious grounds, with “these objections . . . most common among conservatives and Republicans” (Newport 1999). This seems to indicate that some Americans do indeed take Halloween seriously and literally, but negatively, as some view Harry Potter. Another example of not seeing Halloween as a harmless fantasy can be found in an article published in Parents Magazine titled, “Why Halloween Scares Preschoolers” (Kutner 1994). The article’s author points out that very young children have difficulty separating fantasy from reality and may therefore be frightened by extreme costumes: “Your child needs to know that ghosts are imaginary” (Kutner 1994:77). It is interesting to note that debunkers say the same thing about ghosts to parapsychologists (and the rest of us). There is one more side to the popular culture of ghosts that deserves mention: the subculture of “ghost hunters.” In my own limited participant observation in the Gettysburg area, I found that ghost hunters constitute a multifunctional interest group that combines amateur science, adventure, and sociable interaction. This subculture overlaps with the subculture of battle reenactors and comes close to being a part of parapsychology. Its relationship to parapsychology is similar to the relationship between amateur UFO study groups and more professional researchers in ufology (Emmons 1997:96–101). A recent Internet search using the keyword ghost turned up 11,376 sites; the keyword apparition resulted in 928. About one-third of the “ghost” sites had to do with other meanings of the word ghost, as in ghost town or Holy Ghost, but a great many were relevant to the ghost interest subculture. These included Web sites run by ghost hunter groups organized in particular geographic areas. “Apparition” sites tended to be related to religious visions, as in the case of Marian apparitions. Some ghost-related Web sites are organized by individuals who attempt to be “professional,” in the sense that they make their livings from selling ghost books (their own and those written by others), giving ghost tours or organizing ghost outings, and selling electronic “ghost detection” equipment. Vandendorpe (1998) gives examples of such ghost-hunting devices. Many search for anomalies in temperature changes and for unexplained images on film,

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whereas others are designed to detect magnetic, electrical, and/or radio/microwave variations. The sellers of some devices claim that their equipment can capture electronic voice phenomena on cassettes or on digital recorders. Vandendorpe notes that although some ghost hunters are skeptical of the motives of the “professionals” (who are involved for profit), even part-time amateurs often use detection equipment, such as digital cameras for taking photographs that yield unexplained spots of light or “orbs” that may represent the presence of spirits. Sometimes their photographs contain images that are interpreted as human forms (ghosts). Another element in the ghost hunter subculture is the use of psychics or mediums to attempt contact with the spirit world. Ghost hunting often combines psychic and technical approaches. This is in the spirit of parapsychology, attempting to bridge science and religion (or spirituality), even if ghost hunters are seldom trained parapsychologists. The few parapsychologists who actually do field studies of hauntings tend to point out that any photograph by itself is of little use as evidence without accompanying reports from witnesses.

CONCLUSION It is clear that there are many ways of framing ghosts. In a scientifically ideal context, we ought to be able to suspend judgment and learn from them all. However, we are haunted by the ghosts of the clash between science and spirituality, between rationality and religion. It is difficult to take ghosts seriously in Western academe without becoming subject to ridicule. If scholars and scientists were not so haunted, we might construct a theory of cultural elaboration in which we could look for some basis for ghosts in experience, then see how this experience becomes framed variously by human cultural constructions. It would still be difficult to ascertain what that basic experience is. At least debunkers and parapsychologists alike could agree that many apparition experiences are illusions, dreams, hallucinations, and other mental phenomena not necessarily related to physical reality. It is the allegedly evidential cases that become problematic. Agreeing to suspend judgment about those cases, we could then move to an appreciation for the cultural variation in ghost cultures, finding the differences between Chinese and Western ghosts, for example, rooted in different forms of economy and social organization. At the same time, we might be impressed by how many cultural universals there are throughout world societies—for example, the use of ghosts as supernatural social control. Other patterns show up in ghost narratives collected at various times and places by modern folklorists, literary analysts, and mass-media scholars who examine ghost motifs and their social/psychological functions.

However we study ghosts, they still involve death, the dead among us, and their many uses. In spite of the official rationality brought about by and since the Enlightenment, ghosts are not really dead. Even in Western societies, with their extremes of normal science and popular culture, there is still some lingering, haunting ambiguity about death and the Headless Horseman.

REFERENCES Bennett, Gillian. 1998. “The Vanishing Hitchhiker at Fifty-Five.” Western Folklore 57:1–17. Breznican, Anthony. 2001. “Supernatural Themes in ‘Harry Potter’ Continue to Anger Certain Conservative Christians.” Associated Press, November 14. Burland, C. A. 1970. “Algonquin Indians.” Pp. 63–65 in Man, Myth and Magic, vol. 1, edited by Richard Cavendish. New York: Marshall Cavendish. Buse, Peter and Andrew Stott. 1999. “Introduction: A Future for Haunting.” In Ghosts: Deconstruction, Psychoanalysis, History, edited by Peter Buse and Andrew Stott. New York: St. Martin’s. Dundes, Alan. 1998. “Bloody Mary in the Mirror: A Ritual Reflection of Pre-Pubescent Anxiety.” Western Folklore 57:119–35. Ellis, Bill. 2001. Aliens, Ghosts and Cults: Legends We Live. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. Emmons, Charles F. 1982. Chinese Ghosts and ESP: A Study of Paranormal Beliefs and Experiences. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow. ———. 1997. At the Threshold: UFOs, Science and the New Age. Mill Spring, NC: Wild Flower. ———. 2003. “The Spiritualist Movement: Bringing the Dead Back.” In Handbook of Death and Dying, vol. 1, edited by Clifton D. Bryant. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Emmons, Charles F. and Jeff Sobal. 1981. “Paranormal Beliefs: Functional Alternatives to Mainstream Religion?” Review of Religious Research 22: 301–12. Felton, D. 1999. Haunted Greece and Rome: Ghost Stories From Classical Antiquity. Austin: University of Texas Press. Goode, Erich. 2000. Paranormal Beliefs: A Sociological Introduction. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland. Henderson, J. Neil. 1981. “Comanche Ghost Sickness: A Biocultural Perspective.” Medical Anthropology 5:195–205. Hess, David J. 1993. Science in the New Age: The Paranormal, Its Defenders and Debunkers, and American Culture. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Honigman, John Joseph. 1945. “Northern and Southern Athapascan Eschatology.” American Anthropologist 47: 467–69. Johnson, Kendall. 1999. “Haunting Transcendence: The Strategy of Ghosts in Bataille and Breton.” Twentieth Century Literature 45:347–70. Johnston, Sarah I. 1999. Restless Dead: Encounters Between the Living and the Dead in Ancient Greece. Berkeley: University of California Press. Jones, Jeffrey M. 2000. “Even Adults Familiar With Harry Potter Books.” Gallup News Service, July 13. Kastenbaum, Robert. 1995. Is There Life After Death? The Latest Evidence Analyzed. London: Prion.

Ghosts: The Dead Among Us– • –95 Kutner, Lawrence. 1994. “Why Halloween Scares Preschoolers.” Parents Magazine, October, pp. 76–77. Maher, Michaeleen C. 1999. “Riding the Waves in Search of the Particles: A Modern Study of Ghosts and Apparitions.” Journal of Parapsychology 63:47–80. ———. 2000. “Quantitative Investigation of the General Wayne Inn.” Journal of Parapsychology 63:365–90. Marshall, Anthony. 2000. “Ghosts Are Good for Business— No Matter Where They Settle Down.” Hotel & Motel Management, January 10, p. 18. McAdams, Deborah D. 2000. “Trips to the Other Side.” Broadcasting & Cable, July 31, p. 36. Montell, William L. 1975. Ghosts Along the Cumberland: Deathlore in the Kentucky Foothills. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press. Nesbitt, Mark. 1991. Ghosts of Gettysburg: Spirits, Apparitions and Haunted Places of the Battlefield. Gettysburg, PA: Thomas. ———. 1992. Ghosts of Gettysburg II: Spirits, Apparitions and Haunted Places of the Battlefield. Gettysburg, PA: Thomas. ———. 1995. Ghosts of Gettysburg III: Spirits, Apparitions and Haunted Places of the Battlefield. Gettysburg, PA: Thomas. ———. 1998. Ghosts of Gettysburg IV: Spirits, Apparitions and Haunted Places of the Battlefield. Gettysburg, PA: Thomas.

———. 2000. Ghosts of Gettysburg V: Spirits, Apparitions and Haunted Places of the Battlefield. Gettysburg, PA: Thomas. Newport, Frank. 1999. “Seven Out of Ten American Families Will Be Giving Out Treats This Halloween.” Gallup News Service, October 29. Newport, Frank and Maura Strausberg. 2001. “Americans’ Belief in Psychic and Paranormal Phenomena Is Up Over Last Decade.” Gallup News Service, June 8. Rhine, Louisa E. 1981. The Invisible Picture: A Study of Psychic Experiences. Jefferson, NC: McFarland. Rogers, L. W. 1949. The Ghosts in Shakespeare: A Study of the Occultism in the Shakespeare Plays. N.p.: Rogers. Rogo, D. Scott. 1974. An Experience of Phantoms. New York: Dell. Smith, Greg. 2001. “Supernatural Ambiguity and Possibility in Irving’s ‘The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.’” Midwest Quarterly 42:174–82. Tangherlini, Timothy R. 1998. “‘Who Ya Gonna Call?’: Ministers and the Mediation of Ghostly Threat in Danish Legend Tradition.” Western Folklore 57:153–78. Tyrrell, G. N. M. (1963). Apparitions. New York: Macmillan. Vandendorpe, Laura. 1998. “Ghost Hunters Link Data With Unexplained Images.” R&D Magazine, June, pp. 106–7.

THE MALEVOLENT “UNDEAD” Cross-Cultural Perspectives

KEITH P. JACOBI

cross the world and throughout time, there is a relationship between the living and the dead. An individual begins to prepare mentally for death once he or she is old enough to comprehend the concept. When a child turns to her father at the age of 4 and says, “When you are dead . . . you don’t come back anymore,” that realization begins the child’s unfortunate walk toward death. All individuals follow similar avenues. However, different cultures march to different drummers in the ways they handle and cope with the dead. The living bury the dead, rebury the dead, pray for the dead, discuss and celebrate the dead, eat the dead, mutilate the dead, and visit the dead. Many living persons wish that particular deceased individuals were not dead and could return. Thus, to confront their own fears of their eventual death, individuals project some degree of animation on the dead. People transcend or rise above their fear of their own death by keeping the dead alive. The term undead is used primarily in reference to what most people think of as the “walking dead.” These undead are corporeal; that is, they are physical entities that have material substance and can be touched or felt. The types of undead that come to mind are animated corporeal bodies such as vampires, zombies, reanimated mummies, reanimated corpses, and bodies cobbled together from bits and pieces of multiple humans, such as the monster in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Usually, the corporeal undead are without souls or human sensibilities. Humans fear these undead because of their physical existence, which means they can touch and therefore physically harm the living. There are two distinctive types of undead: (a) the corporeal undead, which include revenants (a generic term for the animated undead) and vampires (who are undead but have undergone a process of transformation; Barber 1988:2–3); and (b) the corporeal living dead, which include zombies (most notably in relation to the voodoo faith in Haiti). Zombies are not dead but appear to be, even 96

to doctors (Boelderl and Mayr 1995); they are individuals who have been poisoned by a concoction that includes the toxins from puffer fish (Diodon hystrix L., Diodon holacanthus L.), sea toads (Sphoeroides testudineus L., Sphoeroides splengeri Bloch), and the large buga toad (Bufo marinus L.) (Davis 1987, 1988:110). To create a zombie, one mixes these toxins with other ingredients, including the “crushed and ground remains of a human cadaver,” to make a powder that can be placed in food or administered by the prick of a thorn (Davis 1988:110, 112). When an individual ingests the powder, he or she becomes a zombie, although remaining conscious of what is going on around him or her (Boelderl and Mayr 1995). For example: If the patient tried [sic] to take anything in his hand or to stand up, he feels that his limbs are powerless. The patient remains conscious. If he goes to sleep after eating, he finds that he is suffering from poisoning when he awakes and cannot move or speak. In serious cases, the patient may die while asleep. After some time, the motor nervous system is completely paralyzed and it becomes impossible to move any part of the body. The eyes do not respond and the mouth stays closed, making speech impossible. The pulse and respiration slow down. The body temperature drops. Asphyxia occurs as a result of all this and, sometimes, the patient even dies. The patient’s comprehension is not impaired even in serious cases. When asked about his experiences, he can describe everything in detail after recovery. (Akashi 1880, quoted in Davis 1988:156)

Davis (1988) classifies zombies into three types. A zombi astral or zombi éfface is a zombie in which a part of the person’s soul is changed by the individual who possesses it, a zombi cadavre or zombi jardin is a zombie that has been created to work for someone, and a zombi savanne is an individual who had become a zombie and subsequently “returned to the state of the living” (p. 301).

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Unlike zombies, vampires are undead corporeal creatures, dead individuals who have returned from the grave to haunt and physically harm the living. Vampires are malevolent creatures who feed on the living to sustain their own existence because they are not alive (Boelderl and Mayr 1995). When vampires feed, they kill the living. Just as zombies return as the living dead, when a vampire kills, that act enables the deceased to become resurrected; thus the dead become reborn and alive again (Boelderl and Mayr 1995). The term undead also may be used in reference to what are known as ghosts. Ghosts, however, are incorporeal; that is, they do not have a material presence. They are the disembodied and restless spirits of deceased individuals and cannot be touched, nor can they physically touch the living. Underlying belief in ghosts is the common need to confirm that once the body is dead there is a continuation of the life force in an afterlife. The souls or spirits of individuals take form as bodiless presences, or ghosts. Many cultures have traditions concerning the ghosts of ancestors. These ancestor spirits or ghosts are often known as the “living dead” only when they are held in the memory of the living (Mbiti 1970). As time progresses, memories of certain ancestors fade in the living, and eventually these individuals are forgotten and become ghosts without names (Mbiti 1970). For example, among the Lugbara of Uganda there are two types of undead ghosts. The first are ghosts who are nameless and called ancestors. These are dead relatives who have faded from the memories of their descendants. The second are ghosts of relatives who have recently died. The living rely on these ghosts for aid against their daily misfortunes (Middleton 1971:488). In different cultures, people describe and perceive the presence of ghosts differently. Ghosts are often observed to be wearing white sheets—an image that undoubtedly arises from the shrouds or winding-sheets used to wrap corpses before they are placed in their graves. Ghosts come in a wide variety of shapes and kinds, however. Some are transparent. Some are lifelike apparitions of their former selves, whereas others are horribly gaunt, with empty faces, devoid of eyes and lips. Not all ghosts take human or even vaguely human form: Phantom horses frequently appear, as do phantom dogs and large birds, and ghost lore is full of accounts of ghost trains, ghost stagecoaches, and, of course, phantom ships such as the Flying Dutchman (Lehmann and Myers 1989:304). These animated incorporeal undead are for the most part benevolent and benign. Many of them have died “good deaths” (Bloch and Parry 1982:16) and are helpful ghosts or spirits. Still, there are those undead whom the living do not want to return, and some cultures may create cults of the dead to help deal with the loss and fear they feel toward the deceased (Malefijt 1968). In addition, the malevolent undead may have been unsavory or vengeful people when alive—monsters in life, so they would naturally become monsters in death. They may have been people who were averted from their path to the afterworld by supernatural

forces, or they may have died “bad deaths” (Bloch and Parry 1982:16). Newcomb (1940) quotes a Navajo medicine man: “After the spirit has gone there is something evil about the body which none of the Navajos understand, and of which they are afraid” (p. 75). The ancient Maya believed the underworld, or Xibalba, to be heavily populated with ugly, evil mutants. They are depicted in Maya art as “creatures that were skeletal, hermaphroditic, anthropomorphic, and zoomorphic” (Jacobi 2000:38). The names the Maya gave to the underworld spirits were of such misfortunes as “disease, old age, sacrifice and war, and were often depicted with black marks, representing decaying flesh, as well as bony bodies and distended bellies” (Schele and Miller 1986:268). In Maya art, depictions of the spirits of Xibalba show individuals with “farts so pungent that they emerge in huge scrolls, and their breath is so foul it is visible” (Schele and Miller 1986:268). These visual manifestations encapsulate the fear of the living toward ugly and malevolent spirits. The living do not want such spirits to return, but they animate the undead to provide mental and physical outlets through which they can express their own fears. One can curse at, plead with, cry out to, hate, and physically strike back at the malevolent undead; one can blame them for all of one’s misfortunes (bad luck, disease, and death). The malevolent undead are a needed construct of humanity. The cosmology of the Netsilik Eskimos includes a number of malevolent supernatural forces, some of which represent the human undead. A shaman might acquire the help of one group of spirits, the tunraqs, as a gift from another shaman or through the spirits’ decision to associate with the shaman. The tunraqs, which are ghosts of dead men, could even be related to the shaman (e.g., they may include the shaman’s grandfather; Balikci 1967). The tunraqs are supposed to be helpful spirits. They help to lessen the impacts of the actions of malevolent spirits who try to bring sickness and other types of misfortune to the Eskimos. According to Balikci (1967), even though the tunraq spirits are helpful, they can also be very independent: One “spirit called Orpingalik . . . used to attack his master Anaidjuq suddenly from behind and pull out his genitals; the unfortunate shaman, after much yelling, could recover these during a trance” (p. 195). Evil ghosts, such as the ghosts of men who felt that magic killed them while they were in bed, are especially feared in Netsilik Eskimo culture. When tunraq spirits are evil, they are the most feared of the evil spirits. If a shaman sends a tunraq spirit on a mission and the spirit fails in that mission, the spirit will turn on its master and could cause sickness and death to the master, his relatives, and other Netsilik in the shaman’s camp. Then other shamans need to assist in turning away the evil tunraq with even more powerful tunraqs that they have enlisted to help them (Balikci 1967). Among the Navajo, “bad deaths” include deaths caused by unforeseen acts of nature, such as lightning strikes. Kluckhohn (1967) quotes one story about such a death:

98– • –KEEPING THE DEAD ALIVE It was almost dark and that man was standing in the door of that same hogan. His wife and kids were outside getting in the sheep. All at once lightning struck that man and killed him. His wife and kids ran away and didn’t even go back in the hogan to get their things. They never went back and that man is still where they left him. (P. 213)

According to Ward (1980), Navajos who die bad deaths— such as through drowning, murder, or suicide—should not be touched, therefore many of them go unburied. Violation of this taboo might force a ghost to return and harm the living. The animation of both good and malevolent incorporeal and corporeal undead is a direct result of various eventrelated individual or group actions. The malevolent undead may be animated through a variety of events: An individual could die a bad death, or could misidentify a living person as someone who is dead; an individual might mistake a normal or abnormal taphonomic process for a sign of the undead returning, or strike up a discussion with a dead person about a certain topic; or an individual might neglect to pay tribute to his or her dead ancestors, or physically create a living or dead enemy through aggression, or even write about the undead.

THE MISTAKEN MALEVOLENT UNDEAD: THE MALEVOLENT UNDEAD AT FIRST CONTACT In the early 1930s, when the Australian explorer Michael Leahy traveled to unexplored areas of Papua New Guinea to search for gold, he became the first person from the outside world to contact the inhabitants of this remote highland region. His extensive notes, photos, and film footage went unnoticed for 50 years, until Bob Connolly and Robin Anderson rediscovered them and created both a documentary film and a book titled First Contact (1987). The book and film include interviews with Leahy as well as his brothers and others who were on the expedition in addition to interviews with members of the Mount Hagan highland tribe who were present at first contact. The interviews with the tribe members are important because they provide recollections of what exactly the tribe’s men and women believed the Leahy brothers represented. The people of Mount Hagan believed the white men were spirits, the returning ghosts of loved ones and ancestors. They even believed they recognized the white men as certain relatives: We’d never seen white men before—that’s why we thought they must be our own returning dead—and my mother thought Mick Leahy was the spirit of my dead father, who had come to take me. . . . One day we were digging for earthworms—well out of sight of the white man’s camp. Mick . . . came up to us and took me. My mother began to cry and said, “Don’t go away!” Mick took me, telling my mother, “I will look after him, and he’ll grow big, and then come back and talk to you people.” . . . My mother wasn’t sure if Mick

was my dead father, and she hesitated to let me go in case they killed me. But our village was some distance away, and she had to go. But she said she would come back next morning and find out what they’d done to me. (Quoted in Connolly and Anderson 1987:160–61)

Among the tribespeople, there was no doubt that the white men were the dead. One of Michael Leahy’s companions was a man named Michael Dwyer, who happened to have false teeth. One of the highlanders recounts that this white man pulled out his teeth, and “‘when we saw this everyone just ran in all directions.’ . . . Teeth might fall from a dead man’s skull, but surely not from the living” (p. 38). When the highlanders spied on the strangers while they were bathing in the river, some highlanders at first came to the conclusion that the white men were not the returning dead, they were just men; after all, they had penises just the same as all of the tribesmen. However, while the white men bathed, the highlanders saw white foam (soap suds) surround and cover their bodies. The highlanders thought this foam “was the pus coming from a dead person’s skin, like the milky part from the rotten flesh” (p. 46). When the strangers went to the river to pan for gold, it appeared to the highlanders that the white men were “sifting the gravel for their own bones” (p. 51). Even legend fueled the highlanders’ fear of these malevolent white spirits. Their tribal lore included stories of “giant white beings with fangs who could crack open trees with loud explosions and who hunted men” (p. 104). The strange appearance of Leahy’s group and the shootings of Mount Hagen people that eventually took place (set off by the theft of supplies and the fact that Leahy and his companions felt that their lives and the lives of their carriers were in danger) became ingrained in the psyches of the Mount Hagen people. Even today, they keep quiet about dead relatives. They do not welcome them back from the dead as they did at first contact. They remember stories about the wild spirits that came and killed people, and these stories are the cause of much fear among the tribespeople (Connolly and Anderson 1987).

WILL THE REAL UNDEAD RISE? THE REVENANT AND THE VAMPIRE Sometimes people animate the dead because of ignorance about taphonomic processes. Often, they mistake the details of the process of human decomposition for signs of life. The living may focus on certain aspects of a dead body and come to fear that the dead may walk again to harm the living. In the famous story of Peter Plogojowitz from the third decade of the 1700s, as recounted by Barber (1988:6–7), we get a view of how the vampire took form as a malevolent entity. Plogojowitz died and was buried. Then, some 10 weeks after his death, the village he had lived in experienced misfortune. Within the span of a week, nine other people died after an illness that lasted

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24 hours. Individuals who were on their deathbeds said that Peter Plogojowitz came to them while they slept and “laid himself on them, and throttled them, so that they would have to give up the ghost” (p. 6). These accounts by several individuals who then died created fear among other villagers. They knew that certain signs would indicate if Plogojowitz were indeed a vampire. They speculated that the evidence would include a lack of decomposition, and the body may even have enlarged since its burial, due to its feasting on the living. Further, they expected that there would be obvious hair and nail growth. Plogojowitz’s body was exhumed, and the following horrors were noted by the imperial provisor of the Gradisk District: The hair and beard—even the nails, of which the old ones had fallen away—had grown on him; the old skin . . . had peeled away and a new fresh one had emerged under it. The face, hands, and feet, and the whole body were so constituted, that they could not have been more complete in his lifetime. . . . I saw some fresh blood in his mouth, which, according to the common observation, he had sucked from the people killed by him. In short, all the indications were present that such people (as remarked above) are said to have . . . all the subjects with great speed, sharpened a stake . . . and put this at his heart, whereupon, as he was pierced, not only did much blood, completely fresh, flow also through his ears and mouth, but still other wild signs (which I pass by out of high respect) took place. (Quoted in Barber 1988:6–7)

The story of Peter Plogojowitz provides a classic example of the creation of a vampire—an undead being that is undergoing the process of transformation to a creature that might be interested in blood (Barber 1988). As noted above, revenant is a generic term used to refer to all animated undead. Accounts of some of the more wellknown types of malevolent undead come from Europe, but vampires are not solely a creation or construct of Eastern Europeans—vampire legends are a worldwide phenomenon. Vampires appear in one form or another in many cultures: the obayifo and asasabonsam (Ashanti) and the asiman (Dahomeans) of Africa; the fifollet or feu-follet of African Americans in Louisiana; the American vampires of New England; the loogaroo of Haiti; the asema of Surinam; the sukuyan of Trinidad; the Dakhanavar of Armenia; the yara-ma-yha-who of the Australian Aborigines; the opyri or vipir, vepir, vapir, the obur, and the ustrel of Bulgaria; the chiang-shih or kiang-shi of China; the upír and nelapsi of the Czech Republic and Slovakia; the dhampirs and mulo of the Gypsies of Eastern Europe; the Nachtzehrer or Bluatsauger of Germany; the lamiai, empusai, mormolykiai, strige, callicantzaros, and vrykolakas of Greece; the rakshasas, the yatu-dhana or hatu-dhana, the pisachas, the bhutas, vetalas, or betails, and the goddess Kali of India; the kappa of Japan; the lampir of Bosnia; the Camazotz of the Maya of Central America; the Tlalteuctli, Coatlicue, Cihuacoatl, Itzpapalotl, Cihuateteo, and Tlahuelpuchi of the Aztecs of Mexico; the thaye and tasei of Myanmar; the aswang, danag, and mandurugo of the

Philippines; the upier, upierzyca, and vjesci of Poland; the langsuyar, pontianak, and penanggalan of Malaysia; the Strigoi and Moroi of Romania; the uppyr and eretik of Russia; the mara of Scandinavia; the bruxa of Portugal; the Vukodlak, kosac, prikosac, tenjac, and lupi manari of Croatia; the kukuthi or lugat of Albania; the vjeshtitza of Montenegro; the Talamaur of the Banks Islands in the South Pacific; the Phi Song Nang of Thailand; the 58 Wrathful Dieties of Tibet; and the baobban sith of Scotland (Melton 1994). This list, although by no means complete, illustrates the global presence of the vampire phenomenon. The Peter Plogojowitz account shows how the decomposition of the dead plays an important part in the fears of the living. Many of the specifics of the deterioration of dead human bodies have become part of folklore. In research conducted through the Human Identification Laboratory of the Arizona State Museum, University of Arizona, Galloway (1997:140–41) defined the five stages of decomposition, beginning with remains that are fresh and progressing through early and advanced decomposition to skeletonization and finally to extreme decomposition. Galloway (1997:141), Rebmann, David, and Sorg (2000:14), Anderson (2001), and Roksandic (2002) provide definitive information on the decomposition of human remains; I summarize this information briefly below. Fresh remains (first stage), whether they be burned or not, include flesh with little change to the surface or exterior of the body. There is no discoloration of the body. Within the body, bacteria are hard at work, decomposing tissues. No smell is obvious to humans, but dogs can detect fresh remains from a distance. No insect activity is obvious. Early decomposition (second stage) is characterized by a change in color of the cadaver. First, the color is of a “pink-white appearance,” which changes to a gray and then to green discoloration; then a brownish discoloration becomes apparent at the fingers, nose, and ears (Galloway 1997:141). There is a progression to a green color on a bloated body, and finally the color darkens from green to brown to black discoloration seen in the arms and legs. Odor from the remains is noticeable to humans and animals at a distance (Rebmann et al. 2000:14). The appearance of the body in early decomposition includes bloating from internal body gases, skin slippage, and hair loss, with some areas of the body looking fresh while other areas are bloated. After bloating, the skin can get a leathery appearance. Insects are present, helping with decomposition (Galloway 1997; Rebmann et al. 2000). In advanced decomposition (third stage), the flesh on the body collapses due to body gases escaping, with a “caving in of the abdominal cavity, often accompanied by extensive maggot activity” (Galloway 1997:141; see also Rebmann et al. 2000). Remaining flesh can be black in color (Rebmann et al. 2000). Mummification takes place in environments conducive to this process. Moist decomposition includes beginnings of bone exposure and the development of adipocere, a soapy, crumbly material that forms from soft tissue after it has been in a water environment

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for a while. The odor of the remains is strong and easily discernible by humans and animals at a distance (Rebmann et al. 2000). During skeletonization (fourth stage), the tissues undergo liquefaction. Decayed tissues liquefy and penetrate the surrounding dirt matrix. Bone becomes dry, with some remaining human grease. The odor of the remains becomes weaker. It may smell “cheesy or musty,” and animals can detect this smell from a distance (Rebmann et al. 2000:14). Finally, the bone becomes a dry bone skeleton. In extreme decomposition (fifth stage), the skeleton itself undergoes deterioration due to the natural elements. Exposure to sun will bleach bones and cause them to dry and crack. Bone will exfoliate in this fifth stage. The body may have a “musty odor,” and an animal cannot detect the odor from as far away as during earlier stages (Rebmann et al. 2000). Other signs of decomposition that figure into the folklore of the revenant and the vampire, as Glaister and Rentoul (1966) note, include the enlargement of the face, enlargement of the scrotum or vulva, the appearance of blisters of all sizes on the body, the dropping off of fingernails and toenails; the liquefaction of the eyeballs, and, perhaps most important for folklore, the exuding of a fluid mixed with blood from the mouth and nose. The effects of decomposition, added to the manifestations of a disease, help to account for descriptions of vampires in New England. Among the signs of vampires reported by individuals in New England during the late 1700s through the later 1800s are the usual observations one might expect of a decomposing body in a grave: bloated chest, long fingernails, and blood issuing from the mouth. However, the presence of tuberculosis also played an important part in creating the vampire lore of New England. Tuberculosis is a disease that causes the sufferer to waste away. Persons with tuberculosis “‘lose flesh,’ despite the fact that they remained active, desirous of sustenance, and maintained a fierce will to live” (Brown 1941; quoted in Sledzik and Bellantoni 1994:271). These physical and mental characteristics helped to fuel belief in vampires among some New Englanders. People afflicted with tuberculosis desired to live but were wasting away. In addition, they coughed up blood-streaked sputum (Hetherington and Eshleman 1958); this appearance of blood at the mouth paralleled what the New Englanders knew of the vampires of Europe. Tuberculosis is also highly contagious, spreading rapidly among individuals who live in crowded conditions. If a person died of the disease, it was likely that he or she had also infected relatives or other individuals who were living in close proximity. In perpetuation of the vampire myth, it would appear that the dead individual came back as a malevolent undead being to feast off those close relatives. The victims would show evidence of this draining by appearing to waste away (Sledzik and Bellantoni 1994). J. R. Cole (1888) describes a case involving six sisters in which such feasting by the malevolent undead was

halted. Michael Bell presents this account in his book Food for the Dead (2001): In the old West Stafford graveyard the tragedy of exhuming a dead body and burning the heart and lungs was once enacted—a weird night scene. Of a family consisting of six sisters, five had died in rapid succession of galloping consumption [tuberculosis]. The old superstition in such cases is that the vital organs of the dead still retain a certain flicker of vitality and by some strange process absorb the vital forces of the living, and they quote in evidence apocryphal instances wherein exhumation has revealed a heart and lungs still fresh and living, encased in rottening and slimy integuments, and in which, after burning these portions of the defunct, a living relative, else doomed and hastening to the grave, has suddenly and miraculously recovered. The ceremony of cremation of the vitals of the dead must be conducted at night by a single individual and at the open grave in order that the results may be decisive. In 1872, the Boston Health Board Reports describe a case in which such a midnight cremation was actually performed during that year. (Pp. 161–62)

CONVERSATIONS WITH THE MALEVOLENT UNDEAD The living often want to persuade the dead not to interfere with or harm the living. The living also often converse with the dead for other reasons, such as to describe current happenings, to ask about what the afterlife is like for the dead, to ask the dead to undertake specific actions on behalf of the living, and to create a dialogue that allows the living to understand why someone died. Historically, among the Mandan Indians of North America a proper funeral ceremony was conducted by the village members upon the death of an individual. The body of the deceased was outfitted in clothing and supplies that represented what that individual would need if he or she were to embark on a journey of a few days’ duration. The body was then wrapped in buffalo skin and placed on a scaffold in an area away from the village where there were other scaffolds. The deceased would then be considered a member of a “village of the dead” (Catlin 1975:146). Village members would visit this village of the dead daily, to mourn. Eventually, the scaffolds and the flesh of the dead would deteriorate and the skeletal remains and scaffold pieces would fall to the ground. The skulls would then be picked up and placed in a circle that included about a hundred skulls “placed some eight or nine inches from each other with the faces all looking to the center” (Catlin 1975:147). Family members of the deceased would know which skulls were those of their relations. The skull circle served as a focal point for meeting the dead, as George Catlin (1975), who studied the Indians in the 1800s, describes: Independent of the duties which draw the women to this spot, they visit it from inclination, and linger upon it to converse with the dead. There is scarcely an hour on a pleasant day

The Malevolent “Undead”– • –101 when some of these women may not be seen sitting or laying by the skull of their child or husband—talking to it in the most pleasant and endearing language they can use and seemingly getting an answer back. It is not unfrequently the case that the woman brings her needle-work with her, spending the greater part of the day sitting by the side of the skull of her child, chatting incessantly with it, while she is embroidering or garnishing a pair of Moccasins. Then, perhaps, overcome with fatigue, she falls asleep, with her arms encircled around it, forgetting herself for hours. Afterward she gathers up her things and returns to the village. (P. 147)

Talking to the dead is a universal practice that continues throughout the modern world. People in modern rural Alabama, and in Chicago, and in Osaka, Japan, go to cemeteries, lay offerings on or next to graves, and talk to the dead individuals buried there. One group that takes the practice of conversation with the dead to a passionate and highly involved level is the Sora of eastern India. For the Sora, conversation with the dead is a daily exercise, and participating in such conversation is a way of dealing with issues surrounding death. A conversation may be as simple as a single living individual talking to a single dead individual, or it may be very complex, involving a number of living and dead individuals. Shamans (usually female) act as mediums for the dead individuals. The discussions are synergistic: All individuals involved, both dead and alive, use these sessions to learn about each other, and, through that knowledge, both the dead and the living change. For example, they might better understand the nature of an individual’s death and the feelings about that death of all the individuals, dead and alive, who may figure into the story. If a number of living participants are involved in a dialogue with several dead participants, the living often circle around the shaman, who is in a trance and provides the avenue for one or more of the dead to speak. During these sessions, the living question, argue, “persuade, cajole, tease, remind, deceive, plead,” and even gossip and laugh with the dead, sometimes for hours (Vitebsky 1993:5). Among the Sora, a dead person is known as a sonum. The sonum lives in an alternate world, a distorted world, compared with the known world of the living. In that world, “the dead keep doves as chickens and pythons as cows . . . and hunt living humans as game animals” (Vitebsky 1993:217). The sonum is not only an individual but a condition. A sonum has a dual purpose in its relationship with the living. It can be benevolent and helpful (known as an ancestor sonum), or it can be malevolent and punishing (known as an experience sonum). The Sora believe that any death or sickness is a direct result of the actions of a sonum (Vitebsky 1993). An experience sonum does not directly kill or create a sickness for an individual. Rather, the sonum duplicates the symptoms of its own sickness or death and projects those symptoms and/or exact manner of death on the living. The Sora understand the sonum’s causing an illness or death in another person as part of the cycle of life and death. Different experience sonums reside in different

areas, each creating its own symptoms. For example, a sun-sonum resides in the sun and can cause deaths due to accident or murder. An earth-sonum can cause death in childbirth or old age. A convulsion or epilepsy-sonum lives just outside a village in a “clump of bushes” (Vitebsky 1993:74) and causes convulsions and epilepsy. Vitebsky (1993:139) relates a story that illustrates the malevolent nature of the undead in Sora society. An earthsonum caused the deaths of several Sora women in childbirth. One woman named Mabmati died in childbirth and became earth-sonum. Mabmati duplicated the death in her niece Ra’gi, who was unmarried and pregnant. Ra’gi died in pregnancy due to an abortion gone awry; the abortion also resulted in the fetus’s death. Ra’gi became earthsonum and duplicated her death in her lineage-sister Gadi, who in turn duplicated the death in her sister Pui’jan. Vitebsky (1993:164) presents a transcription of one Sora dialogue involving 19 dead persons and 3 living speakers. The Sora were trying to heal a baby stricken with diarrhea and backache caused by the lumbago-sonum, which is related to the sun-sonum. In this involved and complex dialogue, which has almost 300 speaker changes, we find out that a male sonum named Palda, who killed himself, is trying to kill the son of a woman named Rungkudi, who is one of the living speakers: Palda:

Hey aunt! You were happy enough to dispose of my corpse, weren’t you?

Rungkudi:

. . . Did your mother or father teach you to hang yourself? Did they put you up to it?

Palda:

I’m not saying any of you put me up to it.

Rungkudi:

So did I kill you then? Don’t you try to pass on your death to your brother again. I’m not joking, if you get my boy . . . to do it I’ll . . .

Palda:

Only the other day I almost made him hang himself, but then I said “Hey, you, untie yourself!” I went and fetched a knife to cut him down . . . Hey, aunt, are you listening?

Palda goes on to tell the living speakers how he might be prevented from causing the death of Rungkudi’s son. The ritual involves sacrificing a pig and then cutting up and burning rope. Palda leaves the dialogue and other sonums enter, each with issues for the living; of course, the living also have issues with the dead. One of the living, an elderly woman named Sindi, tries to prevent Rungkudi’s dead daughter, Amboni, from giving her death symptoms (scars on the throat, coughing, and choking) to Rungkudi or to her living sisters. The Sora’s conversations with both the benign and the malevolent undead allow both the living and the dead to evolve. Individuals change, for the most part, in positive ways. In some cases, there is room for redemption of a sonum. Through their conversations with the dead, the Sora achieve a better understanding of the relationships

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between living individuals and dead ones. The person involved in a dialogue creates “an intimate and subtle portrait of a personality, derived from the sum of his interactions” (Vitebsky 1993:119). And when multiple living and dead individuals are involved in dialogues, the Sora people as a whole evolve, changing because they have a more defined and clearer picture of the strengths and weaknesses of the living and the histories and personalities of the dead, who become reaffirmed in the minds of the living. These conversations with the dead illustrate that the dead open relationships with the living and control those relationships. As Vitebsky (1993) notes, “The dead make the living into passive objects of their own activity,” but the result of the dialogue is an education in life (p. 244).

THE MALEVOLENT “LIVING” VERSUS THE MALEVOLENT “UNDEAD”: A NATIVE AMERICAN EXAMPLE Throughout history, humans have been cruel in their treatment of the human body at death and after death. Decapitations and the hacking off of body parts are recorded in both the written and the archaeological record throughout the world. It is true that a good number of these decapitations and dismemberments were inflicted in the throes of battle, and some of the dismemberments happened by accident, but beyond the fact that these inflicted traumas caused death, they have another significance: Many of these dismemberments are directly related to the intent of individuals or groups to prevent the recipients of the trauma from coming back from the dead, or to prevent those individuals from attaining a particular spiritual place. Although they were not dealing with the undead in a manner that one would equate with vampires, prehistoric and historic Native Americans had numerous methods for preventing malevolent or enemy spirits from coming back to punish the living. One of the most visible of these is found in the burial treatment of those who might have been considered threats. In most prehistoric and historic Native American interments, the individual was buried in an extended or flexed manner, on his or her back or side. Burials of individuals in a prone position—that is, lying facedown—were not as common. In fact, such burials were reserved for individuals who were different or who were enemies. At the prehistoric site of Moundville in Alabama, for example, the burials of two achondroplastic dwarves were found in the 1930s. Achondroplasia is a rare congenital malformation and is very rare in the prehistoric record. Both of the individuals were found buried facedown (Snow 1943). The unstated implication behind this mode of burial is that the living did not want these individuals to come back. Examples of similar practices have been found throughout the world. For instance, Ralph Merrifield (1987) found that in Britain during the late Roman and early Anglo-Saxon periods there were a

significant number of prone burials. Merrifield asserts that the bodies were placed in this manner to ensure that the deceased did not return, as the act of prone burial separated the living from the dead and directed the dead on a journey away from the living. At the archaeological site of Mulberry Creek (1Ct27) in the Tennessee River Valley in northern Alabama, three Native American individuals were found who had been thrown in the burial pit in a haphazard fashion and covered over with dirt (Webb and DeJarnette 1942). Two of the three had projectile points embedded in their backs. These individuals were enemies to those who buried them; they were afforded the dignity of a burial, but the lack of care in how they were placed in their grave reflects disrespect. Native Americans found that one of the most visible ways of punishing the dead was by the act of scalping. Native Americans believed that to travel successfully to an existence after death, they needed to be physically complete (Hudson 1976), and scalping precluded this. For Native Americans in the Southeast, the treatment of the body after death was of great concern. As Hudson (1976) recounts, when men were killed away from home in a raid, warriors would sometimes scalp one of their dead comrades themselves so that their enemies could not take the scalp. When it was possible to return and reclaim the remains of comrades fallen among the enemy, they would do so; when they could not, they wept and mourned the death of these men far more than for men who had the benefit of proper mortuary rites. It was deeply disgraceful to have one’s body dismembered or left to be devoured by animals. (P. 328)

Scalping was tangible proof of an individual’s success in combat. Most individuals who were scalped were already dead or died soon after the act of scalping. However, rare individuals did survive being scalped, sometimes for weeks, like one individual whose remains were found at the prehistoric site of Moundville, and sometimes longer, like another individual whose remains from the same site indicate that his scalp lesions healed totally and he lived out the rest of his life (Snow 1941). Both of these individuals would have lived what was left of their lives after their scalpings with the knowledge of their coming destiny after death and the knowledge that they would be prevented from harming the living after they died. At the archaeological site of 1Lu59 (Bluff Creek site), excavated during the Works Progress Administration’s project in the Tennessee River Valley, the burial treatment of one individual represents an interesting case of the living dealing with someone they thought to be a threat in death. As Webb and DeJarnette (1942) describe the case, the skeletal remains are of a man who was buried headless. Found across his abdomen were five human fibulae that had been sharpened to points. These fibulae may have been tools of torture used to pierce the man. In addition, evidence of a necklace made of human teeth was found in the vicinity of the individual’s neck and between his elbows.

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The 100 teeth that made up the necklace show evidence of holes drilled to thread cords through and grooves on the roots of the teeth to wrap cords around. It is obvious that this individual was not accorded the common treatment of a Native American at death, in that he was incomplete. This individual could have been some type of shaman, as evidenced by the necklace. The fact that the necklace included at least 10 lower-left second premolar teeth indicates that the teeth came from at least 10 different people. These teeth, although worn, show no evidence of caries development, so the deceased was not extracting teeth for the purpose of alleviating pain due to decay. All tooth classes are present: incisors, canines, premolars, and molars. All of the teeth are from adults. What did these teeth represent to the deceased individual? They were not diseased teeth. They were not the teeth of the young or of individuals who were initiates to puberty or some type of tribal fraternity. The teeth could have been the teeth of enemies, and they probably served as trophies that represented the individual’s power over other living or dead individuals. The fact that this “shaman” was decapitated indicates the power the living had over this individual at his death, and their disrespect for him. The beheading was a conscious attempt to prevent the deceased from accessing the afterlife and coming back to harm the living. When Native Americans placed additional human body parts in a burial with an individual who was complete, this represented an offering to that individual. Such human trophy elements were taken from individuals who were believed to be not worthy of being complete, or who were at least not as worthy as the individual with whom the trophy elements were buried. These unfortunate individuals were enemies or slaves. Sacrifice victims (children, tribe members, and others), in contrast, would be offered up whole, and a different status would be given to them. Regardless, the mutilated individuals would be prevented from accessing the afterlife and from coming back to harm the living. Their body parts would honor the deceased in the burial pit by virtue of being revenge. In Tennessee, at an archaeological site named Chucalissa (40SY1), which dates to the beginning of the 1400s, there are three separate burials with extra human body parts buried with them. One of the three has an individual buried with three extra human skulls (Nash 1972). Marks indicating scalping appear on two of the skulls, and one of the other skulls was painted red (Jacobi and Hill 2001). Archaeological sites in the Tennessee River Valley in northern Alabama, such as the Koger’s Island site (1Lu92) and the Perry site (1Lu25), have multiple burials with deliberately placed body parts in the burial pits, specifically, skulls, hands, and feet. These skeletal offerings honor the individual; they prevent his enemies from hurting him in the afterlife and prevent those enemies from harming the living. Trophy hands and feet even accompanied some of the seven individuals who were scalped and placed in mass graves at the Koger’s Island site (Bridges, Jacobi, and Powell 2000). They were

incomplete, but revenge in the form of trophy hands or feet was placed within their burial pit. Sometimes Native Americans took the power they expressed over the dead to the level of using a human body part in a ceremony or even for everyday tasks. For example, they made simple tools out of human skeletal elements, such as a portion of human femur (Jacobi and Hill 2001). At Pinson Mound, archaeologists have found rattles made from human parietals (two parietals filled with small pebbles and fastened together with cord), decorated with elaborate designs (Mainfort 1986). These noisemakers were placed on either the arms or the legs; similar rattles made out of turtle shells were worn in the same manner (Lewis and Kneberg 1946, plates 102, 103). Native Americans also have been known to make bowls out of human skulls. At the archaeological site of Mulberry Creek (1CT27), a human skull bowl was found; it is complete with drilled holes toward the rim of the bowl that would have allowed cord to be attached so that the bowl could be hung up or suspended (Webb and DeJarnette 1942). This bowl was not found in a burial context; it most likely represents the remnants of a disrespected individual, perhaps a victim of battle, who ended up as either a utilitarian object or a ceremonial object. It is also possible that the bowl represents a Native American “attempt at keeping the legacy of some relative alive through the incorporation of a physical portion of the individual into a daily or ceremonial icon. Or, were they modifying skeletal elements of individuals who were viewed as enemies and thus exerting some kind of control or revenge over them?” (Jacobi and Hill 2001:9). Through their actions perimortem and postmortem, Native Americans of the Southeast physically and, more important, psychologically delivered punishment to individuals who were malevolent or potentially malevolent after death. Well-known engravings by A. De Batz, Le Page Du Pratz, and Theodore DeBry (who based his work on first-person eyewitness accounts and sketches by Jacques Le Moyne) document the trophy taking and display of human remains. Drawings exist that depict individuals displaying dried scalps poles (Fundaburk [1958] 1996:48–49, ills. 113, 115), and one engraving shows the total dismemberment of a human, with nothing left but a torso. Two other engravings show trophy arms and legs hung on poles, with the remaining torsos violated in the anus with arrows and poles (Fundaburk [1958] 1996:10–11, ills. 15, 16). Native Americans who were disrespected, hated, or misunderstood during their lives would have known what would happen to their bodies at death and, in some cases, for years after. This was the inherently understood psychological punishment to the recipient. Both the physical and the psychological trauma inflicted by these actions helped Native Americans to confront their own fears of death. By continuing to use the remains of the dead, Native Americans reminded themselves of the power they had over their enemies.

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THE MALEVOLENT UNDEAD AS ENTERTAINMENT: THE ANIMATED DEAD IN POPULAR CULTURE Fear has always been a driving factor in the majority of human reactions or responses to the undead. Conversely, fascination with the dead, sometimes fascination propelled by fear, drives some humans into acceptance of, glorification of, obsession with, mimicry of, and even partnership with the undead. Since prehistoric times, humans have shown an interest in how the body works (Ackerknecht 1967, 1982; Lisowski 1967). Scientists and artists in the past fueled human fascination with the dead (and the undead) through their dissections and anatomical drawings, which provided the public with views of the inside of the human body. Hans Holbein, an artist who lived in the first half of the 1500s, produced a series of woodcuts titled The Dance of Death. These engravings depict a human skeleton (representing death) appearing in the lives of numerous people in all walks of life. For example, different illustrations in the series show the death skeleton standing behind the pope, playing the violin to a duchess, preventing a peddler from peddling his wares, pouring wine down the throat of a drunkard, and leading a blind man to his destiny (Holbein 1887, plates V, XXI, XXXIII, XXXIX, XLIII). In 1543, Andreas Vesalius of Brussels, the founder of modern anatomy, created one of the greatest volumes of anatomical illustrations ever produced: De Humani Corporis Fabrica. Each illustration, with its accompanying anatomical labeling, is an artistic masterpiece. The title page of the volume illustrates a human dissection under way, with throngs of people straining to see, some crowding around the dissection table, others looking over their shoulders, and still others leaning over a balcony above (Saunders and O’Malley 1973:43). In the anatomical illustrations, the human body is posed in odd and striking ways. There are depictions of standing skeletons and fleshless bodies with pealed-back muscles and tendons that appear as if they are dripping or oozing off the body in the process of decomposition. The fleshless bodies also stand upright. In one illustration, a body is held upright by a rope hung around the neck; another shows a body leaning against a wall (Saunders and O’Malley 1973:103, 107). Many of the illustrations show fleshless bodies striking poses in the foreground within natural landscape scenes. In the background, towns and other structures can be seen (Saunders and O’Malley 1973:93–103). Most people today would find these depictions of fleshless figures horrific, no less than did people in the 1500s. The figures in many of the illustrations appear to walk as though alive, and although such depictions educated some of the public, others were both fascinated and frightened by them. In the early 1800s, the vampire found its way into popular culture. Lord Byron had started a novel that was to involve a Greek vampire who fakes his own death and burial (what survives of this text today is usually referred

to as “A Fragment of a Novel” or “Augustus Darvell”). The vampire’s traveling companion later arrives in England and finds that the vampire is alive and feasting on Londoners (Bleiler 1966). At the time Byron was writing and plotting this novel, he was attended medically by a doctor named John Polidori. Polidori stole Byron’s idea and subsequently wrote and published a story titled “The Vampyre” in an issue of the New Monthly Magazine in 1819 (Bleiler 1966). Even with Polidori’s name on it, the public accepted the story as Byron’s. The vampire soon became a popular figure. A stage play based on “The Vampyre” was produced in France in the early 1820 (Bleiler 1966), during which period the public’s obsession with vampires continued. Two German operas based on Polidori’s story were produced in 1828: In March, Heinrich Marschner’s Der Vampyr was performed, and Peter Joseph Von Lindpaintner’s version of the story, with the same title, was performed in September (Palmer 1992; Brown 1992). Literature was the primary medium through which the undead continued to be part of popular culture. Thomas Preskett Prest published the amusing, campy novel Varney the Vampire in 1847, and Sheridan LeFanu’s Carmilla, about a female vampire, was published in 1872. However, two novels that appeared in the 1800s rise above the rest: Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley, published in 1818; and Dracula, by Bram Stoker, published in 1897. These two works brought the malevolent undead to the mass public and created a foundation for the expanded elaboration of the undead mythos that continues to this day. These classic novels encapsulate all the centuries of humankind’s fear of and fascination with the dead. From Frankenstein: It was on a dreary night of November that I beheld the accomplishment of my toils. . . . It was already one in the morning . . . when, by the glimmer of the half-extinguished light, I saw the dull yellow eye of the creature open; it breathed hard, and a convulsive motion agitated its limbs. How can I describe my emotions at this catastrophe, or how delineate the wretch whom with such infinite pains and care I had endeavoured to form? His limbs were in proportion, and I had selected his features as beautiful. Beautiful! Great God! His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a lustrous black, and flowing; his teeth of a pearly whiteness; but these luxuriances only formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes, that seemed almost of the same colour as the dun-white sockets in which they were set, his shrivelled complexion and straight black lips. (Shelley [1818] 1981:42)

From Dracula: “Ah, you believe now?” I answered: “Do not press me too hard all at once. I am willing to accept. How will you do this bloody work? “I shall cut off her head and fill her mouth with garlic, and I shall drive a stake through her body.” It made me shudder to think of so mutilating the body of the woman whom I had loved. (Stoker [1897] 1992:207)

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The malevolent undead continue to figure as major characters in the literature of today. Public interest in the undead seems to lie with vampires in particular. Novelist Anne Rice, with her contribution to the vampire mythos through her creation of the vampire Lestat and other vampire characters (introduced in Interview With the Vampire in 1977 and since populating numerous sequels and other novels), keeps vampires continuously in the public eye. In her books there are good vampires and bad vampires, and all vampires are very erotic. Numerous other authors also add to the proliferation of vampire literature. Chelsea Quinn Yarbro has produced a series of books, starting with Hotel Transylvania (1979), that chronicle the exploits of the vampire Count Saint-Germain. Brian Lumley brings us numerous vampires and vampire conflicts in his multivolume Necroscope books and spin-offs (see, e.g., Lumley 1986). Laurell K. Hamilton has created a series of books featuring a character named Anita Blake, a vampire hunter and zombie hunter (see, e.g., Hamilton 1993), and Stephen King has included vampires in his horror fiction in Salem’s Lot (1976). Sherlock Holmes has met Dracula (Estleman 1978) and so have the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew (Larson and Sloan 1978). P. N. Elrod (1990, 1995) has brought us the vampires Jack Fleming, a reporter, and Jonathan Barrett, among a number of her other vampire creations. And of course there is Sonja Blue, the vampire in sunglasses created by Nancy A. Collins (1992). Numerous romance novels also feature vampires as protagonists; titles include Vampire Lover (Lamb 1994), The Vampire Viscount (Harbaugh 1995), and Love Bites (St. George 1995). In Western popular culture today, we even use vampires to educate and entertain children. On the popular children’s television series Sesame Street, a character called the Count (who bears a resemblance to Count Dracula) helps children learn about numbers. A children’s book titled Let’s Count, Dracula (Benjamin 1992) does the same thing. Beyond the vampire rabbit of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, a vampire rabbit named Bunnicula is a character in a popular children’s book series (see, e.g., Howe and Howe 1979). In the children’s book Vampires Don’t Wear Polka Dots (Dadey and Jones 1990), teachers are vampires, and vampires are featured in at least one installment in the Babysitters Club mystery book series (Martin 1994). In addition, vampires and other undead creatures are often featured in comic books. Anne Rice’s books have been adapted by Innovation Comics, and Marvel Comics has offered vampire comic creations such as Count Duckula, Morbius, and Tomb of Dracula. Perhaps one of the most erotic female vampire creations in comics is Vampirella, whose stories are published by Harris Comics. In addition to those mentioned, numerous other vampire creations are offered monthly by various comic book publishers. Television has brought vampires to the public in numerous series. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the successful soap opera Dark Shadows featured the good/bad

vampire Barnabas Collins; spin-off books by Marilyn Ross chronicling the lives of the program’s characters also became popular (e.g., Ross 1968). Vampires have appeared in television in many different kinds of programs, including The Addams Family; Count Duckula; Doctor Who; Fantasy Island; The Flintstones; Forever Knight; F Troop; Get Smart; Happy Days; Kolchak: The Night Stalker; Love, American Style; The Man From U.N.C.L.E.; The Monkees; The Munsters; The Phil Silvers Show; Rod Serling’s Night Gallery; The Sonny and Cher Comedy Hour; Starsky and Hutch; and Tales From the Darkside (Jones 1993). In recent years, we have become acquainted with Buffy the Vampire Slayer, a successful television show based on a Hollywood movie. The character of Buffy kicked her way onto television and subsequently into numerous merchandising opportunities that keep her, her associates, and good and evil vampires in our daily lives. Hundreds of movies have been made involving vampires and other undead creatures, since the time when movies were silent and even earlier, when movies were called “2-minute trick films.” An early trick film made by Georges Méliès in 1896, The Haunted Castle, has some familiar vampire trappings, such as a bat, a medieval castle, and a crucifix that destroys the devil (Jones 1993). The silent film Nosferatu, made in Germany in 1922, is the earliest screen adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula (Jones 1993). Different versions of Dracula and other vampire movies have been made in many different countries, showing the cross-cultural appeal of the undead in entertainment. Vampire movies have been made in the United States, England, France, Italy, Spain, Germany, Ceylon, Mexico, Malaya, Turkey, Argentina, Japan, South Korea, Philippines, Morocco, Poland, Brazil, Hong Kong, Russia, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Singapore, India, Canada, Yugoslavia, Austria, Romania, Colombia, Thailand, Greece, Czechoslovakia, Australia, China, Finland, and Venezuela. Stephen Jones (1993) has produced an illustrated movie guide that can help you find the vampire movie of your choice, anything from the classic Dracula to movies with titles such as Dracula Sucks, Mama Dracula, Love at First Bite, I Married a Vampire, Kung Fu Vampire Buster, Scream Blacula Scream, Vampires on Bikini Beach, and Toothless Vampires. Vampires even appear in stage musicals, such as Dance of the Vampires, and stage plays; the classic Dracula story has been adapted for the stage many times. Games and related merchandise involving the undead are popular among certain sectors of the public today. For example, Warner Bros. makes a Buffy the Vampire Slayer board game, and the U.S. Playing Card Company sells a game called Zombies. Role-playing games such as Ravenloff, by TSR, and Vampire: The Masquerade, by White Wolf, are popular. In Vampire: The Masquerade, participants create good or malevolent characters, which they role-play in scenarios monitored by a “gamemaster” or “dungeonmaster.”

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Obsession with the undead is widespread in modern popular culture. There are vampire- and zombie-themed rock groups, such as Desmo Donte, Type O Negative, and White Zombie. There is even a Japanese rock star who claims to believe that he is a 400-year-old vampire from the Netherlands. Vampyre Magazine includes a section called “The Sanguinarium Directory” that lists various vampire churches, societies, fan clubs, newsgroups, and Web sites (Melanie and Todd 2001). There are vampire boutiques, vampire corset and leather stores, vampire jewelry and cosmetics stores, and vampire art galleries. There are stores that offer casket furniture for modern-day wannabe vampires. Fangsmiths will help you to achieve the perfect vampire smile through dental filing. There is a Vampire Research Foundation and an interactive vampire dinner theater (Melanie and Todd 2001). There are underground vampire clubs and goth bars that serve a vampire cocktail known as the blood clot. At some underground vampire bars, razor blades are handed out at the door for attendees to use, possibly to participate in the dangerous behavior of exchanging blood with their loved ones. As these numerous examples show, the undead are everywhere in popular culture. In some cultures today the evil undead are not feared; rather, they are creations in the stories told through different media. In most of these societies humans do not truly believe in the undead; rather, the undead serve as symbols for evil that is confronted and defeated by the living. However, in some cultures, even though the undead are prevalent in popular media, there remains very real belief in both the incorporeal and the corporeal undead. The undead are a necessary part of daily life in these cultures.

THE FUNCTION OF THE UNDEAD IN SOCIETIES The idea that ghosts, vampires, zombies and other undead entities actually exist may sound silly to many of us in Western society. However, the concept of the undead is very real and serves as an important thanatological symbol in a large number of cultures. Most humans feel the need to know that there is something after death. Cultures construct variations on the concept of the undead in their attempts to help individuals understand death and the existence that is known as the afterlife. Cultures create animated corporeal and incorporeal undead entities to help describe the processes of death as well as hoped-for outcomes/results of death. Both benign and malevolent undead function to aid humans in understanding the physical and spiritual aspects of death. Benign animated ghosts and the tangible animated undead are important only when there is a dichotomous relationship/partnership with the malevolent undead. Humans need the malevolent undead to explain things they do not understand and to take the blame for misfortune. The existence of the malevolent undead provides a way for

members of a culture to explain the unexpected deaths of loved ones, or to blame something outside themselves when bad things befall an individual or a group. Anthropologists examine the concept of the undead across four subfields: linguistic anthropology, cultural anthropology, physical anthropology, and archaeology. Most cultures have linguistic terms for corporeal and incorporeal representations of the undead, as evidenced by the numerous names for vampires throughout the world mentioned above. Often, the terms by which undead entities are known in a culture are specific to that culture and its ways of relating to the dead. Although the concept of vampires or the undead in general is present in many cultures, explanations for the existence of the undead, the reasons given for why they help or punish the living, and the ways in which members of a society confront the undead and accept, reject, or defeat them are not the same cross-culturally. Physical anthropologists find the undead interesting because the examination of taphonomic processes, which includes the study of decomposition of human remains, offers insights into why people in the past have viewed the undead as being in fact alive. For example, in the past, people may have viewed the bloating that is part of the decomposition of a body as evidence that an undead individual had risen from the grave and feasted on the blood of the living. Or the movement of maggots in and around a corpse may have made it look as if it were alive. Archaeologists and physical anthropologists who are involved in skeletal analysis attempt to understand the actions of past cultures and their responses to the undead by examining human skeletal remains for evidence of certain types of trauma. Cut marks on a skull are evidence of scalping; the absence of a head, hand, or foot is a mark of mutilation. Both types of trauma, usually inflicted perimortem, shed light on a culture’s belief in the necessity of entering the afterworld physically complete. If one is incomplete, one is denied access. Perimortem scalpings, decapitations, and amputations were preemptive strikes against those individuals who might, if they were whole, come back as malevolent spirits.

CONCLUSION Children sometimes hold their breath as they pass by cemeteries to avoid inhaling the bad spirits of the dead, which could cause the children’s own death. This seems like a silly superstition, but the threat of cemetery air was very real to me and my friends as we were growing up around the city of Chicago. Even though a good bit of my everyday work involves the dead, I still pause and think about that superstition when I pass the cemeteries I know from my childhood in and around Chicago. At the core of this superstition is a very real fear of the dead, of dying, and of the dead who are malevolent. Such fear of the dead, and especially of the dead who are malevolent, is pervasive in human cultures.

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Spiritual constructs, both benign and malevolent, are necessary creations that once animated in the minds of humans help provide mental and physical explanations for the deaths of individuals and for the process of dying. Both benign and malevolent undead creations enable living persons to confront and transcend their own fears of death. The benign undead are important manifestations, but not nearly as beneficial as the malevolent undead to the mental and physical constitution of an individual or a group. It is the malevolent undead who help feed the fear, quiet the fear, explain the disaster, and provoke and prevent the human response. Events in the lives of people animate the malevolent undead. Among the Navajo, strange deaths, such as a death caused by a lightning strike, were believed to create situations that might release malevolent spirits. In New Guinea, when the inhabitants of Mount Hagan first encountered the Leahy expedition, they approached with caution and fear because they saw animated ghosts. One of their first reactions was to raise their axes in shock and defense, because they thought the ghosts were probably malevolent. Then one New Guinea native recognized that one of the ghosts was in fact a relative returned from the dead. Later, after members of the Leahy expedition killed some of the New Guinea highlanders, these “ghosts,” in the minds of some native inhabitants, remained malevolent. Among Europeans and New Englanders, series of deaths from unknown causes created fear that malevolent undead entities had returned to cause disease and death. The solution for the misfortune was to exhume a body and inspect it for known signs of a vampire, and then the natural process of decomposition animated the people’s beliefs in malevolent entities. The remedy in such situations was to drive a stake through the heart of the corpse or to burn the remains. Once this was done, the situation was understood. The Mandan Indians of North America participated in conversations with the malevolent undead that helped the participants understand their own misfortunes or those of family members. Among the Sora of India, a shaman is the vehicle through which benign and malevolent spirits voice their opinions to the living while the living verbally challenge and question the dead. The resulting conversations are emotional and combative, with the malevolent undead admitting to their participation in misfortune, relating the causes of their own deaths and why they made other relations die from similar causes. From these discussions with the malevolent undead, the Sora gain understanding about why certain unfortunate events occurred, and that understanding allows them to control current and possibly future situations. Among prehistoric and historic Native Americans of the Southeast, burial in a prone position, decapitation, scalping, trophy taking and display of human body parts, and use of human bone in utilitarian or ceremonial ways served as preemptive mental and physical deterrents toward potential and known malevolent enemies who, once dead, might return as undead bent on harming the living.

The malevolent undead are pervasive in current popular culture. They are described in literature and depicted in television programs, movies, stage plays, musicals, operas, and games. The influence of the undead can be seen in the ways some people dress, adorn themselves, cosmetically alter their teeth, listen to music, drink alcohol, use computers, and worship. The undead, malevolent or not, even take part in the education of our children. It is surprising that the malevolent undead have gained such prominence in the psyches of individuals and cultures. This prominence is evidence of human beings’ continuing fear of and fascination with death, which governs and guides our actions in response to unexpected events.

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Series No. 2). Albuquerque, NM: Center for Anthropological Studies. Webb, William S. and David L. DeJarnette. 1942. An Archaeological Survey of Pickwick Basin in the Adjacent Portions of the States of Alabama, Mississippi and Tennessee (Smithsonian Institution Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 129). Washington, DC: Government Printing Office. Yarbro, Chelsea Quinn. 1979. Hotel Transylvania. New York: Signet.

SPIRITUALITY JOHN D. MORGAN

e use the term spirit in many ways, to refer to the vitality of a high school team, to the content of beverages, as well as to the position that there are conscious beings that are immaterial. In this last sense, the term fundamentally means independence from matter: either that the creature is an immaterial being or that there is something about the being that acts in an immaterial way, that is, in a way that cannot be fully explained by bodied functions. Other meanings of spirit are extensions of this idea of immateriality, which we inherited from classical thought. Because the language of Greek philosophy was a convenient tool for presenting their message, early Christians adopted the idea of an immaterial, spiritual soul, a notion not found in quite the same way either in Judaism or in non-Western philosophies. We who live in a Western culture shaped by both the language of the Greek intellectual experience and the Christian religious experience often identify the idea of spirituality with religion, but the spiritual nature of the person is broader than at least organized religion. The literature dealing with the spiritual needs of the dying and the bereaved, or spiritual questions that persons may ask in the face of death, has grown significantly in the past 20 years. Many articles, chapters, and books deal with the spirituality of children (Coles 1990), of adolescents (Balk and Hogan 1995), of the aged (Koenig 1993), of the dying (Heyse-Moore 1996), and of the bereaved (Klass 1999). Such material has been written by nurses (O’Connor 1998), physicians (Ley 1992), and chaplains (Gilbert 2002), among others. One might think that spirituality is a newly discovered source of special insights into the needs of the dying and bereaved, but this is not the case. The beginnings of the modern hospice movement in the United Kingdom were rooted in the Christian viewpoint of Dame Cicely Saunders, the founder of that movement. Saunders held that the spiritual needs of hospice patients, their families, and hospice staff must be not only cared for, but central to treatment (Wald 1986:26). In 1989, the International Work Group on Death, Dying, and Bereavement solidified much 110

of the thinking up to that point with the following set of assumptions (Corless et al. 1990:34–41): 1. Each person has a spiritual dimension. 2. The spiritual orientation influences mental, emotional, and physical dimensions. 3. Dying and grieving can be times of spiritual growth. 4. Spiritual beliefs and practices are exhibited in widely different ways. 5. Spiritual needs can arise at any time or place. 6. A broad range of spiritual opportunities should be available for the dying and bereaved. 7. Joy and humor are essential parts of human spirituality.

In this chapter, I examine an argument for the spiritual reality of human beings as well as present a formulation of the idea of spirituality that I believe to be useful to those who work with dying and grieving persons.

A CLASSICAL DEFINITION OF SPIRITUALITY Although it is evident that human beings are composed of material bodies, the idea that they cannot be described adequately in material terms is seemingly as old as the first recognition by a primitive that humans differ from other animals. All animals know—that is, they become informed by their surroundings, and they use this information as they go about satisfying their needs. Self-consciousness, however, is different from simple knowing. Human beings know that they know. This seems to be one way in which they differ from nonhuman animals. If other animals are self-reflective, they have not developed the language they need to express their self-reflexiveness in a way humans can understand. In addition, there are different levels of knowing. Nonhuman animals are aware of the tastes, colors, smells, tactile qualities, and sounds of their immediate

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surrounding environments, but their lack of symbolic language as a way of communicating seems to imply also a lack of abstract thought. Language requires not only information from things, but information about things that is sufficiently abstracted from the immediate individual things that it is possible to refer to those things using symbols. For example, the sound of the word wine and a visual sign reading WINE refer to the same thing. This ability to know abstractly seems to be a uniquely human phenomenon. Some 25 centuries ago, Plato believed that this was the fundamental characteristic of human beings (see, e.g., Plato 1937:4490). In the abstraction of the idea “wine,” the human mind is aware of the sense data received but has the ability to transcend the immediate sense data to arrive at a universal.1 Because each person is a material being who gets its existence one moment at a time, we experience material things one experience at a time. Yet in spite of the immediacy of all experience, persons can think—that is, be aware of the commonality, the common characteristics of the individual things found in experience. Thinking, awareness of the common characteristics of things, is the fundamental example of the spiritual nature of the human being. The question “Do you like red wine?” is easily understood by both those who like the product and those who do not. It is even understandable, by analogy, to those who have never tasted wine. The question is not “Do you like the red wine that is on your tongue at this moment?” Rather, the question is “Do you like red wine?” that is, any red wine at all. When we stop to think about it, we realize that we have never tasted “any red wine at all”; we have tasted only “this individual drop of red wine on my tongue now” or some other. In spite of the fact that all of my experiences of red wine have been in particular places and at particular times, I still understand the question “Do you like (any) red wine at all?” We can explain the fact that the human mind is aware in a way that is not limited by the immediacy of surroundings only if we hold that there is some aspect of the person that dematerializes, or spiritualizes, the data of experience. The cause of this universal idea of “wine” cannot be the individual liquids outside the mind. Each of them is individual, tied to a particular space and time. But the concept “wine” is not tied to any given space or time. Not only does the human mind know things in an abstract way—that is, a way outside the limits of individual space and time—the human mind can also know itself. The human mind is capable of answering the question “What is a human mind?” The human mind can reflect on itself. We can, for example, give a definition of the mind as “the process by which we are aware of experience in a nonspatial or nontemporal way.” Even if one were to disagree with a particular definition of thinking, the point remains

that the human mind (the thinking power) is capable of defining itself, capable of thinking about what thinking is. No other material or animal capacity seems to be able to reflect back upon itself. This conceptualization beyond the limits of immediate experience is spirituality. Free choice is also a spiritual function. By choosing, by willing, by committing oneself to a goal or a plan, one determines that something one knows abstractly, only as a future possibility, not only can exist, but can exist as a goal. The value of this goal exists only in the human will determining that it shall be. This goal is by definition something that is not yet. Deciding that one is going to make the “best apple pie ever” does not imply that the apple pie exists anywhere except in one’s thoughts. The human being can commit him- or herself to that which is not yet. The meaning that humans find in music, art, and literature, although dependent on the physical characteristics of tones, rhythm, paint, canvas, and words, is not identifiable with these tools of expression. Art, as Maritain (1966) says, is “the expression of the inexpressible” (p. 60). It is the creation, or at least the awareness, of a value that is not found directly in the material makeup of the work of art. The arts can be used to enable people to find meaning, “to overcome fragmentation in their lives” (Bailey 1986). Culture—“the ideas by which we live” (Ortega y Gasset 1944:37)—does not exist as a group of physical facts, but as human interpretations of fact, and thus is part of our spiritual heritage. Ethics consists in doing the right thing, whether that “right thing” is perceived of as duty, as the greater balance of good over evil, or as the Will of God. Ethics is rooted in the capacity of the individual to perceive a set of possibilities outside the immediate and to compare those possibilities with their conceptualized ego ideals. The Greek word ethos, from which the English word ethics is derived, means character. Ethics is the determination of the character or person one wishes to be. Ethics understood in this way would be impossible if we were not able to understand ourselves outside the immediacy of space and time. The spiritual nature of the person opens the door to the possibility that each of us is a part of a larger whole. We not only find the meaning in our lives in that larger whole but have some obligation to it. This is what is usually meant by religion. In this sense, the term religion applies not only to the usual Western or Eastern religions, but also includes philosophies and other movements in which persons find meaning in their lives. Each person asks what it is that gives meaning to life, and whether whatever he or she chooses will be a defense against the bad times that come into each life, such as death and bereavement.

1. The term universal as I use it here is taken from logic. It refers to a “oneness with respect to many,” as opposed to individual, which refers to a single space-time phenomenon (Reese 1980:597).

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TOWARD A PRACTICAL DEFINITION OF SPIRITUALITY I believe that the following will be helpful in the analysis of spirituality. Barely skimming the surface of the history of thought, we see many definitions of what it is to be a person. These definitions range from “spiritual substance” (Plato) to “will to power” (Nietzsche), and include such awarenesses as the person as a moral creator (Kant), the person as a problem solver (James), the person as a network of relationships (Marcel), the person as worker (Marx), the person as freedom (Sartre), the person as sexual (Freud), the person as part of the Absolute (Hinduism), the person as redeemed (Christianity), and the person as destined to do the will of God (Islam). Each of these views is intrinsically understandable. Each can be intelligently defended. Each makes a certain kind of sense. We find ourselves agreeing with many of these positions in whole or in part. Yet the diversity of viewpoints teaches us the greatest lesson of spirituality: The person is a self-creator, a being who decides in one way or another what kind of being he or she will be. Our spirituality gives each of us the particular integration of these identifying characteristics. We thus arrive at a more formal definition of spirituality: Spirituality refers to the ability of the person to choose the relative importance of the physical, social, emotional, religious, and intellectual stimuli that influence him or her and thereby engage in a continuing process of meaning making (Morgan 2002). Spirituality is not some supernaturally oriented package of ideas; rather, it is a focus on what we can become (Hefner 1998:540). Another way of discovering spirituality is to examine the difference between pain and suffering. According to the International Association for the Study of Pain, pain is “an unpleasant sensory or emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage, or described in terms of such damage” (quoted in Chapman and Gavrin 1993:5). It may be acute (that is, of limited duration and with a specific meaning) or it may be chronic (that is, of unlimited duration and with no specific meaning, or with a specific meaning that is already held). It is relatively easy for individuals to tolerate the pain of sunburn, minor headaches, stubbed toes, insults, or failure to receive what they perceives to be their due. In chronic pain, physical or psychological, the pain no longer operates as a signal that something is wrong. The person who is feeling the unrelieved pain of a growing tumor already knows that something is wrong. Suffering, however, has the connotation of “perceived threat to the integrity of the self, both physical and psychological” (Chapman and Gavrin 1993:6). That is, in suffering, one has the sense of “losing it,” of no longer being in control of one’s own life, of helplessness and hopelessness. Callahan (1993) divides suffering into two levels: At the first level, the individual deals with uncertainty, fear, and dread; at the second, he or she deals with “the

meaning of suffering for the meaning of life itself” (p. 100). Suffering occurs when one has the sense that the level of pain has become intolerable, that one can no longer be the kind of person that one wants to be. Aside from very important individual differences in pain thresholds, a major factor in how much pain one can tolerate without disintegration into suffering is one’s perception of the world, the philosophy, the sense of meaning, that one holds: one’s spirituality. A Buddhist who accepts the First Noble Truth (Smith 1986:148), that life is pain, will relate to pain differently, and presumably will suffer less, than a materialist consumer who defines him- or herself only in terms of possessions. A person’s philosophy can operate as a buffer against suffering. As Callahan (1993) puts it: “We are all fated to suffer and die. We are not fated to make one interpretation only of this necessity, or one response, or to have just one possibility of shaping the contours of our suffering” (p. 136). Because humans are meaning-seeking beings, we experience spiritual pain when we have the sense that our lives may be meaningless. No one individual can tell another where to find meaning; we can only support one another in the process of meaning creation. We offer each other social support—that is, we ask each other “How are you?” and stay around long enough to hear the answer.

THE SELF AND THE OTHER In our consciousness of our spirituality, we realize that our ego boundaries become permeable (Klass 1993:52); we realize that there is more out there than the individual person. I am on this stage of life, but I am not alone. I respond to other people, with their spiritualities. I become aware of my connections to other persons, to the environment, to our God (Graydon 1996:326). We know that we cannot survive as loners. Exclusionary self-interest is destructive. Because primates cannot survive outside the group, whatever disrupts group bonding leads to extinction (Clark 1998:656). However, each of us must still be a unique person. As Clark (1998) notes, “Societies where a meaningful social identity is denied to the autonomous individual ultimately fail” (p. 657). The ideal is to create a human society that encourages full cooperation while at the same time encouraging the fullness of individual accomplishment.

SPIRITUALITY AND RELIGION By religion, I mean an awareness that the individual is part of a larger whole and that the meaning that he or she has is found in a relationship to that larger whole. There are both descriptive and prescriptive aspects to this relationship. The descriptive aspect indicates how the universe exists and the relationship of the individual person to that universe. The opening lines of the Hebrew Bible (“In the

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beginning God created the heavens and the earth”) provide a description of how the universe exists, and the later lines that state that the human is created in the image of the Divine are a description of the place of the individual person in that universe. The prescriptive side of this is that, given the relationship we have with the Divine, we ought to conduct our lives in a manner that will enhance that relationship rather than diminish it. This human search for meaning is found in the traditions of the five religions of the world that account for most membership: Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Although they may differ in many details, these traditions have some elements in common. The first of these commonalities is the idea that the real is more than meets the eye (Smith 1986). Although these traditions differ in the manner in which they express this truth and the foundations on which they hold the truth, they all agree that there is more to reality than physical objects. The world that we see, touch, taste, smell, and hear is only a small part of the whole. In addition, these five religions share the belief that this whole is itself the Divine, or is causally related to the Divine. In the words of Immanuel Kant, the person “is a citizen of both worlds.” The human being is the bridge between the physical world and the world of the spirit, or the Divine world. This belief is founded on a revelation—that is, an event on the part of the Divine that allows the believer to enter into an awareness of the true nature of reality, something that might not happen otherwise. Underlying this thinking is the view that the Divine wills the happiness of all. Because the Divine wills the happiness of all, a pulling back of the curtain, a revelation, has occurred. The Hebrew Bible tells us that Adam was made from the dust of the earth and that Eve was made from Adam’s rib. Whether or not the Divine performed surgery in the Garden of Eden is not the point of the story, however. Rather, the point is that we are related to the earth itself, and that men and women are so related that humans of the two sexes do not achieve fulfillment apart from each other. There have been hermits in history, but even their hermitage was for the sake of the rest of the human race. The various religious traditions differ in the ways that they say it, but they agree that the person needs to be lovingly related to others (Smith 1986). Blending the various themes above, we have the ideas of the church, or communion of saints—that is, a fellowship through the Divine with each other. To summarize: There is a reality outside ourselves that reveals itself to us and is a standard for us. We each create ourselves in light of that standard, and we do it in fellowship with others. However, we all fail. The major traditions differ in their formulations but agree that we all have a need for forgiveness: peace with ourselves, our fellows, and our God (Smith 1986). This forgiveness, or peace, among ourselves, others, and the Divine is as much of freedom from suffering as we have in this present state, because in it we find a meaning that puts all the pieces together and has withstood the test of time.

All cultures have developed ceremonies and rituals that convey these realities to the living and the dying. It is helpful to remember the points that Edgar Jackson (as cited in Rando 1984:316–17) made some years ago about the value of religion to the dying: • It helps them control their fears and anxieties by revealing not only the tragedy and sorrow of life, but also its blessings and rich experiences. • It emphasizes those events in the history and experience of humanity that make life seem more understandable and give more people a sense of changelessness in the midst of change, of the eternal in the midst of time. • It helps them to turn their best thoughts and feelings into constructive action. • It inspires those of faith to act as they believe, to fulfill their aspirations in life. • It allows them to transform the tragic events of life through the direction of its hope and the power of its love. • It leads to deeper sensitivity of the spirit, higher aspirations of service, and a firmer conviction that the cosmic purpose is best understood as creative goodness. Therefore, although grief is painful and disappointing, it does not lead to despair. • When it contains a belief in immortality, it relieves some of the guilt and sorrow that would be present if it were thought that at no point in time or eternity could wrongs be righted or injustices rectified. • It highlights tradition, giving people a longer view by allowing them to tie present sufferings to time-honored sources of spiritual strength, and thus transcend current pain. • It gives courage in the present and direction for the future. • It moves attention away from death and tragedy, not by denying them, but by fitting them into a larger perspective. • Through community religious rituals, it provides evidence of group strength and comfort, and recognizes the dignity of life and the validity of feelings prompted by facing death.

THE EXISTENTIAL QUEST FOR MEANING When the World’s Fair was held in New York City in 1960, the Vatican gave the commissioners of the fair permission to transport Michelangelo’s Pietà to New York for exhibition. People were worried. The statue was to be moved by boat, and boats do sink—not very often, but they do. If such an accident were to happen, the Pietà would be lost. We are often quite concerned over the loss of precious things, and many things are precious precisely because they are rare. The Pietà is a wonderful creation, but it is not, by far, the most precious thing in existence. The Pietà and similar artifacts are

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literally set in stone; they do not have the ability to be self-creations. Persons, however, are self-creations. Each person is a once-in-a-lifetime-of-the-universe event. Although our bodies and our instincts are structured by nature, and we are influenced by parental guidance and culture, each of us decides what person we shall be. Each of us is unique. What is it to be a person? Fundamentally, a person is a subject. The definition of subject, from logic, is “that which has powers.” The term power is not used here in any political sense, or in the sense of power over others. Rather, it is used in its root sense of “the capacity to do” (e.g., the power to see, the power to taste). The term object refers to anything that activates a person’s powers. A subject is a potential seer, but unless there is a colored object (the lining of my tie), the subject will not see. The colored object (my tie) has made the subject’s power to see specific. A subject is a potential seer of any color whatsoever, but becomes an actual seer of a specific colored object. A subject is a potential hearer of any sound, but because of the object now hears a specific sound. Objects get their meaning and value from subjects. Color would be meaningless if there were no seeing creatures in this world. Sounds and odors would have no meaning if there were no sensate creatures in the world. Unfortunately, we often think of persons, ourselves and others, as objects. It was not too long ago that the common understanding of a woman was that she was “somebody’s daughter,” then “somebody’s husband,” then “somebody’s mother,” and then eventually “somebody’s widow.” A woman was defined in terms of other persons. She was thought of objectively—that is, as a thing that gets meaning from outside. When we think of persons primarily as their sexes, their races, their religions, their nationalities, their careers, their sexual orientations, we think of them as objects, as things that get their meaning from without. But a person is not an object. A person is a subject, that which creates meaning. A subject is one who says, “Yes, but”: “Yes, I am a woman, but . . . ”; “Yes, I am a tennis player, but. . . . ” Each of us realizes that there is more to the self that we are than a list of categories can formulate. What existentialist philosophers call the “moment of subjectivity” is the realization that no list of categories could ever possibly describe the unique person. The moment of subjectivity is the moment in which a person realizes that never before in the history of the universe did he or she exist, and never again will he or she exist. Each person is a once-in-the-lifetime-of-the-universe event. Our realization of our uniqueness has two consequences. The first is that we understand that we will never be truly known by another person. In moments of depression or sadness, we may feel sorry for ourselves, saying to ourselves, and to anyone who will listen, “Nobody really understands me.” The philosopher Jose Ortega y Gasset (1956:50) uses the term “radical solitude” to describe what it is to be a person. There is something about each of us

that others just cannot grasp and something about them that we cannot grasp. The second consequence of our realization of our uniqueness is that we realize that we have a limited amount of time to be who we can be. Each person is unique, yet destined to cease to be. Nothing makes the person more conscious of his or her uniqueness than death. No one has said this better than Ernest Becker (1973): Yet, at the same time as Eastern sages also knew, man is a worm and food for worms. This is the paradox, he is out of nature and hopelessly in it; he is dual, up in the stars yet housed in a heart-pumping, breath-gasping body that once belonged to a fish and still carries the gill marks to prove it. His body is a material fleshly casing that is alien to him . . . the strangest and most repugnant being that it aches and bleeds and it will decay and die. Man is split in two; he has an awareness of his own splendid majesty, yet he goes back to the ground to rot and disappear forever. (P. 27)

We are unique, yet we know that we will go into the ground to rot forever. Each of us is a special selfcreation, but as far as nature is concerned, we are nothing but body (Becker 1973:31). Once we have passed our genes on to the next generation, we have done our evolutionary work. The awareness that we are nothing but bodies, and bodies die, forces us to ask the question, “What kind of God would make such fancy worm food?” (Becker 1973:26). In the process of growing up, we discover ourselves. Our culture tells us how to define ourselves, but, being self-creating beings, we stop and ask ourselves if our culture is correct in the definition it has provided. We step aside from our culture from time to time. The human condition is that we find ourselves on the stage of life knowing we have roles to play but not knowing what those roles are, or even the plot of the story. No other animal has to live this terrible condition. Nonhuman animals have instincts by which they run their lives. For Becker (1975), “Spirituality is not a simple reflex of hunger and fear, it is an expression of the will to live, the burning desire of the creature to count, to make a difference on the planet because he has lived, has emerged on it, has worked, suffered, and died” (p. 3).

ACHIEVING SELF-CONSCIOUS SPIRITUALITY Everyone is spiritual. However, many of us adopt “shortterm spiritualities” or meaning systems. Materialism is a meaning system. Consumerism is a meaning system. Marxism is a meaning system. Graydon (1996:328) suggests that the following questions may be useful for opening the door to self-conscious spirituality—that is, to an evaluation of the fruitfulness of one’s meaning system or spirituality:

Spirituality– • –115 • When you are discouraged and despondent, what keeps you going? • Where have you found strength in the past? • Where have you found hope in the past? • Who have you looked up to? • Who inspires you? • What does death mean to you? • What does suffering mean to you? • What does [religious] community mean to you? • What does healing mean to you at this point in your life? • What is your attitude to your death? • Can you forgive others? • Can you forgive yourself? • What would bring you inner peace? • Can you find strength in yourself? • Do you love yourself? • Can you perceive yourself as being loved by others, by God? • How are you relating to yourself? • How are you relating to others? • How are you relating to the universe? • How are you relating to your God?

Spiritual awareness can also be opened up in ways other than through questioning. Art therapy, music therapy, bibliotherapy, guided meditation, journaling, telling our life stories, examining photographs and other memorabilia— all of these can be effective tools for opening persons to self-conscious spirituality.

THE NEED TO BE COMFORTABLE IN OUR OWN SKINS We will always have fundamental insecurities in our lives. Each of us is a unique being who has to make sense out of life and do it on our own. We stand on the shoulders of giants, but we still have to do it on our own, as Abraham did. And that’s scary. Those who are uncomfortable with ambiguity, uncomfortable in their own skins, may believe that they need to be protected from others. To protect myself from your influence, I may want to kill you—if I can kill you, that proves how much power I have. Each of us eventually realizes that everyone we love is going to die. We have a lot of choices when faced with this realization: We can pretend that it is not so, or we can take the energy the realization stimulates and perhaps try to make a better world. The great

contribution made by such groups as the Compassionate Friends, Bereaved Families of Ontario, the Candlelighters, and Mothers Against Drunk Driving is that they have made meaning out of chaos. We need to try somehow to create a culture in which meaning might triumph over chaos. Once one has faced death, nothing else matters in the same way. Death has the ability to teach us to accept reality in its fullness, to accept the limits of what it is. This is the work of death education, palliative care, bereavement service. We try to make people comfortable in their own skins.

REFERENCES Bailey, Sally. 1986. “The Arts as an Avenue to the Spirit.” In In Search of the Spiritual Component of Hospice Care, edited by Florence S. Wald. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Balk, David E. and Nancy S. Hogan. 1995. “Religion, Spirituality, and Bereaved Adolescents.” Pp. 61–88 in Beyond the Innocence of Childhood: Helping Children and Adolescents Cope With Death and Bereavement, vol. 3, edited by David Adams and Eleanor Deveau. Amityville, NY: Baywood. Becker, Ernest. 1973. The Denial of Death. New York: Free Press. ———. 1975. Escape From Evil. New York: Collier Macmillan. Callahan, Daniel. 1993. The Troubled Dream of Life: Living With Mortality. New York: Simon & Schuster. Chapman, C. Richard and Jonathan Gavrin. 1993. “Suffering and Its Relationship to Pain.” Journal of Palliative Care 9(2):5–13. Clark, Mary E. 1998. “Human Nature: What We Need to Know About Ourselves in the Twenty-First Century.” Zygon 33:645–59. Coles, Robert. 1990. The Spiritual Life of Children. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Corless, Inge F., Norman Autton, Sally Bailey, Marjorie Cockburn, Ronald Cosh, Barrie de Veber, Iola de Veber, David Head, Dorothy C. H. Ley, John Mauritzen, Patrice O’Connor, and Takeshi Saito. 1990. “Assumptions and Principles of Spiritual Care.” In International Work Group on Death, Dying, and Bereavement: Statements on Death, Dying, and Bereavement, edited by Charles A. Corr, John D. Morgan, and Hannelore Wass. London, ON: King’s College. Gilbert, Richard B., ed. 2002. Health Care and Spirituality: Listening, Assessing, and Caring. Amityville, NY: Baywood. Graydon, Douglas. 1996. “Casey House Hospice: Caring for Persons Living With HIV/AIDS.” Pp. 325–34 in Ethical Issues in the Care of the Dying and Bereaved Aged, edited by John D. Morgan. Amityville, NY: Baywood. Hefner, Philip. 1998. “The Spiritual Task of Religion in Culture: An Evolutionary Perspective.” Zygon 33:535–44. Heyse-Moore, L. H. 1996. “On Spiritual Pain in the Dying.” Mortality 1:297–316. Klass, Dennis. 1993. “Spirituality, Protestantism, and Death.” Pp. 51–74 in Death and Spirituality, edited by Kenneth J. Doka and John D. Morgan. Amityville, NY: Baywood.

116– • –TRANSCENDING DEATH Klass, Dennis. 1999. The Spiritual Lives of Bereaved Parents. Washington, DC: Taylor & Francis. Koenig, Harold G. 1993. “The Relationship Between JudeoChristian Religion and Mental Health Among Middle-Aged and Older Adults.” Advances in Mind-Body Medicine 9(4):33–38. Ley, Dorothy C. H. 1992. “Spiritual Care in Hospice.” Pp. 207–15 in Spiritual, Ethical and Pastoral Aspects of Death and Bereavement, edited by Gerry Cox and Ronald J. Fundis. Amityville, NY: Baywood. Maritain, Jacques. 1966. L’Intuition creatice dans l’art et dans la poesie. Paris: Desclee de Brower. Morgan, John D. 2002. “Dying and Grieving Are Journeys of the Spirit.” In Heath Care and Spirituality: Listening, Assessing, and Caring, edited by Richard B. Gilbert. Amityville, NY: Baywood. O’Connor, Patrice. 1998. “Are We Meeting Patients’ Spiritual Needs?” American Journal of Hospice Care, July/August, pp. 31–37.

Ortega y Gasset, José. 1944. Mission of the University. New York: Newton. ———. 1956. “In Search of Goethe From Within.” In Jose Ortega y Gasset, The Dehumanization of Art and Other Writings on Art and Culture. Garden City, NY: Doubleday. Plato. 1937. “Phaedo.” In The Dialogues of Plato, edited and translated by Benjamin Jowett. New York: Random House. Rando, Therese A. 1984. Grief, Dying, and Death: Clinical Interventions for Caregivers. Champaign, IL: Research Press. Reese, William. L. 1980. Dictionary of Philosophy and Religion: Eastern and Western Thought. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press. Smith, Huston. 1986. The Religions of Man. New York: Harper & Row. Wald, Florence S. 1986. “In Search of the Spiritual Component of Hospice Care.” Pp. 25–33 in In Search of the Spiritual Component of Hospice Care, edited by Florence S. Wald. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

RELIGION AND THE MEDIATION OF DEATH FEAR MICHAEL R. LEMING

t is commonly believed that normal people are afraid to die and that death anxiety is a cultural universal. As a result, some people also assume that the threat of death should serve as a deterrent to the kinds of behaviors that are deemed to be undesirable, inappropriate, and/or threatening to the society. Such thinking seems to abound. For example, international travelers are frequently confronted with signs in some countries warning them that the possession and use of illegal narcotics is punishable by death. In many parts of the United States, people who commit murder may be sentenced to die at the hands of the state—again, the assumption is that the existence of the death penalty will deter individuals from committing such violent crimes. All capital punishment laws are based on the assumption that, because normal people fear death, the threat of capital punishment will deter the commission of heinous offenses. Moreover, the assumption that it is normal to fear the dying process seems to permeate the American cultural fabric. In nursing homes and hospice programs, for example, it is not uncommon for neophyte caregivers, whether nurses, aides, or volunteers, to become anxious when patients express a desire to die. Inexperienced caregivers often cannot understand why patients express such a desire, and in turn they express their own need to learn how they can deter their terminally ill patients from this feeling. The taken-for-granted assumption is that the fear of death is universal and that death anxiety is a cultural component of all societies. My purposes in this chapter are to evaluate such assumptions and to present evidence that serves to challenge this thinking.

THE ASSUMPTION OF A FEAR OF DEATH If the fear of death were universal, it would be difficult for terrorists planning suicide attacks to overcome their own

anxiety as they prepare to sacrifice their lives for the sake of their belief systems. It would also be impossible for professionals and laypersons to address the consequences of disastrous events by risking their lives to save the lives of others. If death fear were natural, then issues relating to the so-called instinct for self-preservation also would require intense examination. In fact, serious evaluation of the validity of the concept of the fear of death reveals many actions on the part of humans that demonstrate that death anxiety may not be a cultural universal. The ancient philosopher Plato denies the universality of death anxiety, claiming that philosophy serves to prepare people for death: Those who really apply themselves in the right way to philosophy are directly and of their own accord preparing themselves for dying and death. If this is true, and they have actually been looking forward to death all their lives, it would of course be absurd to be troubled when the thing comes for which they have so long been preparing and looking forward. (Phaedo 64a, in Tredennick 1969:107)

A more contemporary example of this type of thinking comes from psychologist B. F. Skinner. When he was approaching death from leukemia, the 86-year-old Skinner said with a laugh, “I will be dead in a few months, but it hasn’t given me the slightest anxiety or worry or anything. I always knew I was going to die” (quoted in Bjork 1993: 229). If the fear of death were universal, we would not expect to find much in the way of differences when we compare populations or subpopulations of people. Such is not the case, however. Anthropological research into death-related customs and rituals has found that not all cultures hold death as something to be feared. Where death fears do exist, their intensity and form appear to vary by culture. An extensive body of cross-cultural thanatological literature suggests that people from different cultures have different 117

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views of death and dying, and that not all cultures posit that death and dying need be viewed as something to be feared (see Abdel-Khalek 2002; Lester and Becker 1993; Demmer 1998; McLennan, Akande, and Bates 1993; Reimer, 1998; Reimer and Templer, 1995–96; Roshdieh et al. 1999; Saunders 1999; Suhail and Akram 2002; Tang, Wu, and Yan 2002; Thorson and Powell 1998). When considering death fear, many analysts begin with the premise that death per se has no meaning other than the meaning that people give it. Sociologists, for example, assume that fear of death is learned through social interaction. In U.S. culture, popular horror movies depict death—as well as ghosts, skeletons, goblins, bogeymen, and ghoulish morticians—as something to be feared. Rather than providing positive images of death and dying, these products of popular culture reinforce fearful meanings; for example, they portray cemeteries as eerie and funeral homes and morgues as scary places that are best avoided. Sometimes people who have had traumatic deathrelated experiences (such as witnessing a fatal auto accident, discovering the body of someone who has committed suicide, or being present at a funeral where the emotional outbursts of some mourners created feelings of discomfort for others) develop very fearful attitudes toward death, but such occurrences are rather uncommon. Certainly, such experiences do not account for the prevalence of death fears among Americans. As Erving Goffman (1959) observes, first impressions are important; our initial impressions tend to dominate the meanings that we attribute to situation-specific experiences. Goffman’s work is germane to my argument in this chapter in that many individuals tend to maintain the meanings of death that they first learned in childhood, even when they are confronted by more positive images later in life. Fear of death is also affected by age, gender, and occupation. For example, research has shown that older people tend to have less death anxiety than do younger people. (For an overall perspective on the relationship between death anxiety and age, see Suhail and Akram 2002; Swanson and Byrd 1998; Galt and Hayslip 1998; Fortner and Neimeyer 1999; Davis-Berman 1998–99.) Studies have also found gender differences in death anxiety; men and women tend to have different types of fears related to death, and, in general, women tend to fear death more than do men (see Howze 2002; Cotton 1997; Gantsweg 2002; Suhail and Akram 2002). Thorson and Powell (1996) investigated occupational differences in levels of death anxiety and found evidence that, in general, male funeral directors tend to be more fearful of death than males in other occupational groups. Researchers have also conducted studies concerning fear of death in people of different religions and people of different levels of religious involvement, and the findings appear to be mixed. Some analysts report an inverse relationship between religiosity and death anxiety (e.g., Alvarado et al. 1995; Chibnall et al. 2002; Suhail and Akram 2002), whereas others have been unable to establish

such a relationship (e.g., Rasmussen and Johnson 1994; Shadinger, Hinninger, and Lester 1999). Researchers have also explored religious variables, documenting differences in death anxiety among people of different religious groups (see Shadinger et al. 1999; Howze 2002; Reimer and Templer, 1995–96; Saunders 1999; Swanson and Byrd 1998). In one such study, Reimer and Templer (1995–96) found that Roman Catholics have higher death anxiety than do Protestants. In summary, death fears do not appear to be instinctive or universal. It seems that fear of life’s end is learned from and perpetuated by culture. Such meanings occur because death is not an ordinary experience. In challenging the order of everyday life, firsthand encounters with death are so unusual that the prospect of the experience can be traumatic. (For discussions of the relationship between the dying and death experience and levels of individual death fear, see Cotton 1997; Straub 1997; Chung, Chung, and Easthope 2000; Evans, Walters, and Hatch-Woodruff 1999; Demmer 1998; Brubeck and Beer 1992; Ireland 1998; Hayslip et al. 1997; Firestone 1993; Mikulincer et al. 2002.)

CONTENT OF DEATH FEAR Death anxiety is a multidimensional concept that is based on four concerns: (a) the death of self, (b) the deaths of significant others, (c) the process of dying, and (d) the state of being dead. Fears related to the process of dying can be further elaborated into concerns about dependency, pain, indignity, and isolation and the fear of leaving loved ones. Additional sources of fear include the finality of death, the fate of the body, and afterlife concerns such as divine judgment. In this model’s more elaborated form (documented in Leming and Dickinson 2001), eight types of death fears can be applied to the death of self and the death of others: The Process of Dying 1. Dependency 2. The pain in the dying process 3. The indignity in the dying process 4. The isolation, separation, and rejection that can be part of the dying process 5. Leaving loved ones

The State of Being Dead 6. The finality of death 7. The fate of the body 8. Afterlife concerns

As shown in Table 1, the content of fear is influenced by the identity of the person whose death the individual

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is considering. From the Table 1 The Eight Dimensions of Death Anxiety as They Relate to the Deaths of Self perspective of one’s own and Others death, one may have anxiety over the effects that one’s Self Others dying (or being dead) will Process of dying have on others as well as many 1. Fear of dependency 1. Fear of financial burdens concerns about how one’s 2. Fear of pain in the dying process 2. Fear of going through the painful body might be treated by experiences of others others. From the perspective of 3. Fear of indignity in the dying process 3. Fear of being unable to cope with a survivor, concerns might the physical problems of others include financial and emo4. Fear of loneliness, rejection, 4. Fear of being unable to cope emotionally tional problems related to the and isolation with the problems of others death of a significant other. 5. Fear of leaving loved ones 5. Fear of losing loved ones Given that many factors State of being dead related to the experience of 6. Fear of the spirit world 6. Fear of ghosts, spirits, devils, and so on death and death-related situaFear of nothingness Fear of never seeing the person again tions can engender fear, we Fear of the finality of death Fear of the end of a relationship would expect to find individFear of not being able to achieve Guilt related to not having done enough ual differences in types and one’s goals for the deceased intensity of death fear, includFear of the possible end of physical Fear of not seeing the person again ing differences related to and symbolic identity social circumstances and past 7. Fear of the end of all social relationships 7. Fear of losing the social relationship experiences. However, with all Fear of the fate of the body Fear of death objects of the potential sources for difFear of body decomposition Fear of dead bodies ferences, repeated administraFear of being buried Fear of being in cemeteries tions of the Leming Fear of Fear of not being treated with respect Fear of not knowing how to act in Death Scale yield consistently death-related situations high scores for the fears of 8. Afterlife concerns 8. Afterlife concerns dependency and pain related to Fear of divine judgement Fear of the judgement of others—“What the process of dying and relaare they thinking?” tively low anxiety scores for fears related to the afterlife He states that individuals construct funeral practices and and the fate of the body. In one study, approximately 65% then develop religious orientations and rituals to support (N > 1,000) of the individuals surveyed experienced high those practices. anxiety concerning dependency and pain, and only 15% experienced the same level of anxiety relative to concerns Death and the Origin of Religion about the afterlife and the fate of the body (Leming, Symbolic interactionists assert that meanings are 1979–80). Thus it is the process of dying, not the event of socially constructed. These meanings provide a knowledge death, that causes the most concern. Perhaps one explanabase for activities and actions and provide order for those tion for this finding is that many Americans are uncomwho share a common culture. Peter Berger (1969) suggests fortable with death, and society does not provide a that the human world is devoid of any order other than that supportive environment for those undergoing the dying which is socially created. Life situations challenge the process. Indeed, approximately 70% of all deaths in the order on which social life is based. Many of these situaUnited States take place in hospitals and nursing homes. tions are related to what Thomas O’Dea (1966) refers to as the three fundamental characteristics of human existence: uncertainty, powerlessness, and scarcity. RELIGION AS A MEANS OF COPING Uncertainty refers to human activity that does not always lead to predictable outcomes. Even careful planRegardless of why death anxiety exists, perhaps a more ning may not allow a person to be in a position to achieve important question is, How do people cope with such feelall of his or her desired goals. To an extent, the human ings and anxieties? One way has been through the practice condition also is characterized by powerlessness. Many of religion. Émile Durkheim, one of the founders of the events are beyond humans’ capability to change or avoid discipline of sociology, claims that it was the fear of death them; among these are death and natural disaster. Scarcity and the dead that led to the creation of religion. He offers exposes humankind to inequity in the distribution of the empirical support for this claim in The Elementary Forms social and environmental resources that promote life satisof Religious Life ([1915] 1995), in which he discusses the faction. This unequal distribution serves as the basis for relationship between death and the rise of religious rituals.

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perceptions of relative deprivation and frustration. According to O’Dea (1966), experiences of uncertainty, powerlessness, and scarcity “raise questions which can find an answer only in some kind of ‘beyond’ itself” (p. 5). Therefore, marginal situations, which are characteristic of the human condition, force individuals to the realm of the transcendent in the search for meaningful answers. Berger (1969) claims that death is one such marginal situation: Witnessing the death of others and anticipating his own death, the individual is strongly propelled to question the ad hoc cognitive and normative operating procedures of “normal” life in society. Death presents society with a formidable problem not only because of its obvious threat to the continuity of human relationships, but because it threatens the basic assumptions of order on which society rests. Death radically puts in question the taken-for-granted, “business-as-usual” attitude in which one exists in everyday life. (P. 23)

It is the transcendent reference, or religion, that helps an individual to maintain a reality-oriented perspective when the order of life is challenged. Contemplating death, we are faced with the fact that we will not be able to accomplish all our goals in life. We also realize that we are unable either to extend life or to control the circumstances surrounding death. It is troubling that some individuals must endure painful, degrading, and meaningless death, whereas others find more meaning and purpose during the final days of life than they experienced in the years preceding the terminal period. Finally, the relative deprivation created by differential life spans raises questions that are unanswerable. Religious-meaning systems provide answers to the problems of uncertainty, powerlessness, and scarcity created by death. O’Dea (1966) illustrates this function of religion: Religion, by its reference to a beyond and its beliefs concerning man’s relationship to that beyond, provides a supraempirical view of a larger total reality. In the context of this reality, the disappointments and frustrations inflicted on mankind by uncertainty and impossibility, and by the institutionalized order of human society, may be seen as meaningful in some ultimate sense, and this makes acceptance of and adjustment to them possible. (Pp. 6–7)

Religion as a Means of Providing Understanding The anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski (1965) calls religion the “great anxiety reliever,” asserting that it functions to relieve anxiety caused by crisis. According to Malinowski, religion provides individuals with the means for dealing with extraordinary phenomena; it functions to restore normalcy.

Every important crisis of human life implies a strong emotional upheaval, mental conflict and possible disintegration. Religion in its ethics sanctifies human life and conduct and becomes perhaps the most powerful force of social control. In its dogmatics it supplies man with strong cohesive forces. (P. 70)

Malinowski claims that “death, which of all human events is the most upsetting and disorganizing to man’s calculations, is perhaps the main source of religious belief” (p. 71). A. R. Radcliffe-Brown (1965) disagrees, claiming that religion induces fear and anxiety—such as fear of spirits, fear of God’s judgment, and fear of the devil and hell— from which people otherwise would be free. According to Radcliffe-Brown, nonreligious individuals experience less death anxiety and cope better with death than do religious persons. Thus he poses an alternative perspective: “If it were not for the existence of the rite and the beliefs associated with it the individual would feel no anxiety, and . . . the psychological effect of the rite is to create in the individual a sense of insecurity and danger” (p. 81). Radcliffe-Brown argues that religion may serve to increase anxiety for the individual rather than reduce it. His contention is that religion functions to create a sense of anxiety that maintains the social structure of the society, as noted in the following: Actually in our fears or anxieties, as well as in our hopes, we are conditioned by the community in which we live. And it is largely by the sharing of hopes and fears, by what I have called common concern in events or eventualities, that human beings are linked together in temporary or permanent associations. (P. 81)

According to Radcliffe-Brown, from the point of reference of personal death anxiety, religious beliefs have dysfunctional consequences. Whereas Malinowski notes that the individual may feel anxiety on certain occasions, Radcliffe-Brown asserts that the social expectation is that people should experience anxiety on such occasions. Starting with Malinowski’s reference point, attention is thus focused on the function of religion for the individual. From this perspective, patterns of social integration are contingent on psychological processes. Given that religious rituals help some individuals to find meaning in death, the social function of religion must be anxiety reduction. Malinowski (1965) illustrates this point: Religion in its ethics sanctifies human life and conduct and becomes perhaps the most powerful force of social control. In its dogmatics it supplies man with strong cohesive forces. It grows out of every culture, because life-long bonds of cooperation and mutual interest create sentiments, and sentiments rebel against death and dissolution. The cultural call for religion is highly derived and indirect but is finally rooted in the way in which the primary needs of man are satisfied in culture. (P. 72)

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George Homans (1965) attempts to resolve this problem, declaring that both Malinowski and RadcliffeBrown are correct in their assessments of the role religion has in promoting death anxiety. Homans argues that Radcliffe-Brown’s hypothesis complements Malinowski’s theory in that Malinowski’s observations are at the individual level (the micro level) whereas Radcliffe-Brown’s analysis is directed toward the community (the macro level). Homans argues that when individuals encounter death, the anxiety they experience is socially ascribed, or learned. With its emphasis on immortality of the soul and belief in a coming judgment, religion increases the level of death anxiety for those who adhere to religious teachings. However, once these individuals have fulfilled the requisite religious or magical ceremonies, they experience only a moderate amount of anxiety. Homans brings both these perspectives to bear in the following four propositions: 1. Religion functions to relieve anxiety associated with death-related situations. 2. Death anxiety calls forth religious activities and rituals. 3. In order to stabilize the group of individuals who perform these rituals, group activities and beliefs provide a potential threat of anxiety in order to unite group members through a “common concern.” 4. This secondary anxiety may be effectively removed through the group rituals of purification and expiation.

Summarizing the relationship between religiosity and death anxiety, the following theoretical hypotheses can be derived: Hypothesis 1: The meanings of death are socially ascribed— death per se is neither fearful nor nonfearful. Hypothesis 2: The meanings that are ascribed to death in a given culture are transmitted to individuals in the society through the process of socialization. Hypothesis 3: Anxiety reduction may be accomplished through social cooperation and institutional participation. Hypothesis 4: Religious institutions foster institutional cohesiveness by giving participants a sense of anxiety concerning death and uniting them through a common concern. Hypothesis 5: If religious institutions are to remain viable, they must also provide means for anxiety reduction. Hypothesis 6: Through its promise of a reward in the afterlife and its redefinition of the negative effects of death upon the temporal life of the individual, religion diminishes the fear that it ascribes to death and reduces the anxieties that secular society ascribes to death.

To test the empirical validity of these hypotheses, I surveyed 372 randomly selected residents of a small midwestern city concerning death anxiety and religious

activities, beliefs, and experiences (Leming 1979–80). I divided the subjects into four groups, based on the religious commitment scales developed by Charles Glock and Rodney Stark (1966) and Joseph Faulkner and Gordon DeJong (1966). Approximately 25% of the respondents fell into each category—the first group consisted of those persons who were the least religious and the fourth group was composed of those who were the most religious. I then compared the subjects’ death anxiety scores on the Leming Fear of Death Scale (see the appendix to this chapter) for each of the eight different fear content areas with each of the levels of religious commitment. As the data displayed in Table 2 indicate, the relationship found between the variables of religiosity and death anxiety was curvilinear; that is, moderate religious commitment added to the general death-related anxiety that individuals had learned from secular sources. Those subjects with moderate religious commitment received only the negative consequences of religion—this coincides with Radcliffe-Brown’s identification of religion as a common concern of death anxiety. These persons acquired only the anxiety that religion is capable of producing, and none of the consolation. On the other hand, highly religiously committed individuals had the least anxiety concerning death. This supports Malinowski’s argument that religion provides individuals with the solace they need to cope with death-related fears. In summary, religiosity appears to serve the dual function of “afflicting the comforted” and “comforting the afflicted.” Thus, for those with a high degree of commitment, religion relieves the anxiety it causes. The theoretical model suggests a curvilinear relationship between the two variables—those persons with moderate religious commitment experience the greatest amount of anxiety in each of the eight areas. In attempting to evaluate this relationship, I found that the theoretical model was supported, with only two curvilinear trend deviations (Leming 1979–80; see Table 2). These deviations are found among the least religious group for the factor of fear of dependency in the dying process. This finding suggests that nonreligious individuals are more concerned than religious persons about being self-sufficient and independent of others, and that they find dependency even more distressing than do persons who are more religious. In terms of the fear of isolation, there does not seem to be a relationship between death fear and religious commitment. Education, age, and religious preference did not affect the curvilinear relationship (Leming 1979–80). With the exception of the fear of isolation, persons who held the strongest religious commitment were the least fearful. Furthermore, in each of the eight death fear areas, the strength of commitment was the most significant variable for explaining the relationship between religion and the fear of death.

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Table 2

Mean Scores for the Various Types of Death Fears by Level of Religious Commitment Level of Religious Commitment Least Religious

Most Religious

Type of Death Fear a

Fear of dependency in the dying process Total mean = 3.9

4.2b

4.10

3.85

3.75

Fear of pain Total mean = 3.7

3.80

4.00

3.65

3.50

Fear of isolation Total mean = 3.0

2.80

3.00

2.95

3.0 b

Fear of the finality of death Total mean = 2.9

3.05

3.25

2.80

2.75

Fear of leaving loved ones Total mean = 2.8

3.05

3.25

2.65

2.60

Fear of indignity in the dying process Total mean = 2.75

2.55

2.90

2.85

2.55

Fear of the afterlife Total mean = 2.55

2.50

2.95

2.60

2.30

Fear of the fate of the body Total mean = 2.55

2.50

2.70

2.60

2.40

24.75

26.45

24.30

22.90

Combined Leming Death Fear Scorea Total mean = 24.3

a. The possible range for the subscale scores is 1 through 6, with the values of 1 and 6 indicating low and high anxiety, respectively. For the combined Death Fear Score, the potential minimum score is 8 and the highest maximum score is 48. b. Curvilinear trend deviation.

CONCLUSION Death fear, or death anxiety, is not universal or inherent; like all other social values and attitudes, death-related meanings are socially constructed and transmitted from one generation to the next. People who fear death do so because they have been taught that death is something to be feared or because their life experiences have taught them to have fearful responses to death-related phenomena. On the other hand, many have little death anxiety or fear. These individuals’ nonfearful responses to death are also conditioned by their social situations and experiences. Furthermore, among those who fear death, the actual content of their fears may vary widely. Thus it is safe to assume that death anxiety is multidimensional based on four concerns: (a) the death of self, (b) the deaths of

significant others, (c) the process of dying, and (d) the state of being dead. If the fear of death were universal, we would not expect to find many differences across populations, but this is not the case. The intensity and form of death fears vary by culture as well as by age, gender, occupation, and religion. When other factors are controlled for, religion, as a cultural system, seems to have the most influence over the salience and intensity of death fears. Religiosity appears to serve the dual function of “afflicting the comforted” and “comforting the afflicted.” Religions are systems of beliefs and practices that are related to the sacred. Religious institutions meet basic social needs in that a major function of religion is to explain the unexplainable. Religion plays a significant role in helping individuals to cope with extraordinary events, including death. Not only can religious observance assist in restoring the normative order that was in place prior to the move into disequilibrium, but high religious commitment can enable individuals to cope better with their own dying and with the deaths of loved ones. Society may derive benefits from the fears that people experience, but it also needs to foster coping strategies that people can use when faced with death-related anxieties. Religion serves to meet these social needs.

APPENDIX: LEMING FEAR OF DEATH SCALE

In this chapter, I have discussed the concept of death anxiety and factors that influence it. I have suggested that death anxiety is a multidimensional concept with at least eight areas of potential fear for the individual as he or she contemplates the deaths of loved ones and the death of self. Now, having read about death fear, you can assess your own death fear by using the Leming Fear of Death Scale (Leming 1979–80), which appears below. Read the following 26 statements. Decide whether you strongly agree (SA), agree (A), tend to agree (TA), tend to disagree (TD), disagree (D), or strongly disagree (SD) with each statement. Give your first impression. There are no right or wrong answers. After you have responded to the statements, add the numbers below each section and divide by the number of questions in the section to get the fear score for each area. Finally, add up the results in all eight sections to get your total Death Fear Score (maximum score is 48; minimum score is 8).

Religion and the Mediation of Death Fear– • –123

I. Fear of Dependency

V. Fear of Afterlife Concerns

1. I expect other people to care for me while I die. SA A TA TD D SD 1 2 3 4 5 6 2. I am fearful of becoming dependent on others for my physical needs. SA A TA TD D SD 6 5 4 3 2 1 3. While dying, I dread the possibility of being a financial burden. SA A TA TD D SD 6 5 4 3 2 1 4. Losing my independence due to a fatal illness makes me apprehensive. SA A TA TD D SD 6 5 4 3 2 1 (Total of 4 scores) ________ divided by 4 = ________

13. The subject of life after death troubles me. SA A TA TD D SD 6 5 4 3 2 1 14. Thoughts of punishment after death are a source of apprehension for me. SA A TA TD D SD 6 5 4 3 2 1 (Total of 3 scores) ________ divided by 3 = ________

VI. Fear of the Finality of Death 15. The idea of never thinking after I die frightens me. SA A TA TD D SD 6 5 4 3 2 1

II. Fear of Pain 5. I fear dying a painful death. SA A TA TD 6 5 4 3

12. Not knowing what it feels like to be dead makes me uneasy. SA A TA TD D SD 6 5 4 3 2 1

D 2

SD 1

6. I am afraid of a long, slow death. SA A TA TD D 6 5 4 3 2

SD 1

(Total of 2 scores) ________ divided by 2 = ________

17. I am often distressed by the way time flies so rapidly. SA A TA TD D SD 6 5 4 3 2 1 18. The idea that I may die young does not bother me. SA A TA TD D SD 1 2 3 4 5 6

III. Fear of Indignity 7. The loss of physical attractiveness that accompanies dying is distressing to me. SA A TA TD D SD 6 5 4 3 2 1 8. I dread the helplessness of dying. SA A TA TD D 6 5 4 3 2

16. I have misgivings about the fact that I might die before achieving my goals. SA A TA TD D SD 6 5 4 3 2 1

19. The loss of my identity at death alarms me. SA A TA TD D SD 6 5 4 3 2 1 (Total of 5 scores) ________ divided by 5 = ________

SD 1

(Total of 2 scores) ________ divided by 2 = ________

VII. Fear of Leaving Loved Ones IV. Fear of Isolation/Separation/Loneliness 9. The isolation of death does not concern me. SA A TA TD D SD 1 2 3 4 5 6

20. The effect of my death on others does not trouble me. SA A TA TD D SD 1 2 3 4 5 6

10. I do not have any qualms about being alone after I die. SA A TA TD D SD 1 2 3 4 5 6

21. I am afraid that my loved ones are emotionally unprepared to accept my death. SA A TA TD D SD 6 5 4 3 2 1

11. Being separated from my loved ones at death makes me anxious. SA A TA TD D SD 6 5 4 3 2 1

22. It worries me to think of the financial situation of my survivors. SA A TA TD D SD 6 5 4 3 2 1

(Total of 3 scores) ________ divided by 3 = ________

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VIII. Fear of the Fate of the Body 23. The thought of my own body decomposing does not bother me. SA A TA TD D SD 1 2 3 4 5 6 24. The sight of a dead body makes me uneasy. SA A TA TD D SD 6 5 4 3 2 1 25. I am not bothered by the idea that I may be placed in a casket when I die. SA A TA TD D SD 1 2 3 4 5 6 26. The idea of being buried frightens me. SA A TA TD D SD 6 5 4 3 2 1 (Total of 4 scores) ________ divided by 4 = ________ Total Death Fear Score (addition of all 8 areas of death concern) ________ (In any given subscale, a score of 3.5 or higher means slightly fearful of death.)

REFERENCES Abdel-Khalek, Ahmed. M. 2002. “Why Do We Fear Death? The Construction and Validation of the Reasons for Death Fear Scale.” Death Studies 26:669–80. Alvarado, Katherine A., Donald I. Templer, Charles Bresler, and Shan Thomas-Dobson. 1995. “The Relationship of Religious Variable to Death Depression and Death Anxiety.” Journal of Clinical Psychology 51:202–4. Berger, Peter L. 1969. The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion. Garden City, NY: Doubleday. Bjork, Daniel W. 1993. B. F. Skinner: A Life. New York: Basic Books. Brubeck, Dan and John Beer. 1992. “Depression, Self-Esteem, Suicide Ideation, Death Anxiety, and GPA in High School Students of Divorced and Non-Divorced Parents.” Psychological Reports 71:755–63. Chibnall, John T, Susan D. Videen, Paul N. Duckro, and Douglas K. Miller. 2002. “Psychosocial-Spiritual Correlates of Death Distress in Patients With Life-Threatening Medical Conditions.” Palliative Medicine 16:331–38. Chung, Man Cheung, Catherine Chung, and Yvette Easthope. 2000. “Traumatic Stress and Death Anxiety Among Community Residents Exposed to an Aircraft Crash.” Death Studies 24:689–704. Cotton, Allison. 1997. “Is There a Relationship Between Death Anxiety and Engagement in Lethal Behaviors Among African-American Students?” Omega 34:233–45. Davis-Berman, Jennifer. 1998–99. “Attitudes Toward Aging and Death Anxiety.” Omega 38:59–64. Demmer, Craig. 1998. “Death Anxiety, Coping Resources, and Comfort With Dying Patients Among Nurses in AIDS Care Facilities.” Psychological Reports 83:1051–57. Durkheim, Émile. [1915] 1995. Elementary Forms of Religious Life. New York: Free Press.

Evans, Jonathan W., Andrew S. Walters, and Marjorie L. HatchWoodruff. 1999. “Deathbed Scene Narratives: A Construct and Linguistic Analysis.” Death Studies 23:715–33. Faulkner, Joseph and Gordon F. DeJong. 1966. “Religiosity in 5-D: An Empirical Analysis.” Social Forces 45:246–54. Firestone, Robert W. 1993. “Individual Defenses Against Death Anxiety.” Death Studies 17:497–515. Fortner, Barry V. and Robert A. Neimeyer. 1999. “Death Anxiety in Older Adults: A Quantitative Review.” Death Studies 23:387–89. Galt, Cynthia P. and Bert Hayslip, Jr. 1998. “Age Differences in Levels of Overt and Covert Death Anxiety.” Omega 37:187–202. Gantsweg, J. Robyn. 2002. “Gender, Self-Construal, and Death Anxiety Within a Jewish Community Sample.” Dissertation Abstracts International 62(10B):4784. Glock, Charles and Rodney Stark. 1966. Christian Beliefs and Anti-Semitism. New York: Harper & Row. Goffman, Erving. 1959. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. Garden City, NY: Doubleday. Hayslip, Bert, Jr., Heather L. Servaty, Toni Christman, and Elaine Mumy. 1997. “Levels of Death Anxiety in Terminally Ill Persons: A Cross Validation and Extension.” Omega 34:203–17. Homans, George C. 1965. “Anxiety and Ritual: The Theories of Malinowski and Radcliffe-Brown.” In Reader in Comparative Religion: An Anthropological Approach, edited by William A. Lessa and Evon Z. Vogt. New York: Harper & Row. Howze, Alisa Renee. 2002. “Death Anxiety and Psychotherapy: An Examination of Counselor Trainees’ Reactions to DeathRelated Issues.” Dissertation Abstracts International, 62(11A):3699. Ireland, Mary. 1998. “Death Anxiety and Self-Esteem in Young Children With AIDS: A Sense of Hope.” Omega 36:131–44. Leming, Michael R. 1979–80. “Religion and Death: A Test of Homans’s Thesis.” Omega 10:347–64. Leming, Michael R. and George E. Dickinson. 2001. Understanding Dying, Death, and Bereavement, 5th ed. Fort Worth, TX: Harcourt Brace. Lester, David and DeAnne Becker. 1993. “College Students’ Attitudes Toward Death Today as Compared to the 1930s.” Omega 26:219–23. Malinowski, Bronislaw. 1965. “The Role of Magic and Religion.” In Reader in Comparative Religion: An Anthropological Approach, edited by William A. Lessa and Evon Z. Vogt. New York: Harper & Row. McLennan, Jim, Adebowale Akande, and Glen W. Bates. 1993. “Death Anxiety and Death Denial: Nigerian and Australian Students’ Metaphors of Personal Death.” Journal of Psychology 127:399–408. Mikulincer, Mario, Victor Florian, Gurit Birnbaum, and Shira Malishkevich. 2002. “The Death-Anxiety Buffering Function of Close Relationships: Exploring the Effects of Separation Reminders on Death-Thought Accessibility.” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 28:287–99. O’Dea, Thomas. 1966. The Sociology of Religion. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Radcliffe-Brown, A. R. 1965. “Taboo.” In Reader in Comparative Religion: An Anthropological Approach, edited by William A. Lessa and Evon Z. Vogt. New York: Harper & Row.

Religion and the Mediation of Death Fear– • –125 Rasmussen, Christina A. and Mark E. Johnson. 1994. “Spirituality and Religiosity: Relative Relationships to Death Anxiety.” Omega 29:313–18. Reimer, Wilbert L. 1998. “Correlates of Willingness to Die for One’s Religion and One’s Country in American and Filipino Populations.” Omega 37:59–73. Reimer, Wilbert L. and Donald I. Templer. 1995–96. “Death Anxiety, Death Depression, Death Distress, and Death Discomfort Differential: Adolescent-Parental Correlations in Filipino and American Populations.” Omega 32:319–30. Roshdieh, Simin, Donald I. Templer, W. Gary Cannon, and Merle Canfield. 1999. “The Relationship of Death Anxiety and Death Depression to Religion and Civilian War-Related Experiences in Iranians.” Omega 38:201–10. Saunders, Sue. 1999. “A Methodological Study to Develop and Validate a Death Attitude Scale: Buddhists and Medical Students Compared.” Omega 38:211–34. Shadinger, Mary, Kim Hinninger, and David Lester. 1999. “Belief in Life and Death, Religiosity and Fear of Death.” Psychological Reports 84(3, pt. 1):868.

Straub, Sandra Helene. 1997. “Fear of Death After the Loss of a Spouse.” Dissertation Abstracts International 58(4B):1794. Suhail, Kuasar and Saima Akram. 2002. “Correlates of Death Anxiety in Pakistan.” Death Studies 26:39–50. Swanson, Julie L. and Kevin R. Byrd. 1998. “Death Anxiety in Young Adults as a Function of Religious Orientation, Guilt, and Separation-Individuation Conflict.” Death Studies 22:257–68. Tang, Catherine So-Kum, Anise M. S. Wu, and Elsie C. W. Yan. 2002. “Psychosocial Correlates of Death Anxiety Among Chinese College Students.” Death Studies 26:491–99. Thorson, James A. and F. C. Powell. 1996. “Undertakers’ Death Anxiety.” Psychological Reports 78:1228–30. ———. 1998. “African- and Euro-American Samples Differ Little in Scores on Death Anxiety.” Psychological Reports 83:623–26. Tredennick, Hugh. 1969. Plato: The Last Days of Socrates. New York: Penguin.

CHRISTIAN BELIEFS CONCERNING DEATH AND LIFE AFTER DEATH DONALD E. GOWAN

he Apostles’ Creed concludes with affirmations of belief in “the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.” In various ways, Christian communities during two millennia have reaffirmed those two clauses, but beyond this, as McDannell and Lang say in their book Heaven: A History (1988), “There is no basic Christian teaching, but an unlimited amount of speculation” (p. xi). In this chapter surveying Christian beliefs, then, I must necessarily be highly selective, but I must begin at the most creative moment. Surprising new ideas concerning death and life after death appeared in Judaism during the last two centuries B.C.E. They became the basis for almost everything the early church said on the subject, and they have been reaffirmed, elaborated, and at times denied from that day to this. Any study of Christian beliefs must therefore begin with the Jewish literature produced between roughly 200 B.C.E. and 100 C.E. This literature represents a flourishing period of Jewish theology, although the works produced were not accepted as Scripture by the rabbinic Judaism of the Common Era.

THE APPEARANCE OF THE RESURRECTION HOPE The authors of the books of the Old Testament showed little interest in life after death. They would have known of cults of the dead among their Western Asiatic neighbors, and of the Egyptian preoccupation with death, and their silence may have been partly a reaction to those beliefs and practices. Yahweh was the living God, and the dead were separated from him (e.g., Psalms 88:5, 10–12). They dwelt in Sheol, a kind of universal grave where everyone went, and not a place of reward or punishment (Job 3:17–19). Heaven was God’s dwelling place, and only one person was said to have gone to heaven: Elijah, who did so without dying (2 Kings 2:1, 11). (Enoch also did not die; he

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“walked with God; then he was no more, because God took him”; Genesis 5:24). It seems that the Israelites ordinarily accepted death without any great theological or psychological problem, and that was because they had their own sense of “immortality.” Their sense of community identity was so strong that when one died at a good old age, with children, then one’s true identity—character, vitality, reputation (in Hebrew, one’s “name”)—lived on in one’s children. To die without children was thus a tragedy—then one was truly dead (Martin-Achard 1960:3–51). The radical changes in Jewish belief that appear in documents from the second century B.C.E. onward can be easily explained. Earlier, the experience of exile had drastically disrupted communities and families, so the sense of individual identity had of necessity become stronger. The crucial question that was answered by the affirmation that there will be in the last days a resurrection of the dead was more theological than personal, however. It was the question of justice. Prior to the events of 167–65 B.C.E., it was possible to argue, as Job’s “friends” did, that God’s justice is always manifest within one’s lifetime on earth. Suffering is always punishment for sin. But in 167, Antiochus IV Epiphanes, who ruled the region from Judea, Samaria, and Galilee in the south to Syria in the north and Mesopotamia in the east, decreed that the practice of the Jewish religion was prohibited, on pain of death (see 1 and 2 Maccabees). The reasons for that need not concern us here, but the ensuing persecution had lasting effects on theology. People were tortured to death (2 Maccabees 6–7), and when it was precisely the most faithful who were suffering the worst, it was no longer possible to say that all suffering is punishment for sin. Faithful Jews maintained their belief in a God who is sovereign and just—in spite of this awful test—by insisting that there would be in the future a resurrection of the dead, when justice for the righteous and the wicked would finally be done. The Book of Daniel, the latest book of the Old Testament, completed in 165 B.C.E., during the persecution, is the only Old Testament book to affirm explicitly the

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resurrection of individuals (Daniel 12:2; Isaiah 26:19 speaks of resurrection of the righteous, but may refer instead to the resurrection of the nation, as Ezekiel 37:1–14 does). By the end of the second century B.C.E., resurrection was affirmed at greater length. The resurrection hope enabled the martyrs of 167–65 to endure, says 2 Maccabees 7, and the Wisdom of Solomon (2:12–3:9) takes up a hypothetical case of a righteous man who is attacked and killed by the wicked, but says of the righteous in general: “In the time of their visitation they will shine forth, and will run like sparks through the stubble. They will govern nations and rule over peoples, and the Lord will reign over them forever” (3:7–8). By the first century C.E. the resurrection hope had become so firmly established as a Jewish belief that when Jesus told his friend Martha that her brother Lazarus would rise from the dead, she responded, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day” (John 11:24). The most conservative Jews of the time, the Sadducees, still considered resurrection a newfangled idea (Matthew 22:23), but they were a small minority. Why the difficult concept of resurrection? Jews in the second century B.C.E. would have known about the Greek concept of an immortal soul, separable from the body, and a much easier way to think about life beyond the death of the body. The understanding of what it is to be human that they had inherited from ancient Israel was very different from that of the Greeks, however, and that explains it. The Jews did not think of human beings as composed of three separable parts—body, soul, and spirit—but as whole, “animated bodies,” rather than “incarnated souls.” The Hebrew word nephesh, which is frequently translated as “soul,” is not used to refer to something that can be separated from the body and live apart from it. In the creation story, God is said to have formed a body, then breathed into its nostrils the breath of life and it became a “living soul,” or, better, a “living person” (Genesis 2:7). To be human required having a body, as the Jews understood it, and so if there could be life after death it must involve a resurrection. But “in what shape will those live who live in thy day?” Baruch asked (2 Baruch 49:2). In the literature of this period, Jewish authors tried out almost every possible option, and in the paragraphs that follow I try to outline these as neatly as possible. There seem to be four possible answers to the question of what happens to us when we die: • Annihilation: It is simply the end. • Immortality: An imperishable soul lives on without the body. • Resurrection: After an intermediate period, the dead person rises to live again, in a re-created body. • Reincarnation: Something of the essence of the dead person is reborn into another form of life.

The authors of the texts that I consider below occasionally spoke of the first possibility, but only for the wicked. They

were much influenced by the second, especially as they dealt with the problem of the intermediate period, but did not accept it fully because of their preoccupation with the third. They show no trace of ever considering the fourth. Where a belief in resurrection is affirmed it is not always universal in scope. Isaiah 26:19 mentions only the righteous, and Daniel 12:2 says that “many” will be raised. Although most later documents speak of a general resurrection, there are some that restrict it to the righteous. Psalms of Solomon 3:13–16 says that sinners fall to rise no more and speaks elsewhere of their destruction on the day when the righteous find life (13:10; 14:6; 15:15). 1 Enoch says that the wicked do not rise but remain where they have been, in great pain (see 91:9–10; see also 2 Baruch 30). Normally, however, the hope of resurrection meant the expectation that at some future time a dead person, after waiting in some sort of intermediate state, would rise to a new life, presumably involving a body of some sort, in order to face a final judgment. But where do the dead wait? One of the major difficulties of the resurrection hope is the question of the “intermediate state,” and the literature of the period contains a bewildering variety of opinions. Some texts imagine places in the earth (probably an extension of the Sheol concept) where the dead remain until resurrection day (e.g., 1 Enoch 22, 51; 2 Esdras 4:35, 41, 7:32; 2 Baruch 21:23, 30:2; Adam and Eve 41). Little is said about whether they are conscious. 1 Enoch 100:5 says the righteous sleep a long sleep, but Adam and Eve 41 has Adam answer God from the ground. Fairly often the righteous are said to be in the presence of God or in heaven immediately after death. This seems to be true in Wisdom of Solomon 3:1 and in Testament of Asher 6:5–6, where the soul is met at death by an angel of God or of Satan, and the former leads the righteous into eternal life. There is a garden, in 1 Enoch 60:8, where “the elect and the righteous dwell.” On the other hand, the punishment of the wicked often begins immediately, rather than waiting for judgment day (Jubilees 7:29; 1 Enoch 22:11). Most texts say that after the day of judgment the wicked will be consigned to Sheol or Gehenna for punishment. The latter word came from the Hebrew place-name Ge Hinnom, the Hinnom Valley just west of Jerusalem, which, as the city dump, was a place of everlasting fire, and fire is the typical means of torment described in these passages (e.g., 1 Enoch 48:9; 2 Baruch 85:13; 2 Esdras 7:36). Usually the place of punishment is located in the depths of the earth (e.g., 1 Enoch 90:26), but in 2 Enoch 10 and 3 Baruch 4:4–5 it is the third heaven. For the righteous, the texts display great variety. Sibylline Oracles 4 says that resurrected men will be “as they were” (vv. 181–82) and will live on earth (vv. 187–91). 1 Enoch 51 says the earth will rejoice and the righteous will dwell on it. The Testament of Dan 5 locates the righteous in Eden and the New Jerusalem, but usually it is a heavenly existence that is expected, and, in keeping with that, the transformed nature of the resurrected body is

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frequently emphasized. The most interesting passage of this sort is found in 2 Baruch 49–51, which describes a two-step process: First, people are raised just as they were (50:2), then the judgment comes and the appearance of the wicked grows worse while the righteous are transformed “into every form they desire,” into beings like the stars or the angels (51:10). There is a great lack of clarity about where Eden, Paradise, and the New Jerusalem are to be located; often they are heavenly, but occasionally they seem to be a part of the new creation. Paradise was originally a Persian word referring to a garden. It came into Hebrew as a loanword, and then moved into Greek. Judgment is the most consistent feature of Jewish statements about life after death, and the reason is clearly the issue of justice mentioned earlier. Every eschatological passage affirms unequivocally that justice will ultimately be done, and a great court scene at the time of the resurrection was many writers’ favorite way of bringing their projections of the future to a conclusion, with the deeds of the righteous and the wicked brought to light and appropriate treatment dispensed. (For detailed discussions of these texts, see Cavallin 1974; Nickelsburg 1972.) The variety of opinions briefly surveyed above seems to justify one conclusion: No one really knew what it is like after death. Two elements of consistency are important, however. First, the question for them was not the modern one, What will happen to me after I die? Rather, the question was one of theodicy, whether God is truly sovereign and just. And second, in spite of the problems involved in conceiving it, resurrection of the body in the last days was the dominant form of hope. Elements of the other ideas I have briefly described reappear in Christianity.

LIFE AFTER DEATH IN THE NEW TESTAMENT Jesus took for granted the major beliefs about the afterlife that were prevalent in first-century Judaism and did not set out to offer his own authoritative teachings on the subject, as the writers of apocalyptic books were doing in his time. He was interested primarily in this life. The salvation he offered involved healing (to the woman with the hemorrhage: “Daughter, your faith has made you well [Greek: saved you]; go in peace”; Luke 8:48) and forgiveness (to the “sinful woman”: “Your faith has saved you; go in peace”; Luke 7:50). He said that he came that people might have life and have it abundantly (John 10:10). Indeed, the eternal life of which John speaks frequently is said not to begin at death, but in the present, at the moment of decision. “Very truly, I tell you, anyone who hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life, and does not come under judgment, but has passed from death to life” (John 5:24). Jesus spoke a few times of rewards and punishments in the hereafter. He said the reward for those who are persecuted for his sake will be great in heaven (Matthew 5:12;

Luke 6:23), continuing the Jewish martyrdom tradition that began in the second century B.C.E. He never described heaven, but did accept the common association of fire with the place of judgment (Gehenna, or “hell” in most English translations; Matthew 5:22, 29, 30, 10:28, 18:9, 23:15, 23; see also “furnace of fire” in Matthew 13:42). In a parable, he used the idea of two realms set aside for the righteous and the wicked after death, so as to make possible a conversation between the rich man in Hades and poor Lazarus in the “bosom of Abraham” (Luke 16:19–31). The point of the parable is that even if someone were to come back from the dead with a call for repentance it would still be possible for people to disbelieve, so it is not a teaching about what it is like after death. Given that parables sometimes include unrealistic elements to make their points (e.g., a farmer who pays all his workers alike, no matter how long they worked; Matthew 20:1–16), it would be risky to take this as necessarily representing Jesus’ own thoughts about the afterlife. Once, Jesus spoke of the Last Judgment, when the Son of Man will judge the nations for the way they have treated the hungry and thirsty, the stranger, the naked, the sick, and those in prison, saying that those judged righteous will inherit the Kingdom (eternal life), but the wicked will depart into the eternal fire (Matthew 25:31–46). He referred in passing to the resurrection of the righteous (in Luke 14:14 and also in John 5:21–29) and defended the idea against the Sadducees (in Mark 12:13–27 and parallels). He spoke of his own death and resurrection (in Mark 8:31, 9:9, 31, 10:33–34, and parallels). (The much-debated question of what Jesus really said—the “quest for the historical Jesus”—need not concern us, because our interest here is in what Christians believed he said.) Twice he promised that those who believe in him will be with him after death (Luke 23:43; John 14:2–3; “in Paradise” tells us nothing—Paradise had become a synonym for heaven). John emphasized, more than the other Gospels, Jesus’ primary concern for life here and now (as noted above in the quotation of 5:24). In the account of the raising of Lazarus, Jesus says, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die” (John 11:25–26). This Gospel was certainly written after some believers in Jesus had died, so it must be speaking of a life that transcends the death of the body. Even the resurrection accounts in the Gospels and Acts do not record any teachings about the afterlife from Jesus, the only person who should know from experience. He did not talk with the disciples about death, but about what they needed to do next. Their testimony concerning Jesus certainly emphasizes his death and resurrection as the key to their good news of forgiveness, but, as one of my teachers once pointed out, their message was not, “You see, this proves it; we’ll live forever.” The emphasis of their preaching was that resurrection was God’s vindication of Jesus, whose life had seemed to be a terrible failure, ending with the desertion of his disciples and a shameful death by

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crucifixion. Rather, through his resurrection, he was now proved to be the Messiah (e.g., Acts 2:32–36, 3:14–15, 10:39–42). The first Christians were all Jews who already believed in the resurrection of the dead in the last days, but the resurrection of Jesus gave them a new basis for that hope. In Judaism it was a matter of theology: There must be a time when God will manifest his justice, even if it comes after death and at the end of history. For Christians it was a conclusion drawn from an event: One person has in fact been raised from the dead, and he is the first of many to come (e.g., 1 Corinthians 15:20–23). When the church spread into the Gentile world, where resurrection was a novel idea, Christians needed to say more in order to respond to disbelief and to correct misunderstandings. For our purposes, three texts will suffice as examples of early Christian thinking. The earliest document in the New Testament is 1 Thessalonians, written circa 50–51 C.E. Christians of that time expected the last days to be imminent, and when some members of the Thessalonian church died, there was uncertainty about what to believe. Paul provided reassurance concerning the promise of resurrection and spoke of the return of the risen Christ as a time when those who are alive “will be caught up in the clouds . . . to meet the Lord in the air” (1 Thessalonians 4:13–18). This verse is the basis for the much-elaborated scenario of the “rapture” found in some branches of Christianity (see also 1 Corinthians 15:51–52). In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul dealt with a group of questions that disturbed the Corinthian church. Some members of that church were denying that there would be a resurrection in the last days. Paul’s response was based on his certainty that Christ had in fact been raised (15:3–8) and the conclusion the church had reached based on that: Christ’s resurrection and the eventual resurrection of the dead are irrevocably linked (vv. 12–28). The second issue concerned the nature of resurrection. Several resuscitations are recorded in both the Old and the New Testaments— that is, cases of people who were revived but later died— but resurrection was not believed to be a similar revival of the old corpse. It would be a new creation, of a body with new qualities, and Paul tried several analogies from nature to explain what is in truth inconceivable (vv. 35–56). But note the conclusion to this longest discussion of life after death in the Bible. As in Jesus’ teachings, the emphasis is on this life, not the next: “Be steadfast, immovable, always excelling in the work of the Lord” (v. 58). The Book of Revelation, like Jewish apocalypses, is persecution literature, and like them speaks at length of heaven and hell because life on earth means suffering for the righteous. The souls of the martyrs are said to be under the altar in heaven, at rest until the victory can be won on earth (6:9–11). The Last Judgment will bring Satan’s power to an end forever (chap. 20), and the righteous will enjoy eternal life—not in heaven but in the New Jerusalem, which will come down from heaven (chaps. 21–22). Once

again, the theme of life after death is used to vindicate God, as well as those who suffer because they are faithful to him. It has been noted that the New Testament says nothing to describe heaven except in Revelation, and this book has been the source of much of the later Christian speculation about what heaven must really be like. But this is apocalyptic literature, and the language of apocalypse is always symbolic, so it has been a basic error of interpretation to imagine, and even draw, pictures of the world to come based on a literal reading of this book.

DEVELOPMENT OF A DOCTRINE OF LIFE AFTER DEATH No concept of humanity as bodies temporarily inhabited by immortal souls appears in Scripture, but in post–New Testament literature it is taken for granted. It was the prevailing view throughout the Roman world, and it was assimilated into Christian thinking, apparently without debate, in spite of the fact that it is not found in Scripture and does not fit at all well with the New Testament message concerning resurrection. Much of Christian eschatology has involved efforts to explain how both can be true. Death was assumed by all to be the separation of the immortal soul from the body, so there were no serious questions raised for centuries about whether there is life after death. Rather, the questions focused on what kind of life could be expected. With no experimental evidence available, the reflections were based on the few helpful biblical texts, on the experiences of visionaries, and, for the greatest part, on philosophical reasoning. The motivation for affirmations about the afterlife drifted from the earlier concern, that God’s justice must surely be manifested one day for the righteous and the unrighteous who had not experienced it in this life. That did not disappear, for judgment played a large role in every scheme, but the fate of the souls of believers became more and more a matter of concern. The crucial problem for those who believe that the dead will be resurrected in the last days is that of time. We die now, but the resurrection will happen in some indefinite future, and what becomes of us in the meantime? That is an especially acute question with respect to the deaths of one’s loved ones (usually more so than with respect to one’s own death): Where are they now? The concept of the immortal soul gave the church a way (or ways) to answer this question. Already, late in the second century C.E. Irenaeus wrote, with reference to the resurrection of Christ, that “the souls of His disciples also, upon whose account the Lord underwent these things, shall go away into the invisible place allotted to them by God and there remain until the resurrection, awaiting that event; then receiving their bodies, and rising in their entirety, that is bodily, just as the Lord arose, they shall come into the presence of God” (Against Heresies V.xxxi.2). From our perspective, he may seem to have been wise in adding to what he found in Scripture no more than

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souls “in an invisible place” during the interim before resurrection, for later writers could not restrain their curiosity about that place. Customs surrounding death for the first 1,000 years or so, however, seem to reflect the general idea that the souls of the dead were consigned to the keeping of the church until the day of resurrection (see Aries 1974:1–25). Speculation concerning the nature of heaven and hell was bound to develop during that period, of the sort that eventually appeared in Dante’s Divine Comedy (1321) and in ecclesiastical art depicting the Last Judgment. The church’s developing “system” for the forgiveness of sins, combined with the concept of the soul, led to the development of the idea of purgatory. (For our purposes we need not delve into the philosophical efforts to define just what a soul is, as in Aquinas’s theology.) The souls of unrepentant sinners were generally thought to go to a place of punishment immediately after death, with the eventual resurrection, Last Judgment, and commitment to hell added on because these were Scripture’s teachings. The soul had to be defined in such a way that it could experience pain, or there would be no punishment. The souls of the saints might pass into the presence of God immediately, but few are good enough to warrant that blessing. Paul’s teaching that sinners are justified by faith, fully reconciled to God by grace apart from human works of righteousness (e.g., Romans 3:21–28, 5:1–11; Galatians 3–4) had largely been forgotten, replaced by a legalistic system in which sins could be forgiven by the church, but the stain of guilt remained on the soul, which needed to be purified by penance. That system eventually became the sacrament of penance in the Roman Catholic Church. For those who died in a state of grace, but without having done sufficient penance for their minor sins, a place was provided where after death their souls could be purified—purgatory. The idea was present at least as early as the time of Gregory the Great (593–94), who wrote, “As for certain lesser faults, we must believe that, before the final judgment, there is a purifying fire (puratorius ignis)” (quoted in McGrath 1995:359). But the doctrine of purgatory was fully developed by Thomas Aquinas in the mid-13th century: To be sure, the soul is purified from this uncleanness in this life by penance, and the other sacraments, . . . but it does at times happen that such purification is not entirely perfected in this life; one remains a debtor for the punishment, whether by reason of some negligence, or business, or even because a man is overtaken by death. Nevertheless, he is not entirely cut off from his reward, because such things can happen without mortal sin, which alone takes away the charity to which the reward of eternal life is due. . . . They must then be purged after this life before they receive the final reward. (Summa Contra Gentiles IV.91.6)

He reaffirmed resurrection and judgment in the last days. In his commentary on 1 Corinthians 15, he wrote, “My soul is not I, and if only souls are saved, I am not saved, nor is any man.” As the state of the soul during the interim

period had been elaborated, however, resurrection and judgment functioned essentially as ratifications of the judgment of souls shortly after the deaths of individuals. Because they were in Scripture, they had to be retained, but the scenario the church had devised concerning the purgation and judgment of souls immediately after death effectively made them unnecessary. And the concept of the soul was easier for every believer to comprehend than the idea of resurrection. The doctrine of original sin (developed largely from Romans 5:12–21) stated that the guilt incurred by the sin of Adam and Eve was passed on by procreation from generation to generation. Baptism removed that guilt, but this led the church to concern itself over the fate of infants who died unbaptized. By the Middle Ages, the concept of limbo had appeared, a place where unbaptized infants (and the mentally defective) do not suffer the torments of hell but are deprived of the joy of the presence of God in heaven. The concept was never as fully developed as that of purgatory. The elaborate system of penance was a major factor contributing to Luther’s break with the Roman Catholic Church. Having become completely convinced of the efficacy of Christ’s redeeming death, Luther concluded that penance was contrary to Christian teaching and that purgatory was thus nothing but a human invention, or, as he put it, “illusions of the devil.” Calvin also taught that purgatory “makes void the cross of Christ; that it offers intolerable insult to the divine mercy; that it undermines and overthrows our faith.” For if “the blood of Christ is the only satisfaction, expiation, and cleansing for the sins of believers, what remains but to hold that purgatory is mere blasphemy?” (Institutes III.v.6). Both Calvin and Luther retained the belief in an immortal soul, however. Calvin wisely advised, “Moreover, to pry curiously into their intermediate state is neither lawful nor expedient. . . . It is foolish and rash to inquire into hidden things, farther than God permits us to know” (Institutes III.xxv.6). Unfortunately, he did not completely follow his own advice. In the century after Luther and Calvin, the Westminster Confession of 1647 stated succinctly the beliefs held by most Protestants until recent times: 1. The bodies of men, after death, return to dust, and see corruption; but their souls (which neither die nor sleep), having an immortal subsistence, immediately return to God who gave them. The souls of the righteous, being then made perfect in holiness, are received into the highest heavens, where they behold the face of God in light and glory, waiting for the full redemption of their bodies; and the souls of the wicked are cast into hell, where they remain in torments and utter darkness, reserved to the judgment of the great day. Besides these two places for souls separated from their bodies, the Scripture acknowledgeth none. 2. At the last day, such as are found alive shall not die, but be changed; and all the dead shall be raised up with the

Christian Beliefs– • –131 selfsame bodies, and none other, although with different qualities, which shall be united again to their souls forever. 3. The bodies of the unjust shall, by the power of Christ, be raised to dishonor; the bodies of the just, by his Spirit, unto honor, and be made conformable to his own glorious body. (Chap. XXXIII)

The next chapter of the Confession speaks of the Last Judgment, so the basic teaching of Scripture is reaffirmed, purged of purgatory and emphasizing resurrection, but accepting the notion of the immortal soul as orthodox Christian teaching. The idea of a soul that represents who one really is, that can survive beyond the death of the body, is so attractive and so much easier to comprehend than resurrection into a new creation at the last days that it has long been considered, in popular religion, the essential Christian belief. Evidence of this appeared in Europe in the 1950s, when the Swiss New Testament scholar Oscar Cullmann published an article titled “Immortality of the Soul or Resurrection of the Dead” ([1955–56] 1965), in which he developed what all scholars know to be the New Testament view. In the popular press, however, he was accused of attacking one of the fundamental beliefs of Christianity. The rise of materialism and positivism and the development of the physical sciences in the 18th and 19th centuries began to create embarrassment concerning ideas such as heaven, hell, and the soul. Cosmology left no place for heaven above and geology no place for hell below. No experimental evidence could be produced for the existence of a soul. And so beliefs that had been held for centuries began to be challenged, but challengers have not succeeded, so far, in entirely displacing them from the “instincts” (shall we say) of Christians as they face death.

CREATIVITY AND CONFUSION Churches were founded in North America as it was settled in the 17th and 18th centuries, but it has been estimated that in 1775 only about 5% of the North American population belonged to any church (Littell 1971:37). According to Littell (1971), for most of the 19th century the United States was missionary territory, but that mission work was highly successful. By 1900, church membership had risen to 36%; by 1926, it was better than 50%. The Great Awakening of the mid-18th century and the Second Awakening from the 1790s through the 1840s, followed by the work of revival preachers throughout the century, were major factors in the growth of the Christian religion. Revivalism is important for this discussion because the primary themes of revival preachers were the condemnation of sin and the offer of salvation from hell and for heaven. There was plenty of sin to condemn. One author described a frontier town as follows: At New Salem everybody came on Saturdays to trade, gossip, wrestle, raffle, pitch horse shoes, run races, get drunk, maul

one another with their fists, and indulge generally in frontier happiness, as a relief from the week’s monotonous drudgery on the raw and difficult farms. (Beveridge 1928:I.110)

Not to be ignored was the social message of those preachers, which led to significant reforms throughout the country. Church discipline was usually accepted by church members, and the influence of churches’ ethical teachings extended beyond their membership into the larger community. The old Christian message concerning life after death became elaborated in the preaching of revivalists as part of a technique to lead sinners to repent, convert, and be saved. (It is a question whether that elaboration led to satiation and contributed in part to the decline of interest in heaven and hell, especially in the 20th century.) Jonathan Edwards’s sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” preached during the Great Awakening, has become the classic example of a “hellfire and brimstone” revivalist sermon. It is unfortunate that Edwards is remembered primarily for this, given that he was one of the most learned men of his time in America (1703–58), a philosopher, theologian, and the third president of Princeton. But he was also a powerful orator, and the sermon reminds us that this kind of preaching was not confined to poorly educated ministers. A few examples of the depictions of hell presented by later revival preachers serve to illustrate the thinking of the 18th and early 19th centuries. Charles G. Finney (1792–1875) moved his audiences with this: Look! Look! . . . see the millions of wretches, biting and gnawing their tongues, as they lift their scalding heads from the burning lake! . . . See! see! how they are tossed, and how they howl. . . . Hear them groan, amidst the fiery billows, as they Lash! and Lash! and Lash! their burning shores. (Quoted in Weisberger 1958:115)

Jedediah Burchard elaborated the idea of a lake of fire: An ocean of liquid burning brimstone, that is daily replenished. It is walled in by great walls guarded by devils armed with pitchforks. High on the crest of the waves of fire, the damned soul is swept toward this wall, where the sinner thinks he may find at least temporary rest, but when at last he has managed to climb part way out of this sea of fire he suddenly finds himself pitchforked back and swept out by the receding tide. (Quoted in Weisberger 1958:135)

Conversion by fear seemed to have great success for about a century, but during the latter part of the 19th century many preachers found the other side—the blessings of heaven—to be more persuasive. Henry Ward Beecher (1813–87) illustrates the transition: When I come before the Eternal Judge and say, all aglow: “My Lord and God!” will He turn to me and say . . . “You did not come up the right road. Go down!” I to the face of Jehovah will stand and say: “God! I won’t go to hell! I will go to heaven! I love Thee. Now damn me if Thou canst. I love Thee!” And God shall say, and the heavens flame with double

132– • –TRANSCENDING DEATH and triple rainbows, and echo with joy: “Dost thou love? Enter in and be for ever blessed.” (Quoted in Weisberger 1958:170)

Elaboration of the joys of heaven included more variety than did descriptions of hell. For some, it was virtual absorption into the Divine, with little concern expressed for the preservation of personality. Others emphasized rest and eternal praise of God. Many who had absorbed the 19th-century ethos of work and progress found that to be unacceptably boring, and postulated a new life of continual activity and development. What made heaven most important for most Christians was the hope of being reunited with their families, and in spite of all that has been lost during the 20th and early 21st centuries, this seems to prevail to the present. Three offshoots of Christianity appeared in the United States during the 19th century, and I need to discuss them here because of their creativity concerning the afterlife. I refer to them as “offshoots” because although they all honor Jesus Christ in some way, they all also include beliefs never held by any earlier church. The first of these offshoots, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, was founded in 1830 in western New York by Joseph Smith, who said that he had translated the Book of Mormon from gold plates he had discovered there and later returned to a heavenly messenger. That book, plus the Book of Doctrines and Covenants and The Pearl of Great Price, became the basis for the beliefs and practices of the new church, but Mormons believe that church leaders may receive new revelations at any time. The church has extensive teachings about the afterlife. Everyone has existed as spirit children of God before they are born into this life, and at death everyone enters into a new stage of life where the soul may develop until the resurrection. The evil are separated from the righteous and suffer from guilt and fear, but they are given a chance to accept the truths of the Latter-day Saints. The righteous live in a paradise of lakes, forests, and flowers. Family members are reunited, and infants appear as adults. Heaven is an active place, with the righteous devoted to teaching, but the ordinances of the church can be performed only in temples on earth, so church members compile genealogies to enable them to be baptized for their ancestors, who can then make progress in the afterlife. The second coming of Christ will begin the millennium, when Zion will be built on the American continent. The final judgment will lead to a fiery fate for the wicked, and the earth will be re-created as a giant crystal ball. Those who progress furthest in their development in the spirit world can become gods (Doctrines and Covenants 76:5; for sources used in this summary, see McDannell and Lang 1988:313–22). The second offshoot, Christian Science, is based on the work of Mary Baker Eddy, author of Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures ([1875] 1994), who founded the First Church of Christ Scientist in Boston in 1879. Eddy claimed to have found the true meaning of the Bible, but her teachings are more akin to ancient gnosticism than

to orthodox Christianity. God is Mind and God is All, therefore matter is “nothing beyond an image in mortal mind” (Science and Health 116:18). And “Life is God, Spirit, the divine Principle of existence. . . . Life, as so understood, does not enter existence by birth nor leave it by death. It does not come or go. It is eternal. And the individual living identities, created, by Life, God, coexist with Him, indestructible and inviolable” (Christian Science Publishing Society 1990:72–73). Sin, sickness, and death are not created by God, who is all good, so although people are in truth affected by them in this life, Christian Science sets out to prove their essential unreality by its commitment to healing (Christian Science Publishing Society 1990:109–10). Those who die pass through “a belief called death” and then, “Mortals awaken from the dream of death with bodies unseen by those who think that they bury the body” (Science and Health 429:17–18). Eddy thus seems to speak of some sort of resurrection. There is no hell for sinners after death, for she defines hell as “mortal belief; . . . that which worketh abomination or maketh a lie” (Science and Health 588:1–4). Progress is possible after death. In the dialogue in Christian Science: A Sourcebook, the answer to the question “If I were more of a sinner than you, would you get eternal life sooner than I would?” is “We both already have eternal life, since God is our real Life, but I would be more ready to see that fact and be blessed by it than you would under those conditions” (Christian Science Publishing Society 1990:106). As for heaven, it is “a divine state of Mind in which all manifestations of Mind are harmonious and immortal, because sin is not there, and man is found having no righteousness of his own, but in possession of the ‘Mind of the Lord’” (Science and Health 291:13–18). Note that the familiar body/soul dichotomy is modified in these teachings, as matter is unreal, and eternal life is essentially a given, for the Life we all share is the Life of God. The Jehovah’s Witnesses, whose group represents the third offshoot of Christianity, also have distinctive beliefs about God and human destiny. The group was founded by Charles T. Russell in 1872, and after his death in 1916 Joseph F. Rutherford assumed leadership and made significant changes in Russell’s teachings. Rutherford’s teachings deny the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, claiming it was promulgated by Satan (Rutherford 1937:48–49). God is one and should be addressed by his biblical name, Jehovah. Jesus is not divine but was created; he is, however, Jehovah’s official representative on earth. The group’s primary interest is eschatology. Rutherford taught that Satan was cast out of heaven in 1914 (Revelation 12:10–12), and Jesus returned to earth and began to reign, but invisibly. The Lord came to his Temple (see Malachi 3:1) in 1918, and the saints were resurrected. The battle of Armageddon (Revelation 16:16) is imminent, and the righteous who will survive it will remain on earth forever (Rutherford 1944:354). The millennium, the 1,000-year reign of Christ on earth (Revelation 20:4), will conclude with a brief reappearance of Satan, after which most of the

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righteous will live forever on a transformed earth (Revelation 21–22). Only 144,000 of them will go to heaven (Rutherford 1942:100; this figure is based on Revelation 7:4, 14:1, 3). Most of the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ eschatology is based on a literal reading of the Book of Revelation. During the 20th century, the teachings of the mainline churches concerning death and the afterlife changed very little, in spite of the radical cultural changes believers were experiencing. Church members tended to be left with the traditional words, with their churches providing them little help in answering the questions raised by contemporary culture. Many churches developed strong concerns about the ills of society, and social action meant a focus on this life rather than the next. Death became an issue, but because of ethical questions raised by abortion, euthanasia, and medicine’s increasing ability to prolong “life” in ways that scarcely fit the biblical definition of life. Early in the century, the Presbyterian Church in the United States made a confessional change. Showing a pastoral concern for those who have lost children in infancy, the church added a declaratory statement to the Westminster Confession, saying, “We believe that all dying in infancy are included in the election of grace, and are regenerated and saved by Christ through the Spirit, who works when and where he pleases.” Individuals continued to raise the same questions and express the same hopes, of course. In his introduction to a chapter titled “Death and Beyond,” Hans Schwarz (1979) indicates his intent to find a way between two frequent temptations: “undue restraint” (asserting that “all we can say about life beyond death is that God who was good to me in life will also be good to me in death”) and a “travelog eschatology” (p. 195). Although the imaginations of individuals certainly continue to produce such “travelogs,” the trend has been in the direction of what Schwarz calls undue restraint. The eschatology of what may be called, for the sake of brevity, millennial groups has also focused in its own way on this world and this life, more than on the life to come. The messages of many radio and television preachers, as well as the extensive printed and video material of the same kind, emphasize that current events show that we are in the last days, and they combine texts from various parts of the Bible (especially Daniel and Revelation) to create a timetable. Their intent in emphasizing this timetable is to lead people to repentance and conversion before it is too late. Heaven and hell are certainly in the picture, but they do not dominate the message, as they did in the 18th and 19th centuries. For example, in a typical book of this kind, titled Satan in the Sanctuary, McCall and Levitt (1973) begin by demonstrating the necessity for a third temple to be built in Jerusalem, given that the antichrist must appear there for the events of the timetable to continue (2 Thessalonians 2:4); they then describe the antichrist, the rapture, the tribulation, Christ’s return, and the millennium. As for “eternity,” they do little more than quote

Revelation 21:1–2, Psalms 102:25–27, Revelation 21:4–5, and Revelation 32:22 (an error on their part—the chapter and verse they mean to cite are actually 22:22). For believers, the rapture will simply take them to “be with God.” For others: “You’ll get a subpoena: you’ll have to appear before Christ on judgment day” (McCall and Levitt 1973:103). Thus millennial groups tend to elaborate the terrors of life on earth during the last days more than they do the terrors of hell. The question of punishment after death has been a difficult one for Christians throughout their history. Justice seems to require punishment for the wicked who have flourished during this life, and during the many centuries when torture was taken for granted as part of the system of criminal “justice,” it was easy for most to assume that earthly punishments would be magnified in the afterlife. Not everyone has accepted the idea of everlasting pain, however. Some have argued for the destruction of the wicked; others have argued for their suffering and then their destruction. Eventually, universal salvation has come to be espoused by those who believe that mercy triumphs completely over justice in the divine economy. This position does raise the question, however, of how much those who have made themselves enemies of God and have embraced evil will really enjoy God’s presence in another life. So another, cautious way of speaking of the fate of the wicked is to say that they will be separated from God, and thus from all that is good. John Hick (1994) has summarized effectively the now widely accepted argument against the existence of the kind of hell that was accepted for centuries: “For a conscious creature to undergo physical and mental torture through unending time (if this is indeed conceivable) is horrible and disturbing beyond words; and the thought of such torment being deliberately inflicted by divine decree is totally incompatible with the idea of God as infinite love” (pp. 200–201). By the end of the 20th century, some theologians had rejected not only the traditional hell, but all ideas of life after death. For example, Gordon Kaufman (1968), professor of theology at Harvard Divinity School, disposes of the resurrection of Christ by calling it at best a visionary experience of the disciples, then continues: “Although contemporary reconstruction of Jesus’ resurrection clarifies the ultimate convictions of Christian faith about God’s nature, it completely undermines the traditional basis for hope for individual life after death” (p. 468). He continues: “God created man as a finite being. Each man has his own beginning and end, and his own particular place within the on-going movement of history” (p. 470). He also notes, “We are now in a position to dispose rather quickly of such symbols as the ‘last judgment,’ ‘heaven,’ and ‘hell’” (p. 471). Those who retain the concept have generally taken the position that Schwarz (1979) calls undue restraint, or, as McDannell and Lang (1988) put it, “From Fundamentalists to post-Christian radicals, theologians have deserted a human-oriented afterlife and have returned to

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the God-oriented heaven of the reformers” (p. 308). Two examples must suffice here. For the noted Roman Catholic theologian Karl Rahner (1984:118), the afterlife is a “silent emptiness,” but filled with the mystery we call God and the face of Jesus looking at us. In his lectures to pastors on the Apostles’ Creed, the most influential Protestant theologian of the century, Karl Barth (1960), says: We have no idea either of the life beyond or of the passage of this life into the other. We have only what came to pass in Jesus Christ, in his reign, which is present with us through faith, and which is declared to us. What we dare believe, is that we participate in this change, in the effects of human sanctification that occurred in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. (P. 140)

A few examples of worship materials from one denomination will illustrate this reluctance to say too much, at the congregational level. The “Brief Statement of Faith” adopted by the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) in 1990 uses only an allusion to Romans 8:38–39 as its conclusion: “With believers in every time and place we rejoice that nothing in life or death can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” The Presbyterian funeral service is called “Witness to the Resurrection” and includes a selection of resurrection texts from the New Testament from which the pastor may choose to read. The prayers use language such as the following, however: “We enter the joy of your presence”; “Because he lives, we shall live also”; “He [she] has entered the joy you have prepared.” There is one allusion to a familiar hope that is not found explicitly in Scripture: “Look forward to a glad heavenly reunion.” Resurrection itself appears in a prayer that quotes the final clauses of the Apostles’ Creed. The words immortal and soul do not appear, but the promise of immediate union with God is the major theme (Worshipbook 1970:71–86). Finally, while I was working on this chapter, I noticed, in the bulletin at the church where I worship, these words: “Then at the last bring us to your eternal realm where we may be welcomed into your everlasting joy.” If one were to look further, one surely would find the word heaven in contemporary worship materials, but note that in these examples it appears only in the expression “heavenly realm.” The popular literature is less cautious, however, and continues to use language that theological and denominational literature either avoids or uses sparingly. The Golden Book of Immortality (Clark and Davis 1954), an anthology containing hundreds of quotations on death and the afterlife from the works of respected authors, provides a helpful series of examples. Immortality rather than resurrection is definitely the theme. One section of the anthology, “Easter Horizons,” contains references to the resurrection of Christ, but the editors evidently were not interested in including quotations concerning the resurrection of people in the last days. Other section titles reflect the themes of many a funeral sermon, such as “Fear Death? There Is No

Death!” and “Dawn!” Author after author affirms the existence of an immortal soul that goes to be with God immediately after death. The bases for their beliefs vary, however, and it is useful to note the reasons they give (as we remind ourselves that no one can cite experimental evidence). Authority is enough for many. Charles M. Sheldon writes: “I believe in immortality because Jesus taught it and believed it. That is all the proof I need” (in Clark and Davis 1954:188). Many authors use an argument that may or may not be religious: the value of the human personality. Robert J. McCracken argues that because man was created in the image of God, “it is surely inconceivable that death should be the end of everything for him” (p. 31). Charles R. Woodson writes: “When we survey the long and costly course personality has traveled, the belief in immortality is inescapable. Something abiding must come of personality after death, or else the whole creative process of life is utterly purposeless” (p. 42). The quotations in this anthology reveal several of the perennial reasons human beings continue to believe in life after death, in spite of its incomprehensibility. The feeling that the human personality is so valuable that it should not, and thus cannot, die is reinforced by Christian beliefs in God’s love for every person and his intent to perfect his creation—clearly not yet done. The original, convincing argument, that Jesus was in fact raised from the dead, has not been forgotten (although it has been interpreted in a great variety of ways). The justice question, the original issue for Judaism, tends to be muted now. Another factor, which I have slighted so far in this chapter, is general human misery and the ability to endure in spite of it that the promise of a better life after death has provided. With that in mind, note that there is a certain irony in the “humanist outlook” expressed by F. A. E. Crew (1968): “In a world so organized that everyone equipped to do so would be able to enjoy life at least as much as I have done, there would be very few who would hanker after an existence beyond the grave for the life lived on this earth would be complete in itself” (p. 261). For Crew, a comfortable and satisfying life seems to be quite enough to hope for; for those who produced the words I have quoted from The Golden Book of Immortality, it is not. In our time, most Christians reaffirm (often without being very specific) the traditional beliefs about life after death, but others have redefined Christianity so as to exclude an afterlife. That position is partly the result of historical skepticism—doubt about the accuracy of the Gospel accounts—and partly due to the effect of a scientific worldview that finds no place for any of this. As early Christians accepted what the world taught them about the immortal soul, so contemporary Christians find it difficult not to accept what the world teaches them about the impossibility of resurrection. The scientific worldview changed radically during the 20th century, however, and there is a small number of Christians who know something of relativity and quantum

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mechanics, and who find that the new science affords possibilities for new speculation about the great unknown. Two examples must suffice here to illustrate this kind of thinking. The theologian Austin Farrer (1964) writes: According to his [Einstein’s] unanswerable reasoning, space is not an infinite pre-existent field or area in which bits of matter float about. Space is a web of interactions between material energies which form a system by thus interacting. Unless the beings or energies of which heaven is composed are of a sort to interact physically with the energies in our physical world, heaven can be as dimensional as it likes, without ever getting pulled into our spatial field, or having any possible contact with us of any physical kind. (P. 145)

Hick (1994:278–96) elaborates a similar idea. In a recent collection of essays edited by Peters, Russell, and Welker (2002), theologians and scientists take up seriously the issues raised by what contemporary science tells us about the cosmos and about human existence, and begin to explore the possibilities for a new understanding of resurrection. One writer outlines a program: We must reconstruct Christian eschatology to be consistent with both our commitments to the bodily resurrection of Jesus and thus an eschatology of transformation, and with scientific cosmology regarding the past history and present state of the universe and its basis in such foundational theories as special and general relativity and quantum mechanics. (Russell 2002:24)

Two competing views of the future of the universe prevail today, based on notions of continual expansion or eventual contraction, both of which allow no possibility for the continuance of life billions of years into the future. The two options have been labeled “freeze or fry,” and neither offers any comfort of a hope for eternal life. Theologians may deal with this in at least two ways. For one, they can claim that because the present laws of nature are God’s creative work, God is free to create in new ways, and the resurrection of Christ is an indication that he intends to do so (Russell 2002:19). Another argument is that quantum cosmology allows for the possibility of multiple universes, with natural laws of which we have no knowledge (Russell 2002:5) Continuity and discontinuity have always been a problem for the resurrection hope. What, exactly, will be raised? Early theologians struggled with the problem of the decomposition of the body and tried various solutions to the question of identity: How can one say it is the same person who will be raised? (For new approaches, see the contributions in Peters et al. 2002, especially Murphy 2002; Schuele 2002.) One scientist proposes a completely theological answer: The “pattern” that is me is perfectly preserved in God’s memory until I am reembodied in the resurrection (Polkinghorne 2002:52). He also considers that what we have learned about time allows for the possibility that there is no intermediate state (p. 53). Einstein’s

redefinition of time may allow speculation that although for us there is an intermediate period between death and resurrection, in the world of the resurrection there is no apparent interval. These authors admit that the dialogue between science and eschatology is currently only a program, and there is no way to predict its results. Whether it will one day offer to Christians in local congregations new ways to think about death and the afterlife remains to be seen.

REFERENCES Aries, Philippe. 1974. Western Attitudes Toward Death: From the Middle Ages to the Present, translated by Patricia M. Ranum. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Barth, Karl. 1960. The Faith of the Church: A Commentary on the Apostles’ Creed. London: Collins. Beveridge, Albert J. 1928. Abraham Lincoln 1809-1858. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin. Cavallin, H. C. C. 1974. Life After Death. Paul’s Argument for the Resurrection of the Dead in 1 Cor. 15, Part 1, An Enquiry into the Jewish Background (Coniectania Biblica, New Testament 7:1). Lund, Sweden: C. W. K. Gleerup. Christian Science Publishing Society. 1990. Christian Science: A Sourcebook of Contemporary Materials. Boston: Christian Science Publishing Society. Clark, Thomas Curtis and Hazel Davis, eds. 1954. The Golden Book of Immortality: A Treasury of Testimony. New York: Association Press. Crew, F. A. E. 1968. “The Meaning of Death.” In The Humanist Outlook, edited by A. J. Ayer. London: Pemberton. Cullmann, Oscar. [1955–56] 1965. “Immortality of the Soul or Resurrection of the Dead.” Pp. 9–35 in Immortality and Resurrection, edited by Krister Stendahl. New York: Macmillan. Eddy, Mary Baker. [1875] 1994. Science and Health With Key to the Scriptures. Boston: First Church of Christ Scientist. Farrer, Austin. 1964. Saving Belief. New York: MorehouseBarlow. Hick, John. 1994. Death and Eternal Life. Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox. Kaufman, Gordon D. 1968. Systematic Theology: A Historicist Perspective. New York: Scribner. Littell, Franklin H. 1971. From State Church to Pluralism: A Protestant Interpretation of Religion in American History. New York: Macmillan. Martin-Achard, Robert. 1960. From Death to Life. Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd. McCall, Thomas S. and Zola Levitt. 1973. Satan in the Sanctuary. New York: Bantam. McDannell, Colleen and Bernhard Lang. 1988. Heaven: A History. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. McGrath, Alister E. 1995. The Christian Theology Reader. Oxford: Blackwell. Murphy, Nancey. 2002. “The Resurrection Body and Personal Identity: Possibilities and Limits of Eschatological Knowledge.” Pp. 202–18 in Resurrection: Theological and Scientific Assessments, edited by Ted Peters, Robert John Russell, and Michael Welker. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans.

136– • –TRANSCENDING DEATH Nickelsburg, G. W. E. 1972. Resurrection, Immortality and Eternal Life in Intertestamental Judaism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Peters, Ted, Robert John Russell, and Michael Welker, eds. 2002. Resurrection: Theological and Scientific Assessments. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans. Polkinghorne, John. 2002. “Eschatological Credibility: Emergent and Teleological Processes.” Pp. 43–55 in Resurrection: Theological and Scientific Assessments, edited by Ted Peters, Robert John Russell, and Michael Welker. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans. Rahner, Karl. 1984. “Erfahrungen eines katholischen Theologen.” Pp. 105–119 in Vor dem Geheimnis Gottes den Menschen verstehen, edited by Karl Lehmann. Munich: Schell & Steiner. Russell, John Robert. 2002. “Bodily Resurrection, Eschatology, and Scientific Cosmology.” Pp. 3–30 in Resurrection: Theological and Scientific Assessments, edited by Ted Peters, Robert John Russell, and Michael Welker. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans.

Rutherford, Joseph F. 1937. Uncovered. Brooklyn, NY: Watch Tower Bible & Tract Society. ———. 1942. The New World. Brooklyn, NY: Watch Tower Bible & Tract Society. ———. 1944. Religion Reaps the Whirlwind. Brooklyn, NY: Watch Tower Bible & Tract Society. Schuele, Andreas. 2002. “Transformed Into the Image of Christ: Identity, Personality, and Resurrection.” Pp. 219–35 in Resurrection: Theological and Scientific Assessments, edited by Ted Peters, Robert John Russell, and Michael Welker. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans. Schwarz, Hans. 1979. On the Way to the Future. Minneapolis: Augsburg. Weisberger, Bernard A. 1958. They Gathered at the River: The Story of the Great Revivalists and Their Impact Upon Religion in America. Boston: Little, Brown. The Worshipbook: Services. 1970. Philadelphia: Westminster.

NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCES AS SECULAR ESCHATOLOGY TILLMAN RODABOUGH KYLE COLE

ear-death experiences (NDEs) have invaded an area of concern long reserved for theologians— the study of last things. A majority of Americans believe that there is life after death. According to an August 2000 Harris Poll, 85.6% of Americans 18 years of age or older believe the soul survives after death, and 75.3% think they will go to heaven (Harris Interactive 2000). In a national survey on near-death experiences, Gallup and Proctor (1982) found that approximately 23 million Americans “have, by prevailing medical definition, died briefly or . . . come close to death” (p. 6) and about 8 million (or approximately 35%) of these have had some sort of NDEs. A recent search of the Internet for the phrase “afterlife belief” using the Google search engine garnered a list of more than 26,000 sites, and investigation of such sites quickly reveals the wide variety of opinions people have concerning what happens after death and during NDEs. Have people who claim to have had NDEs actually encountered the afterlife before death? How does this relate to the study of last things by religious scholars? Can we measure the phenomenon of near-death experience using scientific methods? As Schwarz (2001) notes, “In its broadest sense the term ‘eschatology’ includes all concepts of life beyond death and everything connected with it such as heaven and hell, paradise and immortality, resurrection and transmigration of the soul, rebirth and reincarnation, and last judgment and doomsday” (p. 26). Different world religions teach that an individual’s journey does not merely come to an end at death; rather, death represents a beautiful beginning that no one truly comprehends (Preuss 1971). The afterlife has long been claimed as the domain of theology, and thereby the existence of an afterlife has been deemed primarily a matter of faith. Although the

experiences of people who have come close to death or who have purportedly crossed the line between life and death have been recorded for hundreds of years, only recently have researchers attempted more organized studies of this phenomenon. Because these studies have not been conducted under the auspices of any specific dogma, this approach might be termed secular eschatology—the secular study of last things. We divide our discussion in this chapter into three major sections: an examination of the near-death experience using Raymond Moody’s model and the findings of other researchers who have tested that model, a look at the NDE as sacred eschatology, and, finally, an examination of the NDE as secular eschatology.

NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCES: AN OVERVIEW The major impetus for the current secular interest in what happens at the point of death was the publication in 1975 of the book Life After Life, by Raymond Moody, Jr.; in this book, Moody presents his model for what he terms “near-death experiences.” Three factors served to strengthen the book’s appeal when it first appeared. First, Moody had impressive credentials as a philosophy professor; he held both a Ph.D. and an M.D., and he taught ethics in a medical school. Second, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, a charismatic speaker and probably the best-known student of death and dying at the time, contributed a foreword to the book, in which she wrote, “This book . . . will confirm what we have been taught for two thousand years—that there is life after death” (p. xi). And finally, in the book Moody pieced case histories together to tell the story of a peaceful journey that helped to reduce readers’ anxiety about dying. 137

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Moody’s Research Life After Life is Moody’s report on a qualitative study in which he interviewed people who had undergone neardeath experiences; the book presents a composite account of what it is like to die. Moody’s narrative is based on accounts from (a) persons who were resuscitated after having been thought dead, (b) persons who came close to death through severe injury or illness, (c) persons who were actually dying, and (d) persons who had severe accidents but escaped unscathed. Despite similarities, no two of the accounts are precisely alike, and a few are not even close to being like the others. No one person whom Moody interviewed reported experiencing every element in the composite, no single element is reported by every person in the sample, and the order of the elements varies. Using the most common experiences he found in all of his research, Moody produced a scenario comprising the following 11 elements, which he pieced together into this somewhat chronological order: • Ineffability: Because the events that people experience during NDEs are outside their normal frame of reference, they encounter vocabulary difficulties in expressing what has happened to them. As Moody (1975) notes, most individuals find that “there are just no words to express what I am trying to say” (p. 26). • Hearing the news: During their near-death experiences, many of those Moody interviewed heard the physician in the operating room or some spectator at the scene declare them dead. One woman told Moody that during attempts to resuscitate her after a cardiac arrest, she heard her surgeon remark, “Let’s try one more time, and then we’ll give up” (pp. 27–28). • Feelings of peace and quiet: One of the most common elements in NDEs is an overwhelming feeling of peace. A man who was wounded while he was a soldier in Vietnam said that he felt “a great attitude of relief. There was no pain, and I’ve never felt so relaxed. I was at ease and it was all good” (pp. 28–29). • The noise: Many report some sort of auditory sensation, either pleasant or unpleasant. The descriptions vary widely—“a really bad buzzing noise,” “a loud ringing,” “a loud click, a roaring, a banging,” “Japanese wind bells,” “a majestic, really beautiful sort of music” (p. 30). • The dark tunnel: Some describe a sensation of traveling rapidly through dark space, often concurrently with hearing the noise. Moody’s interviewees described the space as a cave, a well, a trough, an enclosure, a tunnel, a funnel, a vacuum, a void, a sewer, a valley, a passageway, and a cylinder (p. 30–33). • Out of body: Individuals often report viewing others and themselves from vantage points outside their own physical bodies. Invisible, weightless, and lacking solidness, they possess the ability to move almost instantaneously from one place to another, with physical objects presenting no barrier. Their abilities to think, see, and hear are considerably enhanced. In this state, their

improved hearing is more the ability to pick up thoughts than to hear physical sounds. But because others are unable to hear or see them, persons in this state feel isolated and alone. • Meeting others: As individuals move deeper into their journeys, others come to aid them in the transition to death or to tell them it is not yet their time to die. The deaththreatened persons usually recognize these as relatives or friends who have died previously, or as “guardian spirits” or “spiritual helpers” (p. 55). • The being of light: Many describe encountering an indescribably brilliant light that does not hurt the eyes. Most perceive this light as a being of love and warmth. “Out-ofbody” persons feel an irresistible attraction to this being, or feel completely at ease, as though they are engulfed in the presence of this being. Christians sometimes identify the being as Christ, whereas Jews may call it an angel, and persons with no prior religious beliefs may simply describe it as a “being of light.” Communication between the light and the person close to death takes place through direct transfer of thoughts in such a way that lying and misunderstanding cannot occur. The being of light asks, “Are you prepared to die?” or “What have you done with your life to show me?” (p. 64). The being does not ask these questions in the spirit of condemnation, but in total love and acceptance, no matter what the answers may be. • The life review: The being of light answers the question by presenting a panoramic review of the person’s life. These three-dimensional memories are extraordinarily rapid and in chronological order. The person close to death reexperiences the emotions and feelings associated with the life events. The being of light provokes reflection while stressing the importance of learning to love other people and acquiring knowledge. Individuals report feeling as if they are actually in these flashbacks rather than just seeing them (p. 68). • The border or limit: A few of Moody’s respondents described some kind of border or limit, variously interpreted as “a body of water, a gray mist, a door, a fence across a field, or simply a line” (p. 73). They wanted to cross the barrier but felt themselves drawn back to life. • Coming back: The most common feelings in the initial phase of the NDE are a desire to get back into the body and regret over dying. Some of Moody’s respondents reported that, at a certain point, they did not want to return, but others were glad to return to complete some unfinished, important tasks. Some felt they were allowed to return by the being of light in response to their own requests to live or because God had some mission for them to fulfill. Others felt that the prayers of loved ones pulled them back from death.

Moody notes his respondents’ hesitancy to report these experiences for fear others would think them mentally unstable. Many told him that after their experiences, life became more precious to them, and the acquisition of knowledge more important. There were “no feelings of instantaneous salvation or of moral infallibility” and no “holier-than-thou” attitudes (p. 93); however, for those who had these experiences, death was no longer threatening.

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None of Moody’s respondents described a heaven of pearly gates and winged angels or a hell of flames. Rather, they compared death to a “homecoming,” an “awakening,” a “graduation,” and an “escape.” For the most part, the reward-punishment model of the afterlife did not appear among Moody’s subjects. In the sequel to Life After Life, titled Reflections on Life After Life (1977), Moody describes additional, less frequently discussed, elements of the NDE. Possibly as a result of the popularity of his first book, he found that people who had had NDEs where much more willing to talk openly about the topic, and he examined so many cases that he no longer kept count. These accounts included the more common elements discussed above, along with the following four additional elements: • Vision of knowledge: Many reported experiencing a flash of universal insight—a brief glimpse of a realm where all knowledge seems to exist. On returning, one forgets the knowledge but remembers the feeling of knowing. This vision encouraged many survivors to continue to learn in this life after their return. • City of light: Although Moody reported the lack of anything resembling the traditional concept of heaven in the first book, the phrase “a city of light” occurred in several of the new accounts. In this “city,” everything, buildings and countryside, appears to be bright with brilliant light from no apparent source (Moody 1977:17). • Realm of dulled spirits: Several people reported observing “dulled spirits” or “confused beings” who seemed trapped in a particular state of existence, trying to decide where to go and what to do. Some of these washed-out, dejected spirits appeared to be trying to contact people on earth who had been close to them in life, to warn them to do good to others, but the people on earth were unaware of them. There appeared to be a huge array of these spirits attached to things important to them on earth. • Supernatural rescues: Moody also found instances in which people reported being rescued either before or after death by some voices or persons telling them how to get out of precarious and threatening situations. Sometimes they heard voices telling them their time had not yet come or telling them to breathe so that they might resume life.

In his second book, Moody, reinterprets the absence of a spiritual judgment in his first book. When they had been asked to look back over their lives, Moody’s interviewees had felt repentant over selfish acts and satisfaction where they had shown love and kindness. One individual perceived his flashback this way: “When I would experience a past event, it was like I was seeing it through eyes with (I guess you would say) omnipotent knowledge, guiding me, because it showed me not only what I had done but even how what I had done had affected other people” (quoted in Moody 1977:45). According to Moody, the internal judgment within the individual meshes with Scripture, “With what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged” (Matthew 7:1). Moody (1977)

notes that “nothing I have encountered precludes the possibility of a hell” (p. 36). In his more recent work, Moody (1999) also suggests that his respondents’ personal adventures assured them that life continues beyond death, which need not be feared. They became certain that the most important thing they could do while alive was to learn how to love.

Other Early Research Kenneth Ring, author of Life at Death (1980), wanted to collect data in a way that could be analyzed and evaluated scientifically. Ring (a psychologist with a Ph.D.) and his assistants interviewed 102 people who had “come close to death.” Of these, 26% were “deep experiencers,” as defined by Ring’s weighted index of components experienced, 22% were “moderate experiencers,” and 52% were “nonexperiencers” (pp. 33–34). This gives his total sample a 48% experiencing rate, but only 39% of those referred by medical personnel and hospitals were experiencers. Because that 39% represents a more random selection than does the total figure, which includes self-referrals, Ring notes that the 39% experiencing rate is more representative of the total population. He warns that this is only suggestive, however, given that his sample was rather haphazardly collected. Ring examined several correlates of the NDE and found that how a person nearly dies appears to make a difference: The incidence of core experiences is greatest in connection with illnesses (56%), followed by accidents (42%) and suicide attempts (33%). However, there is a gender difference, with women having core experiences related to illness and men having core experiences related to accidents. Relative to the NDE itself, 71% of Ring’s subjects used the words “peaceful” and/or “calm” to describe their experiences, 37% had out-of-body experiences, 23% experienced the darkness, 29% heard some unusual noise, 33% saw the bright light, 21% entered the light, 27% felt that they approached some kind of boundary, 57% went through a decisional phase that frequently involved flashbacks over their previous lives, 61.5% found their experience difficult to put into words, 37% had an increased appreciation of life, 24% had a renewed sense of purpose, and 24% reported that they had become more loving as a result of their experiences. Ring, followed by other researchers (Bates and Stanley 1985), reduced Moody’s 15 elements to five categories: The first stage included a strong feeling of peacefulness; the second, traveling outside of one’s body; the third, traveling through the tunnel or void; the fourth, the encounter with the being of brilliant light and love; and the last and rarest stage, arriving at the final destination or “heaven.” Ring uses these stages in labeling persons with various levels of experience; for example, “Stage 3” refers to a person who went through the tunnel but did not encounter the being of light. Ring and Franklin (1981–82) suggest two models regarding the stages. In the first, the five stages unfold in a predetermined sequence—an invariant

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model; in the second, the stages unfold in one of several distinct individually determined progressions. Of the two, their second model more closely resembles Moody’s presentation; their first model was an attempt to achieve more structure and predictability. Basically, although Ring’s book is titled Life at Death: A Scientific Investigation of the Near-Death Experience, his work is the Moody model with frequencies. The same problems that plagued Moody—lack of a representative sampling procedure, interviewing problems, lack of ability to corroborate reports, and lack of a genuine check of alternative hypotheses—also weaken Ring’s work. His contributions to research into near-death experiences consist of additional accounts and better records. In his later book, Heading Toward Omega: In Search of the Meaning of the Near-Death Experience (1984), Ring concludes that near-death experiencers invariably believe that that they have glimpsed life after death and that they will survive death when it comes. Michael Sabom (1982), a cardiologist, began his investigation of NDEs with a negative view of Moody’s work and became a supporter as a result of his own research. Sabom sought to determine whether variables such as social, educational, professional, and religious backgrounds made any differences in the kinds of NDEs individuals report. Also, Moody had not attempted to substantiate near-death experiencers’ reports of what they “saw” happening around them when they were presumed unconscious; Sabom wanted to try to corroborate such accounts be checking medical records and other available sources. Over a 5-year period, Sabom located 116 persons who had survived near-death experiences. Of 78 persons chosen arbitrarily from this group, 43% reported NDEs. Sabom found no social or demographic differences between those who did and those who did not report NDEs. Neither prior knowledge of the Moody model nor the cause of the near-death encounter—whether coma, accident, or cardiac arrest—affected the probability of NDE occurrence. Unlike Ring, Sabom found no correlations between how individuals nearly died and what they experienced. Both researchers used nonrandom samples, and differential biases could result from the manner in which subjects were selected. When Sabom tested the accuracy of the autoscopic, or self-visualizing, phenomenon, he found that 26 of the 32 descriptions contained accurate but only general impressions. However, when he asked control patients with heart trouble to reconstruct their in-hospital resuscitations, 80% made at least one major error in describing their resuscitations. Asking someone to tell you what he or she remembers is different from asking someone to reconstruct a total process; the fewer details likely in the first case allow less room for error. Among his subjects, Sabom recorded 32 autoscopic descriptions; 14 entered a dark void; 17 saw a bright light; 28 saw a region of great scenic beauty; 28 reported meeting some other person; and others reported a decision to go back, a border or limit, or a

change in attitude toward death—either their own or that of others. Overall, Sabom’s work is as entertaining as Moody’s and provides more demographic information and statistical comparisons. Sabom concludes that medical personnel must be more respectful of “unconscious” patients, particularly where careless conversation about the grim details or the hopelessness of the situation is concerned. Flynn (1985) examined the lives of near-death experiencers and found support for earlier findings that such persons often change their lives after their NDEs. This transformation to some degree resembles the kind of change associated with religious conversion. We now turn to the subject of the NDE as an example of the life after death promised in most religious traditions.

NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCES AS SACRED ESCHATOLOGY Although Moody did not interpret his findings in a sacred sense, but rather simply as descriptions of what people actually experienced, others moved quickly to make the religious connection. Maurice Rawlings (1978), a cardiologist, recorded many of the same elements that Moody found from his own interviews with patients whom he resuscitated—the out-of-body experience, the dark tunnel, the noise, the river, the dead relatives, and the being of light, along with music and the city of gold. However, additional elements piqued his curiosity. Rawlings had an experience in which he was frightened by the pleas of a man he was resuscitating, who each time he was brought back to consciousness begged, “Don’t stop! . . . Each time you quit I go back to hell! Don’t let me go back to hell!” A couple of days later, when Rawlings returned to ask the patient what this hell was like, all the patient could remember of his NDE was the usual pleasant, Moody-type scenario. This experience motivated Rawlings to conduct research on the negative aspects of near-death experiences. Rawlings (1978, 1983) reports that among the one-fifth of those resuscitated with experiences to report, unpleasant experiences appear as frequently as pleasant ones. Usually, however, the unpleasant experiences related during resuscitation or immediately after are forgotten within a short period. Rawlings reasons that these experiences are so bad that the mind copes by repressing them. Also, people may be somewhat embarrassed to report any temporary sojourns in hell because of what that implies about their personal morality. Rawlings interprets the pleasant place described in Moody’s writings as a prejudgment “sorting” ground; he suggests that the tolerant being of light may even be the devil in disguise, lulling the visitor into complacency. Rawlings’s explanations demonstrate the ease with which these experiences can be given alternative, even opposite, interpretations. Other writers who take a traditional Christian perspective have offered warnings about the Moody model. For

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example, Tal Brooke (1979) suggests that all is not as it appears. Biblical exegesis, according to Brooke, reveals that “the deceased, the dead, cannot be contacted. God has created an impassable barrier. What are, in fact, being contacted in place of the sought-after human souls are some type of deceiving spirits masquerading as the deceased” (p. 69). Brooke asserts that Moody has been seduced by the beliefs of Eastern religions. Norman Gulley (1982), a professor of systematic theology and a member of the Seventh-Day Adventist denomination, says that death is an enemy, and any other teaching is false. He asks, “If Christ did not ascend to his Father until the resurrection morning, and waited in the grave during the interim, why should we expect any other humans to rise heavenward immediately at death instead of waiting until their final resurrection?” (p. 7). Harold Kuhn (1981), another religion professor, says that the darker encounters that Rawlings has written about should not be left out of media coverage in favor of encounters that fit the more positive Moody model: “If the two types can be presented in balance, they may serve to undergird the clear teaching of our Lord concerning the final division of mankind” (p. 82). Atwater (1994) places all NDE components into four different categories: the initial experience, the unpleasant or hell-like experience, the pleasant or heaven-like experience, and the transcendent experience. He sees all of these experiences as enlightenment that comes from a higher being, whether the focus is spiritual or knowledge related. Clearly, the writers cited above see the near-death experience as sacred eschatology to be reinterpreted according to their religious beliefs. Lorimer (1989) points out that over hundreds of years, Christianity has had a difficult time integrating the Platonic idea of the immortality of the soul with the Hebrew idea of the resurrection of the flesh. Therefore, many Christians quickly adopted the phenomenon of the NDE as proof of the existence of heaven, God, and other religious figures; the separation of body and soul; and the possibility of resurrection. The Moody model is not inconsistent with religion; indeed, it parallels Christianity in a number of ways. Different religions, and even different people within a single religious denomination, construct different conceptions of the afterlife. Differences appear even in biblical accounts. On one hand, Jesus’ words on the occasion of the raising of the daughter of Jairus, “She is not dead, but sleeps” (Matthew 9:24; Mark 5:39; Luke 8:52), have been interpreted to refer to “soul sleep”—the idea that the soul becomes unconscious at death. Similarly, in John 11:11, Jesus speaks to his disciples: “Lazarus has fallen asleep and I go to awake him.” Paul refers in 1 Thessalonians 4:13 to those Christians who have already died as “those who have fallen asleep,” and in Acts 7:60 he concludes his description of the stoning death of Stephen with “he fell asleep.” On the other hand, the Scriptures support the idea that the dead go immediately to a place where they have a conscious existence. In Luke 23:43, for example, Jesus assures the penitent thief hanging on the cross, “Today you will be with me in paradise.”

Whatever happens immediately after death, at some point the dead face one or more judgments, according to the Bible. The “sheep and the goat judgment” in Matthew 25:31–46 refers to a parable that Jesus told, suggesting that the good and bad are to be separated by God’s judgment to their eternal destiny—one of bliss and honor for the servants of God and the other of terror and punishment for those who have opposed his will in the physical life. For most religions, and particularly for Christianity, faith is important for understanding the afterlife. As this short discussion illustrates, one can paint different pictures using Scripture, depending on which verses or segments one emphasizes and how one interprets them, but the Moody model is not inconsistent with the “Today you will be with me in paradise” perspective.

Parallels in Other Literature In this subsection, we review and examine past accounts of the experience of death and near death for elements similar to those recorded by Moody. Scrutiny of religious writings and folklore for parallels in NDE descriptions reveals the widespread appearance of these phenomena (Holck 1978). For example, the auditory sensation common to NDEs has a parallel in the Bardo Thodol (the Tibetan Book of the Dead), where the dying person is told that “the natural sound of reality reverberating like a thousand thunders simultaneously sounding, will come” (Evans-Wentz 1960:104). The sensation of being in a dark tunnel, and the accompanying or interchangeable sensations of voidness or vacuum, may relate to the voidness, Shunyata, described in Eastern tradition (Eliade 1967). The out-of-body experience and the awareness of a “spiritual body” is perhaps the feature most widely shared. The Indian tribes of the Argentine and Bolivian Chaco believed that the soul “at first hovers about its old abode, the dead body and the house where the departed lived” (Karsten 1932:189). The Zoroastrian tradition holds that the soul stays near the body for 3 days, hoping to return to the body (Pavry 1965). The Bardo Thodol states that the soul stays in the place where it had lived, sees its relatives, and hears the wailings (Evans-Wentz 1960). Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Mormons, are encouraged to keep diaries, and these documents provide many interesting records of the significant events of their lives. Lundahl (1979) gives several examples of out-of-body experiences from accounts in Mormon diaries. For instance, in a diary entry dated 1838, a Mormon woman relates that her spirit left her body and she was able to see it lying on the bed and her sisters weeping. Another Mormon’s diary from the early 1860s tells how a man who was badly injured in an accident was able to see his body and the men standing around it from a position in the air above; he also was able to hear their conversation. In 1898, a Mormon missionary near death reported that his spirit left his body, although he could not tell how; he said that he saw himself standing

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4 or 5 feet in the air, and saw his body lying below him on the bed (Lundahl 1979). The inaudibility and invisibility of the nonmaterial entity is illustrated by a Chippewa story about a slain chief who spoke to his wife; she could not hear him until he returned to his body. Lithuanian folklore also includes a story of a man who grieved with his family for someone who had died until he realized at his funeral 3 days later that it was his body they were grieving over and returned to life (Eliade 1967). The common NDE element of meeting dead relatives and friends is similar to Jensen’s (1963) description of primitive peoples’ view of the journey into death as one in which they are reunited with departed tribal members and with the deity who receives the dead. The Siberian funeral ceremony suggests that the shaman searches through the crowd of spirits to find close relatives of the deceased to whom the soul can be entrusted (Eliade 1967). The Winnebago tribe believed that dead relatives would guide and take care of the new soul. A Chinese tradition holds that the new soul is led by a demon to ancestors, who then guide it to the happy land. In the Islamic tradition, the souls of the faithful welcome and guide the new soul to heaven. And in Lithuanian folklore, the deceased friends of the dying person come to visit and take him or her away (Eliade 1967). In Lundahl’s (1979) review of Mormon near-death experiences, he relates the case of one man who reported seeing his little daughter, who had died many years earlier. Another reported being introduced to five generations of his father’s people, and a 16-year-old Mormon girl reported that her departed mother had been her guide in the spirit world. Encounters with a being of light are also found in many traditions. A passage from the Saddharma-Smrityripasthana Sutra (chap. 34) states that as death approaches, the dying person sees a perplexing bright light (Eliade 1967). The Bardo Thodol states, “The wisdom of the Dharma-Dhatu, blue in color, shining transparent, glorious, dazzling . . . will shoot forth and strike against thee with a light so radiant that thou wilt scarcely be able to look at it” (Evans-Wentz 1960:160). The Chaco Indians believed that upon their arrival in the afterlife, the souls of the dead encountered an ever-shining sun (Karsten 1932). The life review, or playback of the individual’s actions, is roughly paralleled in the Bardo Thodol, where “the Lord of Death will say, ‘I will consult the Mirror of Karma.’ . . . He will look in the mirror, wherein every good and evil is reflected. Lying will be of no avail” (EvansWentz 1960:166). Similar accounts of the barrier between life and death have been given by the Maori and by the Thompson River Indians of British Columbia (Eliade 1967); that is, those who have died approached some kind of barrier and returned to life. In his review of near-death experiences in Mormon writings, Lundahl (1979) found no flashbacks, but he did find the barrier and the request that the individual return to life. He relates the following typical Mormon experience. In 1891, a 15-year-old Mormon

girl, sick with scarlet fever, reported that her spirit left her body but could still hear and see her family mourning her death; went to another world, where she could hear music and singing; visited with many of her deceased family and friends; saw children singing in age-segregated groups similar to Sunday school; and was told to return to earth to finish her mission, which she did, although it was not her wish. In more recent historical research, Lundahl (1993–94) quotes full Moody-type scenarios directly from pre-1900 Mormon publications, revealing the existence of written documentation of these phenomena more than a century and a half ago. Based on his review of religion and folklore, Holck (1978) suggests that there are similarities between contemporary NDEs and those randomly gathered from literary sources. He concludes that these phenomena are universal— a part of the experience of the human race. However, Holck asserts that whether these phenomena are archetypal, in the Jungian sense, or factual events is open to interpretation. As the above review shows, some relatively similar phenomena have happened across time and ethnic groups. If people who have NDEs actually perceive the literal contact with the afterlife that they report, these studies provide reinforcement for the religious study of last things.

NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCES AS SECULAR ESCHATOLOGY Looking at NDEs from a secular perspective involves taking two approaches: (a) searching for nonmetaphysical explanations for these experiences and (b) examining the experiences objectively, with no religious dogma attached. In this section we do both. Some researchers offer a physiological explanation for the NDE. They assert that the person near death does not actually travel out of body and meet deceased relatives and religious figures; rather, these perceptions are triggered in the mind by physiological changes occurring in the organism. NDEs, therefore, become a study of last things without the sacred explanation. We do not actually see with our eyes but with our brains. Pressure against the eye produces small flashes of light when certain receptors excited by the pressure are induced to send the brain messages of perceptions that have no real object in the environment. As the brain deteriorates, changes in the central nervous system alter perception of the environment. The unconscious could be stimulated by a number of deep organismic changes, which can be separated into at least five categories: starvation and sleep deprivation, toxic metabolic products, autointoxication, anoxia, and drug use. We discuss each of these briefly in turn below. Starvation and sleep deprivation. Starvation and sleep deprivation can interfere with psychological functioning to the point of inducing hallucinations. Symptoms of many diseases interfere with sleep and nutrition, so hospital

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patients could find themselves, through their inability to assimilate food or to get anything but drugged sleep, short on both, despite the best efforts of medical staff. Toxic metabolic products. Profound psychological changes can occur as the result of toxic metabolic products in the organism. In hepatic and renal disease, for example, the liver may fail to detoxify various noxious substances, and the kidneys may eliminate only some of the organism’s waste products. Extreme mental changes can occur when an individual suffers from a progressive disease of the kidneys with subsequent uremia. Autointoxication. Disintegration of bodily tissues, as in cancer or wasting and degenerative diseases, can trigger a high degree of autointoxication. This is particularly so when psychological functioning is affected by the pathological process in diseases such as meningitis or encephalitis, or by brain tumors, head injuries, or other types of brain damage. Anoxia. Anoxia, an insufficient supply of oxygen to the tissues of the body, occurs frequently in dying individuals. Insufficient oxygen, or excess carbon dioxide, produces an abnormal mental state. Lung diseases such as emphysema or pulmonary tumors, which reduce the body’s oxygen intake, can cause anoxia. It is also caused by inadequate oxygen distribution throughout the body, as in cardiac failure or anemia, or by interference with the enzymatic transfer of oxygen at a subcellular level (Grof and Halifax 1978). Depriving the brain of oxygen has long been associated with visions and religious experiences. Australian Aboriginals at one time used near-suffocation or inhalation of smoke in religious rituals. Many religious experiences in India are aided by hyperventilation, holding the breath, obstruction of the larynx, constriction of the carotid arteries, or prolonged suspension by the feet—all of which result in brain anoxia. In a study of deathbed observations by doctors and nurses, Osis (1965) found that anoxia was the most frequently used explanation for patients’ reported visions and perceptions of apparitions. Where death is caused by cardiac arrest, the tissues of the body can survive for a time by turning the oxygen present in the blood into carbon dioxide. Several minutes pass before the brain cells suffer irreversible damage. In this unusual state of consciousness, an individual can perceive that he or she is experiencing an entire lifetime in a few minutes on the clock (Grof and Halifax 1978). Drug use. “I realized that I had died, that I, Timothy Leary, the Timothy Leary game, was gone. I could look back and see my body on the bed. I relived my life, and re-experienced many events I had forgotten” (quoted in Kohler 1963: 31–32). So Leary recounts a psychedelic experience he had in Mexico after ingesting mushrooms. Another drug user reports: “My ideas of space were strange beyond description. I could see myself from head to foot as well as

the sofa on which I was lying. About me was nothingness, absolutely empty space” (quoted in Unger 1963:113). Jane Dunlap (1961) writes of her experience on LSD, “As I watched, love which I had felt overpoweringly throughout the day multiplied until I seemed to be experiencing the sum total of love in the soul of every person who lives” (p. 184). After this experience, Dunlap says, “I feel that I am less critical and considerably more tolerant, sympathetic, forgiving, and understanding” (p. 202). Meduna (1958) notes that carbon dioxide narcosis can produce almost all of the effects of hallucinogens, and carbon dioxide buildup is a major consequence of the impairment of circulation during the dying process. Jack Provonsha (1981), a professor of ethics and an M.D. whose recognized area of authority is hallucinogenic drugs, completes his summary of the parallel between the effects of hallucinogenic drugs and Moody’s model as follows: “Altered psycho-chemistry is often accompanied by heightened levels of suggestibility. The belief systems of persons taking hallucinogens thus may strongly condition the content of the experience through auto- and hetero-suggestion” (p. 15). Stanislav Grof, a psychiatrist, and Joan Halifax, a medical anthropologist, describe the use of drug therapy with terminally ill patients in their book The Human Encounter With Death (1978). They found the experiences of patients under the influence of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) to be remarkably similar to those described in the Moody model. Grof and Halifax studied patients at Sinai Hospital in Baltimore who fit the following criteria: some degree of physical pain, depression, tension, anxiety, or psychological isolation; minimum life expectancy of 3 months; and no major cardiovascular problems, brain hemorrhage, gross psychopathology, or history of epileptic seizures. The psychedelic therapy consisted of three phases. During the preparatory period, the researchers explored the dying patient’s past history and present situation and established a trust relationship with the patient and his or her family. The second phase consisted of the drug session, which lasted from 8 to 12 hours. Lying down with eyes covered, listening to music over stereophonic headphones, the patient was periodically given opportunities to communicate any feelings or insights he or she wished. Then, as the patient returned to a normal state of consciousness, relatives or close friends were invited for a “reunion” that frequently facilitated honest communication and more rewarding interaction. The third phase consisted of several postsession interviews through with the researchers intended to facilitate integration of the psychedelic experiences into the life of the dying individual. There are many direct parallels between the psychedelic experiences that Grof and Halifax (1978) report and Moody’s NDE model. For example, the patients in their study experienced the feeling of leaving the body and outof-body travel (p. 59). Some experienced auditory sensations; for instance, one patient reported hearing “an intense humming sound of a comforting and soothing quality” (p. 97). Another described fighting her way through a

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“black mass” (p. 86), and one mentioned a void. Some patients had the sense of vivid and convincing encounters with the spiritual essences of various deceased relatives. Reassuring telepathic exchange introduced familiarity and joyful expectation into the previously terrifying concept of dying (p. 113). Patients reported encountering a comforting light. One man, for example, became convinced that he had died, and a brilliant source of light, whom he identified as God, appeared and told him not to fear and assured him that everything would be all right (p. 76). Patients frequently reported encountering deities and demons (p. 156). Past life review was also a frequent phenomenon; during a few minutes, persons influenced by LSD subjectively experienced entire lifetimes or even millennia (p. 186). Frequently, these psychedelic sessions included “a condensed replay and reevaluation of their entire past history from the moment of birth on” (p. 113). One patient related: “Everything that has been my life is being shown to me. . . . Memories, thousands of memories. . . . Periods of sadness and periods of nice happy feelings. . . . With the beautiful memories, everything gets very sunny. There is lots of light everywhere; with the sad ones, all gets darker. . . . It was such a beautiful life; no one would believe what a beautiful life I have had” (p. 44). The patients experienced feelings of love, tranquility, and peace, which was one of the objectives of the LSD therapy. A 40-year-old woman commented, “I am not sad any longer that I am to die. I have more loving feelings than ever before” (p. 106). The changes in another man were dramatic. He became peaceful and serene, saying, “I feel like I might come to heaven if I die. . . . I was there” (p. 76). One woman underwent a profound spiritual transformation as a result of her LSD session that improved her remaining days (p. 64). Another similarity between these experiences and NDEs was their ineffability—that is, the experiencers noted their lack of ability to describe the psychedelic state adequately (p. 130). Finally, Grof and Halifax (1978) were able to conduct some subjective tests of these parallels. Several patients who had undergone psychedelic sessions later experienced coma or clinical death from which they were resuscitated, and they described definite parallels between the drug sessions and the experience of “dying.” They also indicated that the lessons they had learned in their LSD sessions, of letting go and leaving their bodies, proved invaluable and made the experiences more tolerable (p. 59). If the similarities between the experiences of these patients and Moody’s model of NDEs seem remarkably close, we should point out the lack of chronology in the page numbers we reference above. We have taken these examples from various places throughout Grof and Halifax’s book and arranged them to coincide with the sequence constructed by Moody. This is not necessarily a naturally occurring sequence, but, as Moody (1975) notes, neither is his. The important thing to note is that most of the components of the Moody model were experienced by persons who were not at the point of immediate death. The

parallels were so clear that those who experienced both the psychedelic sessions and “clinical death” noticed them. An individual does not have to be at the point of death to experience such phenomena. Something occurs within the human mind that is similar across cultures and different experiences, but Grof and Halifax’s drug therapy research demonstrates that it is not necessarily related to imminent death.

Tests of Metaphysical Versus Physiological Hypotheses Rodabough’s (1985) analysis of near-death experiences offers contrasting explanations for NDE accounts. Concluding that what near-death experiencers reports are actual experiences, he divides the explanations for these into metaphysical, physiological, and social psychological categories. Metaphysical explanations correspond to the sacred eschatology, physiological explanations correspond to the secular eschatology, and social psychological explanations give reasons for various components of the experience without suggesting deception. Although Rodabough assumes that simplest explanations are best and advocates the social psychological model, additional research conducted since his review was published gives credence to the metaphysical model without excluding the physiological model. Karlis Osis and Erlendur Haraldsson focus on deathbed visions in their book At the Hour of Death (1977). These researchers tried to test two hypotheses that may explain such visions. According to the “death as transition” or metaphysical (sacred eschatology) hypothesis, dying persons’ perceptions should be relatively coherent and should portray otherworldly messengers and environments for which there is no adequate preconception. Such afterlife visions should vary little by age, sex, religious orientation, or nationality—that is, if dying persons are seeing something that is actually there, their descriptions should cut across individual, national, and cultural differences. According to the “death as destructive” or physiological (secular eschatology) hypothesis, the content of deathbed visions should express memories and expectations stored in the brain of the individual and so should reflect cultural conditioning by family, society, and religious institutions. To test these hypotheses, Osis and Haraldsson mailed questionnaires to physicians and nurses at hospitals in the United States northern India. They obtained 606 cases in which terminal patients reported hallucination of persons. The largest category, 47%, consisted of apparitions of the dead, and 91% of these were identified as deceased relatives of the patient. The patients’ predominant reaction to their dead relatives’ apparent take-away missions was one of serenity and peace. Most of these deathbed visions were of short duration. In 62% of the cases, the person died within 24 hours of the hallucination and lost consciousness in less time than that (Osis and Haraldsson 1977:62).

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In their study, Osis and Haraldsson controlled for brain disease, injury, stroke or uremia, fever, and drugs. Although they do not mention the possibility of serendipitous effects of other medicines, they operated conservatively by including everything in their hallucinogenic index that might increase a patient’s probability of hallucination. Osis and Haraldsson did find that patients’ degree of involvement in religion and belief in an afterlife appeared to shape the phenomena to some extent along cultural lines. For example, an Indian woman suffering a myocardial infarction saw high mountains covered with snow, but no Americans saw a snow-covered paradise. For Indians, but not for Americans, the lower echelon of heavenly personnel frequently behaved in an authoritarian manner. Americans saw figures in heavenly surroundings, whereas Indians saw them in their own sickrooms (p. 107). Some 32% of the Indian patients had negative reactions to apparitions of religious figures, but only 10% of the Americans experienced negative emotions (p. 110). Indians hallucinated fewer dead than religious figures (28% to 48%), whereas Americans hallucinated five times more dead than religious apparitions. Americans favored female apparitions, who often portrayed younger persons. As Osis and Haraldsson (1977) note, “On the whole, Christians tended to hallucinate angels, Jesus, or the Virgin Mary, whereas Hindus would most usually see Yama, the god of death, one of his messengers, Krishna, or some other deity” (p. 64). These visions were relatively independent of the individuals’ reported depth of belief. It is interesting to note also that no dead clergymen and only five gurus turned up in the visions to aid patients in the transition from one world to the next. The death as destruction hypothesis suggests that individuals’ experiences should depend on hallucinogenic medical factors, psychological variables, and cultural forces, whereas the survival hypothesis suggests that otherworldly visions should be relatively independent of such factors because of their ostensibly external origin. Osis and Haraldsson (1977:171) report that the survival hypothesis (sacred eschatology) was supported to their satisfaction over the death as destruction (secular eschatology) hypothesis by the data described above. However, as this brief review demonstrates, these perceptions are culturally determined to some extent, which also gives some credibility to the secular hypothesis. One limitation of Osis and Haraldsson’s study is its reliance on the recollections of physicians and nurses; such recall is notorious for its biased selectivity. So whereas Moody constructed a subjective model, Osis and Haraldsson relied on subjective recollections to test their hypotheses. The lack of a control group with which to make comparisons also presents a problem for their study. Osis and Haraldsson describe the characteristics of terminal and nonterminal patients who saw apparitions, but they do not describe the characteristics of patients in the two

categories who did not hallucinate. If, for example, 50% of those hallucinating had fevers above 100 degrees and only 5% of those not hallucinating had fevers above 100 degrees, this contrast would implicate fever as an agent of hallucination. Without such data, some meaningful comparisons cannot be made. As a result of Osis and Haraldsson’s research, we know that some people have visions that cannot be explained by drugs, fever, and brain disturbance. We can also conclude that expectations about the afterlife affect what individuals see when they are near death. Although we do not know what actually happens to people as they are dying, systematic research such as this brings us closer.

Recent Research: A Secular Collection and Examination of Data In this subsection we look at the other point of secular eschatology, an objective examination of the NDE without the influence of any religious dogma. In recent research, Ring and Lawrence (1993) attempted to verify NDE accounts by checking medical records and interviewing external observers. Each of Ring’s research projects has moved the study of NDEs closer to more rigid scientific exploration. In addition to surveys, interviews, and attempts to correlate certain aspects of the NDE to demographic or medical variables (Owens, Cook, and Stevenson 1990), scholars have recently used more individualist case studies. For example, Michael Sabom (1998) has employed in-depth case studies to test his earlier, more general interviews. He reports in comprehensive detail one patient’s surgical procedures and the environmental setting. His account includes the patient’s exact physical condition— induced cardiac arrest, deep hypothermia (a core body temperature of 60 degrees), barbiturate cerebral protection (no brain wave activity on the electroencephalogram), no brain stem response, and all blood drained from the brain in preparation for the removal of a giant basilar artery aneurysm. At this time, when she was as clinically dead as could be determined, the patient had an extended (Stage 5) NDE; she later described an unusual bone saw the surgeon was using, recounted comments made by those in the operating room during the surgery, and concluded by saying that during her NDE she was the most aware she had ever been in her life. The significance of this study is that Sabom presents detailed comparisons between what the patient reported and the surgery room notes and recall of the other participants during the time of clinical death. This research was not based on the more distant recall used in the earlier studies. Kelly, Greyson, and Stevenson (1999–2000) require that an NDE have three features if it is to be understood to suggest the possibility of survival after the death of the body: enhanced mental processes at a time when physiological function is seriously impaired, being out of the

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body, and awareness of events not available by the usual senses. In a sample of people who would have died without medical attention, Owens et al. (1990) found that 62% had increased mental abilities—that is, increased speed, logic, thought, visual and auditory clarity, and control of cognition. In regard to the second feature, Kelly et al. found that 50% of those they studied who were close to death reported looking down on their bodies from positions outside themselves. To examine the third feature, extrasensory perception, Kelly et al. focus on case studies, including Sabom’s, in which the experiences of sedated patients in surgery are later verified—specifically those elements of the experiences that the patients could not have seen. Cook, Greyson, and Stevenson (1998) report one such experience in detail: A patient describing an NDE during surgery said that one of the surgeons had held his hands to his chest and “flap[ped] his arms as if trying to fly.” The researchers were able to verify the patient’s observation through interviews with witnesses and by examining physicians’ notes. Cases in which research can verify near-death experiencers’ perceptions of events outside the normal range of the physical senses are not common; each such case is thus a significant contribution. Kelly et al. (1999–2000) conclude that such research demonstrates that individuals can be aware of remote events not accessible to the ordinary senses. In a recent report on a 13-year longitudinal study conducted in the Netherlands, van Lommel et al. (2001) provide a matched comparison between NDE patients and non-NDE patients. All 344 patients tracked by the Dutch team had cardiac arrests and were for a brief time clinically dead, with unconsciousness resulting from insufficient blood supply to the brain. All were resuscitated during a fixed period of time and interviewed. By comparing these groups, the researchers gathered reliable data about possible causes and consequences of NDEs that allowed them to conclude that the NDEs could not have been caused by medical factors. This type of careful research, employing longitudinal experimental design, combined with research using individual case studies, as described earlier, continues to advance our knowledge of NDEs.

CONCLUSION Several conclusions may be drawn from the material we have presented in this chapter. Early attempts to gather data about near-death experiences were often limited by poor samples and problems of recall, but data gathering methods have improved steadily over time. Given the current definition of death as whole-brain death, few of these experiences have occurred while persons were dead, so most are not after-death experiences. Because so many of these accounts have not resulted from clinical death, and because those occurring apart from clinical death appear

to be little different from those related to clinical death, we may conclude that certain stimuli present in stressful situations may trigger similar perceptions in the brain. The data collection methods used by researchers investigating NDEs do not lead us to any conclusions about an afterlife. Although these NDE data may be analyzed statistically, they do not lend themselves to causal inference because they do not allow us to discard alternative explanations. Typically, interpretations of NDEs have matched the expectations of the interpreters. Contrary to Kübler-Ross’s proclamation that research into NDEs confirms the fact of life after death, the afterlife still remains a subject for religious faith and beliefs. Most skeptics could be convinced that these accounts are actual after-death accounts only if they were presented with a well-documented case of a person who had no vital signs and a flat EEG for a prolonged period who then came back to life and gave a report. Even then, many skeptics would argue that the “experience” occurred in the person’s mind during the moments of death as the brain lost its oxygen supply and chemical changes took place, not during the period of the flat EEG (Goleman 1977). At present, we have no sure way of knowing. In recent years, some researchers have organized to pursue accounts of NDEs actively and to seek explanations for them while providing support for experiencers. On its Web site, the International Association for Near-Death Studies (IANDS; at www.iands.org) says that its mission is “to respond to people’s needs for information and support concerning near-death and similar experiences, and to encourage recognition of the experiences as genuine and significant events of rich meaning.” Some of IANDS’s stated goals are to provide “reliable information about near-death experiences to experiencers, researchers, and the public” as well as to respond to “people’s needs to integrate the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual aspects of the NDE into their daily living.” To help disseminate information about NDEs, IANDS publishes the Journal of Near-Death Studies as well as a quarterly newsletter, Vital Signs. The organization’s Web site had 1,466,137 hits or visits between November 18, 1998, and August 3, 2002. This ongoing emphasis should provide a wealth of data in the years to come. Those who believe in a life after death and those who do not will find nothing in NDE studies to contradict either belief. This demonstrates that scholars need to examine research results with a critical eye, to avoid accepting any “evidence” not supported by data, no matter how desirable. No doubt, as near-death experiences continue to be recorded, as research techniques are refined, and as more accurate definitions of death are specified, our understanding of these near-death phenomena will grow. Currently, the studies we have reviewed above are the best examples available of research examining last things from a secular perspective.

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REFERENCES Atwater, P. M. H. 1994. Beyond the Light: What Isn’t Being Said About Near-Death Experiences. New York: Carol. Bates, Brian C. and Adrian Stanley. 1985. “The Epidemiology and Differential Diagnosis of Near-Death Experience.” American Journal of Orthopsychiatry 55:542–49. Brooke, Tal. 1979. The Other Side of Death. Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House. Cook, Emily Williams, Bruce Greyson, and Ian Stevenson. 1998. “Do Any Near Death Experiences Provide Evidence for Survival of Human Personality After Death? Relevant Features and Illustrative Case Reports.” Journal of Scientific Exploration 12:377–406. Dunlap, Jane. 1961. Exploring Inner Space. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World. Eliade, Mircea. 1967. From Primitive to Zen. New York: Harper & Row. Evans-Wentz, W. Y., ed. 1960. Bardo Thodol: The Tibetan Book of the Dead. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Flynn, Charles P. 1985. After the Beyond: Human Transformation and the Near-Death Experience. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Gallup, George, Jr. and William Proctor. 1982. Adventures in Immortality. New York: McGraw-Hill. Goleman, Daniel. 1977. “Back From the Brink.” Psychology Today, April, pp. 56–59. Grof, Stanislav and Joan Halifax. 1978. The Human Encounter With Death. New York: E. P. Dutton. Gulley, Norman. 1982. “Life After Death: What About the New Evidence?” These Times, April, pp. 3–7. Harris Interactive. 2002. “No Significant Changes in the Large Majorities Who Believe in God, Heaven, the Resurrection, Survival of Soul, Miracles and Virgin Birth.” Rochester, NY: Harris Interactive. Retrieved May 14, 2003 (http://www.harrisinteractive.com/harris_poll/index.asp?pid=112). Holck, Frederick H. 1978. “Life Revisited: Parallels in Death Experiences.” Omega 9: 1–11. International Association for Near-Death Studies. 2002. http:// www.iands.org. Jensen, Adolf Ellegard. 1963. Myth and Culture Among Primitive Peoples. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Karsten, Rafael. 1932. “Indian Tribes of the Argentine and Bolivian Chaco.” Societas Scientiarum Fennica (Helsinki, Finland) 4(1). Kelly, Emily W., Bruce Greyson, and Ian Stevenson. 1999–2000. “Can Experiences Near Death Furnish Evidence for Life After Death?” Omega 40:513–19. Kohler, John. 1963. “The Dangerous Magic of LSD.” Saturday Evening Post, November, pp. 31–32. Kuhn, Harold B. 1981. “Out-of-Body Experiences: Misplaced Euphoria.” Christianity Today, March 13, pp. 78, 82. Lorimer, David. 1989. “The Near-Death Experience: CrossCultural and Multidisciplinary Dimensions.” Pp. 256–67 in Perspectives on Death and Dying: Cross-Culture and MultiDisciplinary Views, edited by Joyce Berger. Philadelphia: Charles. Lundahl, Craig R. 1979. “Mormon Near-Death Experiences.” Free Inquiry in Creative Sociology 7:101–4. ———. 1993–94. “A Nonscience Forerunner to Modern NearDeath Studies in America.” Omega 28:63–78.

Meduna, Ladislas Joseph von. 1958. “The Effect of Carbon Dioxide Upon the Function of the Human Brain.” In Carbon Dioxide Therapy, edited by Ladislas Joseph von Meduna. Springfield, IL: Charles C Thomas. Moody, Raymond A., Jr. 1975. Life After Life: The Investigation of a Phenomenon—Survival of Bodily Death. Covington, GA: Mockingbird. ———. 1977. Reflections on Life After Life: More Important Discoveries in the Ongoing Investigation of Survival of Life After Bodily Death. St. Simons Island, GA: Mockingbird. ———. 1999. The Last Laugh: A New Philosophy of Near-Death Experiences, Apparitions, and the Paranormal. Charlottesville, VA: Hampton Roads. Osis, Karlis. 1965. Deathbed Observations by Physicians and Nurses. New York: AMS. Osis, Karlis and Erlendur Haraldsson. 1977. At the Hour of Death. New York: Avon. Owens, Justine E., Emily Williams Cook, and Ian Stevenson. 1990. “Features of ‘Near Death Experience’ in Relation to Whether or Not Patients Were Near Death.” Lancet 336:1175–77. Pavry, Jal Dastur Cursetji. 1965. The Zoroastrian Doctrine of a Future Life. New York: AMS. Preuss, Arthur. 1971. Eschatology or the Catholic Doctrine of Last Things: A Dogmatic Treatise. Westport, CT: Greenwood. Provonsha, Jack W. 1981. “Life After Life? Do Some People Really Die and Come Back to Life?” Life and Health, January, pp. 14–15. Rawlings, Maurice S. 1978. Beyond Death’s Door. Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson. ———. 1983. To Hell and Back. Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson. Ring, Kenneth. 1980. Life at Death: A Scientific Investigation of the Near-Death Experience. New York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan. ———. 1984. Heading Toward Omega: In Search of the Meaning of the Near-Death Experience. New York: William Morrow. Ring, Kenneth and Stephen Franklin. 1981–82. “Do Suicide Survivors Report Near-Death Experiences?” Omega 12:191–208. Ring, Kenneth and Madeleine Lawrence. 1993. “Further Evidence for Veridical Perception During Near-Death Experiences.” Journal of Near-Death Studies 11:223–29. Rodabough, Tillman. 1985. “Near-Death Experiences: An Examination of the Supporting Data and Alternative Explanations.” Death Studies 9:95–113. Sabom, Michael. 1982. “Recollections of Death.” Omni, March, pp. 58–60, 103–9. ———. 1998. Light and Death: One Doctor’s Fascinating Account of Near-Death Experiences. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan. Schwarz, Hans. 2001. Eschatology. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans. Unger, Sanford M. 1963. “Mescaline, LSD, Psilocybin and Personality Change.” Psychiatry 26:111–25. van Lommel, Pim, Ruud van Wees, Vincent Meyers, and Ingrid Elfferich. 2001. “Near-Death Experience in Survivors of Cardiac Arrest: A Prospective Study in the Netherlands.” Lancet 358:2039–45.

LIFE INSURANCE AS SOCIAL EXCHANGE MECHANISM DENNIS L. PECK

Legally, life insurance is justified only by the existence of an insurable interest, a reasonable expectation of gain or advantage in the continued life of another person, and no interest in his death. —Viviana A. Zelizer, “The Price and Value of Children,” 1981

n a discussion of “insurance and the law,” Baker (2001) writes that insurance per se is considered a “formal mechanism for sharing the costs of misfortune” (p. 7588). In casting the conceptualization of insurance in this manner, Baker distinguishes insurance into four categories: technologies, institutions, forms, and visions. Such categories are useful for illustrating the general variety of insurance-related activities, but for purposes of this discussion the fourth category, visions, is most useful for establishing a basic conceptualization of life insurance as a social exchange mechanism. Visions are inclusive of each of the other three categories. In the first instance, as Baker (2001) notes, technologies enhance our understanding as to the risk involved. Thus “insurance, in the sense of insurance ‘technology,’ refers to a set of procedures for dealing with risk. Examples include the mortality tables and inspection procedures of ordinary life insurance” (p. 7588). Visions, on the other hand, pertain to ideas about or images of a variety of business practices regarding insurance that have led to the development of the technologies, institutions, and forms. Other social visions exist as well. Despite the fact that all forms of insurance are intended to create a sense of security, perhaps life insurance more than any other form holds a value that is secured in the imagination. Life insurance functions as a symbolic representation of a promise to be there in the future at a time of loss and/or tragedy. As numerous advertisements for insurance companies note, life insurance represents a special future gift, one that is there (or forthcoming) because the giver (the insured) really cares. As with so many things uniquely American, life insurance emerges out of what some analysts describe as a cult 148

of social conditioning; that is, it is part of a web of traditions, customs, and social attitudes. Such conditioning instills an attitude that money and death converge, thereby symbolizing the connection between money and life. In the words of James Gollin (1966), life insurance as a mechanism of social exchange ensures that “money—our great life symbol—is used both symbolically and in fact to abolish death” (p. 197). That is, life insurance underscores the American social belief that money is life and thus represents one important way of ensuring that death gives way to life. Thus the purchase of life insurance is a part of a symbolic process that provides the means to allow people to think that death can in fact be conquered. Insurance is life; at the very least, it is a living value. But yet another vision casts some doubt on this imagined and symbolic sense of security if, for example, an insurance company should deny a claim based on suggested fraud or abuse. Moreover, people in other parts of the world do not easily understand this unique fascination with life insurance among Americans. The British and French, for example, may purchase life insurance, but, according to Gollin (1966), their purchases usually occur later in life than they do for Americans and more often take the modest form of insurance intended to cover funeral expenses. In some countries, such as Spain, widows are hesitant to accept life insurance payouts provided by their husbands’ employers because of the deeply held belief that it is improper to benefit financially from the death of a loved one. Despite these qualifications, among contemporary Americans, at least, the dominant view is that life insurance provides needed financial support for others when the holder of the policy is no longer able to provide or care for

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their needs. This form of insurance provides needed benefits for widows and orphans; if substantial enough, life insurance may even provide the funds essential to ensure coverage of the costs of college educations for the deceased’s children. Although most individuals purchase life insurance for such assurance, it is also, in the words of one analyst, “the only effective technique of thrift for millions presumed to be too weak-minded, too indolent, or too irresolute to save money in any other way than via life insurance premiums” (Hendershot 1957:11). However, the positive values placed on the advantages of life insurance by most Americans today have not always held sway among the populace.

HISTORY OF LIFE INSURANCE AS A SOCIAL EXCHANGE MECHANISM The modern life insurance system was born in England, where it eventually made rapid advances. Even up to the 18th century, however, the insuring of life was neither widely practiced nor generally approved in England. As Baker (2001) notes, life insurance was once perceived by the general public to be immoral because “it interfered with divine providence, equated life and money or was a form of gambling” (p. 7588). Such moral thinking had important consequences for the development of laws related to the insurance industry in the United States, as well as for the life assurance sector that had a humble beginning in 1759, obstructing the growth of life insurance as a form of social exchange. Such values later took a dramatic change of direction during the early 1840s. The New York Life Insurance and Trust Company, founded in 1830, issued approximately 2,000 policies during its first 9 years of existence (Jack 1912:244–45). Although the extent of this activity cannot be considered intense, beginning in 1843 the American life insurance industry undertook a stage of development that has been described as an overwhelming success story. As Viviana Zelizer notes in her book Morals and Markets (1979), there was initially some cultural and ideological resistance to life insurance, and such resistance continues to inhibit the growth of this segment of the insurance industry in most nations other than the United States. Contrasted with other forms of insurance, such as fire and particularly marine insurance, which was a part of the economic structure of many localities dating back in time at least to the 15th-century Italian city-states, the initial American opposition to life insurance was based on a value system that rejected, as Zelizer observes, “a strictly financial evaluation of human life” (p. xi). Life was considered sacred, and Americans in general believed that the value of life—or death, as in the case of insurance—could not be determined as a fixed amount; thus “traditional economic morality and a deterministic religious ethos [in the early decades of the 19th century] condemned life insurance as a sacrilegious speculative venture” (p. xiii).

The unquestioned cultural emphasis placed on rituals of reciprocal or gift-type social exchange observed in primitive, archaic societies by anthropologists (see Mauss 1967) also was not uncommon to the experience of early industrial Western societies, including the United States. This orientation also inhibited early acceptance of life insurance as an appropriate mechanism of social exchange. Although Zelizer (1981) argues that “Christianity sacralized and absolutized human existence, setting life above financial considerations” (p. 1037), some analysts have asserted that during this time of urban development, many Americans thought that holding life insurance was potentially detrimental to a person’s physical well-being and might even hasten an individual’s death. For this reason, holding life insurance was deemed to be harmful to society in general. In essence, this early American ideology was based on the premise that it is wicked to insure one’s life. Early efforts by government bodies to sell the idea of life insurance to the American public did little to inspire confidence in such insurance. Later in the 19th century, however, there were also reasons to support this form of social exchange. In a discussion of problems relating to economic security in late-19th-century Europe, Whaples and Buffum (1991) note that by that time most advanced European nations had adopted some form of “public social insurance” to assist widows, the aged, the sick, and the injured (see also Jack 1912:223–30). This was not the case in the United States, where those in need of economic assistance were dependent on family members, employers, friends, and neighbors. In the rapidly changing urban, industrial environment of the time, which included growing numbers of people of diverse economic, social, ethnic, and ideological backgrounds, such assistance was not always forthcoming for those in need. The growth of industry and a strong economic base eventually led to rising income among an increasingly large and better-educated workforce. Such factors have been identified as important to the creation of ideas that led Americans to recognize a need for and to take the initiative essential to providing some form of assurance to dependent family members in case of debilitating consequences related to accident, sickness, or death. Although some modest activity did occur in which the lives of individuals were insured under extraordinary circumstance for short periods of time, the founding of what is considered to be the first American life insurance company did not occur until 1759. This organization, known as the Corporation of Poor and Distressed Presbyterian Ministers and of the Poor and Distressed Widows and Children of Presbyterian Ministers, was established in Philadelphia by the synod of the Presbyterian Church to insure the lives of the synod’s ministers and their families (American Council of Life Insurance 1996); this initial effort was followed in 1769 by the establishment of a similar organization to insure the lives of New York Episcopalian ministers (Jack 1912:244).

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Despite the enthusiastic reaction to these initial efforts within the business community, it was not until the early 1840s that life insurance policies were issued to any significant extent, and even then the number of policies sold was quite small. Still, this change represented a significant transformation in economic thought (discussed at length by Fogel 2000). According to Zelizer (1978, 1979), this transformation came about as a result of shifts in cultural values and ideologies that occurred along with changes in the definitions of risk taking and gambling. Enhanced actuarial knowledge of mortality and principles relating to life insurance, better insurance rates, and an aggressive sales force first employed by the New York Life Insurance and Trust Company have also been identified as factors that may have assisted in the growth of the industry (Zelizer 1978, 1979; American Council of Life Insurance 1996; Jones [1999] 2002), although some analysts question the importance of these elements.

The Second Great Awakening During the period known as the Second Great Awakening, with its egalitarian ethic, moral evil was equated with the institutions of the time and the idea of unselfishness was promoted. It is noteworthy that the beginning rise of the American life insurance industry corresponds roughly in time with this historical period (1800–1840), an era of religious fervor and revival (see Fogel 2000). By 1840, the U.S. population had attained a literacy rate of 90% and was witness to an active religious and political agenda intended to encourage abstinence from alcohol, improve the rights of women, redress wrongs against Native Americans, abolish slavery, address an increasing number of social problems attendant to the emergence of the urban environment, and, through education and science, advance the ideal of social justice for the working class. Committed to the broad goal of shaping the moral and political character of the nation, reform-minded religious leaders gradually asserted their influence in all aspects of life (Fogel 2000:84–120). These activities are known to have been most intense in the Northeast, where the establishment of the first life insurance organizations also began. As Zelizer (1981) states: “Gradually, the capitalization of the value of adult life and the monetary indemnation of that value became acceptable. However, the monetary evaluation of death did not desacralize it” (p. 1037). In light of the above, it may not be coincidental that the life insurance industry really began to develop during this historical period of liberal religious revivalism. Indeed, American society in general became involved in addressing myriad social issues, led in large part by leaders of the reform-minded Methodist Episcopal Church and the emerging influence of Baptists, who promoted the idea of engaging in unselfish acts. These social-reform-minded religious leaders made a commitment to enhance the religious, moral, and political character of Americans. It

was during this period that many social organizations, including insurance organizations, were created to assist members of the public in dealing with issues related to the urban crisis and social problems such as poverty, alcoholism, and prostitution. Church-affiliated individuals also became involved in the insurance industry at an early date, and, according to Gollin (1966), even today such ideologically oriented persons continue to dominate the industry at the top levels. Other factors were operating during this period as well. Between 1820 and 1860, the growth of the U.S. economy had the effect of raising the wages of American workers, sometimes quite rapidly. At the same time the standard of living was increasing, the extent of immigration was also growing; population density intensified, and infectious diseases spread rapidly, especially within the coastal communities. Life expectancy decreased (Fogel 2000:159–63). Thus, as one might expect, early American assurance organizations were half charitable and only half insurance. It was not until 1809, when the Pennsylvania Company for the Insurance on Lives was formed, that the beginning of life insurance on a regular basis in the United States began to emerge (Jack 1912).

Cultural and Institutional Change After the American Civil War, as Zelizer (1979) observes, the adaptation of life insurance was influenced by cultural factors such as liberal ideology, changing religious beliefs, and changed ideologies concerning risk, speculation, and gambling. Other influences included a changed industrialbased society in which the economic marketplace and the urban environment interacted with other cultural shifts to effect change in the family unit. Women and children were no longer considered to be the responsibility of the community; rather, the nuclear family assumed the obligation for their care. The symbolic meaning of life insurance changed, and the “gift of life insurance” offered assurance that future widows and orphans would have their economic needs met. Life insurance had already achieved legal recognition in 1840, when the New York State Legislature enacted a law that provided that the benefits of a life insurance policy with the wife named as beneficiary be paid directly to her, thereby exempting all claims of creditors (American Council of Life Insurance 1996:130). Factors such as these accounted for the increasingly widespread thinking among wage earners that it was the responsibility of the head of the family to ensure the welfare of dependents through the purchase of life insurance. In 1867, the amount of American life insurance in force exceeded a billion dollars, and by 1870, fraternal organizations and commercial life insurance companies had developed rapidly, offering insurance to club members and to increasing numbers of ethnic, workingclass groups whose purchasing power had increased. Rising wages among Americans, including members of the growing middle and working classes, were sufficient

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to warrant the purchase of life insurance protection for their families, which were experiencing modest increases in affluence. Americans’ rising standard of living continued to be factor in the sale of life insurance for several decades. By 1880, the amount of life insurance in force in the United States had reached more than $1.6 billion, and by 1900, the figure was more than $8 billion (Stevenson 1927:1). A change in cultural ideology based on an economic shift from self-sufficiency of the family unit to one of economic interdependence, along with the need for a lifetime of money income, led to the view that life insurance could be used in part to buffer the insecurities of a changing economic environment (Zelizer 1978, 1979). Although the reasons suggested for this vary considerably, the unquestioned growth of the insurance industry offers some convincing evidence of this changed view. For example, by 1843, the year often identified as the year of transition in the growth of the industry, the Mutual Life Insurance Company of New York had only 400 life insurance policies in force, equaling a total of $1,480,718. Then, in 1843 alone, the company wrote 470 policies totaling $1,640,718. By 1850, the policies in force numbered 6,242, for a total of $15,886,181 (Clough 1946:371). The period of 1850–70 was characterized by a rapid expansion of the insurance industry; a near 50% annual increase was achieved by the end of the 1860s. Although growth in the sales of life insurance was much slower during periods of economic depression, sales increased rapidly from the end of the Civil War in 1865 through 1905. From 1864 to 1869, the prosperity of the business of life insurance was such that it has not been equaled since that period (Jones [1999] 2002:84, 116). Again drawing from Clough’s (1946) historical assessment of the Mutual Life Insurance Company of New York, by the end of 1860, a total of 12,591 life insurance policies were in force in the amount of $40,159,123; by 1870, this number increased to 71,271, in the amount of $242,004,489. Then, at the end of the 19th century, the Mutual Life Insurance Company alone had 439,440 life insurance policies in effect, totaling $1,139,940,529 (pp. 371, 373, Tables 47, 49). As noted above, the total life insurance in force at the beginning of the 20th century was in excess of $8 billion. By 1925, this total amount had grown to $79 billion (Stevenson 1927:3). In that same year, the expenditures paid for death losses totaled only $493,391,370. Four and a half decades later, at the end of 1945, approximately $163 billion of commercial and fraternal life insurance was in force among the general population of the United States. As Dublin and Lotka (1946:144–45) note, this was more than twice the amount in force during the mid-1920s, but to this total can be added another $129 billion of U.S. Government Insurance (begun in 1917) and National Service Life Insurance (started in 1940) that was in force for the veterans who had served during the two world wars.

GIFT GIVING, SOCIAL EXCHANGE THEORY, AND LIFE INSURANCE Gift Giving In primitive, nonindustrial societies such as those observed by Marcel Mauss (1967) and other analysts, gift giving and gift exchange were instruments of social organization that helped to bind a social group together. In contemporary U.S. society, life insurance fills an economic void, replacing the moral exchange conducted among family members and friends to meet group members’ economic needs. Earlier forms of exchanges, although they serve many functions, such as maintaining personal relationships and fulfilling social obligations, no longer remain viable within contemporary large-scale economic systems (Titmuss 1971:72). However, like the modern forms of social security that Titmuss (1971:209) has evaluated, life insurance expresses cooperation and may also serve as a renaissance of the theme of the gift. Gift giving and gift exchange may be characterized as representing a number of group sentiments and individual motives. Titmuss (1971) identifies two such reasons for gift giving: The first includes economic purposes intended “to achieve a material gain or to enhance prestige or to bring about material gain in the future,” and the second is predominantly social and moral, in that the gifts are intended “to serve friendly relationships, affection and harmony between known individuals and social groups” (p. 216). The primary function of gift giving and the future expectation of reciprocal gifts in preindustrial societies may not have been solely economic in nature, but such exchange was an important part of the social and moral intent of the members of these societies. In preindustrial societies gifts were much more functional than economic in that they served religious, magical, sentimental, and moral purposes.

Social Exchange: The Gift of Life Insurance Exchange theory is often criticized for its reductionist approach, given that the outcomes of social exchange “are conditioned to reduce society immediately to the interplay of individual interests” (Manis and Melzer 1978:143). The formal ideas attributed to social exchange theory thus hold little utility for the analysis of social organizations and thereby diminish the theory’s usefulness for assessing the complex social processes in which humans participate that lead to the decision to provide the gift of life insurance beyond what is referred to as a “preordained” type of scheme (Lindesmith, Strauss, and Denzin 1988:18–19). Nevertheless, taking the theory in its simplistic form, viewing life insurance as a form of social exchange allows one the opportunity to appreciate the utility of the gift, although the act requires one to imagine how the recipient will conceptualize its worth. Thus the basics of social exchange theory may be useful for explaining some

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portion of the dynamics involved in the process of an individual’s deciding to provide the gift of life insurance. If life insurance does emerge as a product of the cult of social conditioning, as former insurance agent James Gollin (1966) has proposed, then a portion of the behavioral psychology advocated by George Homans and B. F. Skinner is present. Reward and punishment stimuli serve as the foundation of an exchange of activity occurring between two people. The reward (life insurance) is predicated on the behavior of only one actor, but the gift giving is not intended as a reciprocal gesture, except, perhaps, for the power that exists in the imagination of the giver. In contemporary industrial and postindustrial society, gift exchange does not hold the same importance it had in the past, but a gift in the form of life insurance does signify an element of altruism at the same time it represents a calculated form of economic behavior. As Zelizer (1978) observes, during the late 19th century, life insurance was surrounded with religious symbolism, advertised more for that value than for its monetary benefit: “Life insurance was marketed as an altruistic, self-denying gift rather than as a profitable investment” (pp. 599–600). A major difference from the past uses of gift giving is that life insurance does not establish any future basis for reciprocity. Rather, like any altruistic gift, the purchase of life insurance is a response to the perceived social and economic needs of others, providing an advantage for others rather than oneself. The gift provides future security while demonstrating an altruistic motive and fulfilling a moral and social obligation to those who are important in one’s face-to-face relationships. From 1830 to 1850, life insurance was promoted as a morally accepted means by which husbands could protect the futures of their wives and children. It was within this same time frame, as Zelizer (1981) notes, that “life insurance took on symbolic values quite distinct from its utilitarian function, emerging as a new form of ritual with which to face death” (p. 1037). Life insurance eventually came to be equated with peace of mind, based on the assurance that those who are insured can meet their ends secure in the knowledge that they have fulfilled their moral obligation to take care of their family members.

THE MODERN CONCEPT OF CHILDHOOD AND LIFE INSURANCE Americans are often described as child centered, in that in U.S. society great concern is generally expressed over the care and well-being of children. But children have not always benefited from this kind of attention. Indeed, the concept of childhood is a fairly recent phenomenon, and its discovery holds relevance for any discussion of life insurance. Until the Middle Ages, children were depicted in art as though they were small adults, without any of the unique characteristics that we ascribe to children today. Over the

next several hundred years, a new concept of childhood began to emerge. These changes are evidenced, for example, by the nursing methods used in 14th-century Italy and by the use of the color white for the burial clothes of children, as a testament of their innocence, practiced in 15th- and 16th-century England. The art and literature of 16th- and 17th-century England depict the special characteristics of children through the use of distinctive costumes and the solicitous behavior of parents toward their children. Finally, a growing literature in the late 16th and the 17th centuries questioned the traditional exploitative treatment of children and their characterization as miniature adults. Increasingly, children began to be viewed as essentially innocent and dependent, in need of social training; they needed to be controlled, guarded both physically and morally, and educated in preparation for adulthood (Empey and Stafford 1991:21–45). The first European settlers brought the concept of childhood to the American colonies, although the concept eventually underwent considerable change. In essence, the factors that created the modern urban society also were instrumental in producing the modern concept of childhood, especially among the growing middle- and upperclass portion of the developing industrial nation. It was the labor-saving technology introduced by the Industrial Revolution that allowed this change to take effect. For the first time in Western history, children were no longer an essential component of and productive force in the labor market. By the late 19th century, the segregation of society based on age had became a reality (Empey and Stafford 1991). As children and their parents achieved greater emotional attachment, children’s worth in the marketplace diminished. This process began initially among families of the urban middle class, but eventually the social value of the lower-class child changed as well. This perception of the child was to have important implications for the insurance industry. Zelizer has thoroughly documented the relationship between the concept of childhood and life insurance. She begins her seminal article “The Price and Value of Children” (1981) with the following statement: On March 14, 1895, the Boston Evening Transcript stated, “No manly man and no womanly woman should be ready to say that their infants have pecuniary value.” (P. 1036)

The newspaper was attacking the widespread contemporary practice of parents insuring their children. I discuss the significance of this newspaper statement below.

Life Insurance for Working-Class Children Whereas most life insurance companies directed their attention toward adult males of middle-class families, in 1875 the Prudential Life Insurance Company targeted children under the age of 10 as insurees. What may

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surprise some is that these were not the children of well-to-do families, but children whose families were part of the expanding working class. Since its inception in England, the practice of issuing life insurance for children has been fraught with controversy. In an intriguing analysis of this segment of the insurance industry, Zelizer (1981, 1985) traces the effect of the changing cultural definition of children and the relationship of this change to the purchase of life insurance for children, first by lower-class parents and then later by members of the middle class. In evaluating this phenomenon, Zelizer (1981) asserts that “one important variable was the cultural redefinition of the value of children. As children’s lives became economically worthless but emotionally priceless, their deaths became [defined as] a social problem” (p. 1050). During the mid-19th century, when the children of urban middle-class families were embraced as members of the new, nonproductive world of childhood, the children of working-class families not only retained the economic value they had in the past, but their value actually increased. While middle-class children enjoyed the benefit of formal education in preparation for the future, working-class children’s economic value rose because of rapid industrialization and the new occupations it produced. The children of working-class families became a much-needed component of a productive workforce. This economic situation, the large number of workingclass families and their factory-employable children, and the assertiveness of the insurance industry combined to create an environment that was conducive to the introduction of a new marketing innovation. In 1875, a major life insurance company began to insure the lives of children under the age of 10. In 1879, two other major companies entered into the industrial insurance market. By 1895, $268 million of life insurance was in force; 1.5 million children were insured in 1896, and by year’s end in 1902 more than 3 million children were insured. This was but the beginning. By 1928, more than 37% of the life insurance policies issued by the big three companies were for children. Such innovative practices did not take root without acquiring detractors. Social and legal encounters between representatives of the “child-saving movement” and the insurance industry emerged soon after the practice of insuring children began. As the Progressive movement, of which the child savers were a part, surged ahead with its social reform agenda directed toward diminishing the exploitation of the children of poor families by removing them from industrial factories and placing them in schoolrooms, state legislatures and major newspapers assailed the practice of insuring children as harmful to the public interest (Zelizer 1981:1040–45, 1051). Despite the outpouring of public protestations and moral indignation directed toward the practice of insuring the lives of lower-class children as unscrupulous, sordid, profane, speculative, the illegal wagering of life, commercially exploitative, against public policy, potentially dangerous to

the well-being of children, and expensive for working-class parent, the commercial interests of this practice were eventually upheld in three major court decisions dating back to the 1850s. With these decisions, the crusade of the moral entrepreneurs was defeated, and the moral and legal rights of parents to insure the lives of their children were upheld. Zelizer (1981:1046) identifies the 1858 court case of Mitchell v. Union Life (45 Maine 105, 1858) as significant in upholding this pecuniary bond between parent and child. Life insurance for children held a strong appeal among working-class families, and the sales tactics of the insurance industry were effective in thwarting the child-saving component of the Progressive movement. The insurance companies’ strategy was to address the changing value of children by claiming to promote the welfare of children, and they initially marketed this form of insurance as symbolic concern, as a token of love and affection for the dead child rather than as insurance for the working child (Zelizer 1981:1047). Although Zelizer (1981) acknowledges that one indicator of the changing value of children was the growing public concern throughout the 1800s and early 1900s with children’s deaths and with providing decent Christian burials for children, she also argues that, “ultimately, the debate over child insurance was a debate on the value of poor children, a public assessment of their emotional worth” (p. 1047). The mourning of children became a focal concern among members of the middle class during the period from 1820 to 1875; within this context, Zelizer notes, “The acceptance of children’s insurance suggests that after 1875 lower-class parents adopted middle-class standards of mourning young children” (p. 1049). Ultimately, sales of child life insurance were destined to increase as a result of yet another change in marketing strategy. In moving from an emphasis on burial insurance to an emphasis on the creation of an education fund, the insurance companies promoted child insurance as an attractive child-centered investment among the middleclass. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, children’s value as economically worthless but emotionally priceless led to a view of child life insurance as symbolizing respect for the dead child. Later in the 20th century, however, this valuation symbolized an action of love and respect for the living child (Zelizer 1981:1052).

UNEQUAL OPPORTUNITY LIFE INSURANCE The Legacy of Minority Life Insurance The legacy of the American life insurance industry is replete with opportunities for bias against racial minorities, reflective of the social orientations of a past cultural ethos. Racial bias in the history of the life insurance industry is best demonstrated through the backstage insights of

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individuals who worked within the institution. One such analyst quotes a major insurance corporation official: “We are glad to accept whatever Negro business comes our way. But we don’t go out looking for Negroes to insure” (Gollin 1966:100). If the above statement appears harsh, it is, according to Gollin (1966), also a reflection of a reality of the insurance industry. Selling life insurance involves risk taking on the part of the insurer, and in this area life insurance companies established norms early on to allow them to avoid insuring individuals considered to be at risk of high mortality rates, whether because of age, occupation, morals, or race/ ethnicity. Although such evaluations strongly suggest that white-owned life insurance companies did not curry favor among the black population, some analysts argue that the facts indicate otherwise. Stuart (1940:43) notes, for example, that in 1923 approximately one-sixth of all blacks in the United States were holders of policies issued through the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company of New York. In contrast, James Gollin (1966), a former insurance sales agent, argues that minorities long experienced discrimination in the life insurance industry because of agency prejudice. Such discrimination was not necessarily based on concrete actuarial risk factors; rather, the numerical rating point scale used to calculate risk for blacks and other minorities included race as an adverse factor. Although the insurance companies used a standard rating scale, their estimation of risk for minorities, Gollin asserts, was based on racial bias rather than financial risk. Another explanation some analysts offer for the reticence of life insurance companies to sell insurance to blacks is based on the findings of studies of death rates that indicate men employed in occupations associated with lower-income groups have shorter life expectancy (Stuart 1940:55–56; see also Dublin and Lotka 1946). The eventual entrance of blacks into the insurance arena as company owners was prompted by other factors as well. For example, as Stuart (1940) has documented, when white agents made their weekly visits to the homes of Negro policyholders to collect premiums (known as debits), their behavior was often less than commendable. Stuart notes: “Their haughtiness, discourtesies, and not infrequent abuses of the privacy of the home were resented, but to a great extent tolerated until the organization and entry of Negro companies into this field” (p. 36). The insults, abuses, and violations of the privacy of the homes of black policyholders by white agents, especially in the American South, were well-known in every black community, and such practices helped to stimulate the creation of black-owned industrial life insurance companies. The distasteful practices of white insurance agencies had important and positive long-term economic consequences for black American entrepreneurs. As Stuart observed in 1940: There are comparatively few types of business in which the Negro businessman has even a reasonable chance to

succeed. . . . Among the lines of business and personal service in which colored operators and proprietors may be free from extra racial obstacles . . . [are] barber shops and beauty parlors, food service establishments, journalism, hotels, undertaking and life insurance businesses. (P. xxv)

Stuart lists the names of the 46 Negro life insurance organizations then operating in the District of Columbia and 24 U.S. states. Of these companies, 29 included the phrase life insurance in their names; burial insurance was the major component of 2 of the companies’ names. In 1940, the “Afro-American Life Insurance Company” of Jacksonville, Florida, was one of 26 Negro companies located in the southern portion of the United States. Careful readers may recognize the significance of the wording of the name of this firm.

Growth of a Minority Industry Black life insurance companies grew out of the church relief societies of the 1787–1890 period and the Negro fraternal benevolent burial associations that flourished in the United States from 1865 to 1915. Consistent with the fact that blacks were primarily involved in the labor-intensive industrial marketplace, most of the insurance sold first through benevolent societies and later through black-owned insurance companies covered the areas of health and accident. In reality, this form of industrial insurance was intended to provide modest benefits for the disabled and a decent burial for the deceased. As Stuart (1940:37, 40–44) documents, the rapid growth of industrial life and disability insurance among members of the black community can be attributed in part to black insurers’ sensitivity in making prompt payments to claimants. Although in the past ordinary life insurance policies accounted for only one-sixth of the total policies sold by black insurance companies to black Americans, there was rapid growth in this area, as the following numbers show. In December 1920, the total life insurance in force in what Stuart refers to as “the important Negro companies” was $86,039,131. By December 1937, 17 years later, the amount had increased to $340,816,707. Although this figure placed American blacks very high in comparison with the populations of many nations of the world, it represented only a fraction of all the life insurance in force among members of the U.S. black community. Indeed, as noted earlier, during 1937, the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company was said to hold one-sixth, or $690 million, of all black-held policies in the United States. Thus the estimated total amount of black-held life insurance in force at the time was more than $1.3 billion. This figure placed American blacks just behind the nations of Sweden and Australia in life insurance coverage. During this period of growth for the black life insurance industry, and despite the critical view of some industry analysts, many Americans were beginning to feel that it was important to have some amount of life insurance, no

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matter how small the policy worth. The first weekly premium policy was issued in the United States in 1873, but such policies found their greatest market in the black community. Clearly, black insurers took what Taylor and Pellegrin (1959) identify as a humanitarian approach; their goal was to service the basic needs of the black community. Indeed, it was through the determined efforts of individuals such as the low-status “debit man,” who serviced the needs of these low- to middle-income families, that this substantial portion of a vast industry was created and nurtured. Since 1983, yearly life insurance purchases in the United States have exceeded $1 trillion (American Council of Life Insurance 2002), and minority-owned life insurance companies represent an important component of this industry.

ECONOMICS AND THE VALUE OF HUMAN LIFE Certainly we can’t predict the future. But there are steps you can take to prepare for it. Life insurance is a tool that enables people to guarantee the financial security of those they love. By providing compensation for beneficiaries at death, life insurance preserves the monetary value of a human life when other lives depend on it. (All Quotes Insurance 2002)

Dominant social values often are expressed in economic terms, and, as Starlard (1986) succinctly states, this includes the value placed on human life. This issue is especially important in relation to decisions to insure the lives of individuals whose social value is measured in economic terms relative to the financial needs of others. The value of a man (or life), as Dublin and Lotka (1946:3–5) note in a book by that same title, may be compounded by practical and tangible qualities as well as by the aesthetic and sentimental values held by family members, friends, and business associates. All of these values represent different ideas, depending on the persons holding them and the person on whom the values are placed. Those who have an interest in the insured’s continued existence, especially family members (such as spouse and children), place a high value on that individual. In this area, the value of a human life may even be considered priceless. Placing such metaphysical issues aside, however, it is the survivors’ financial interest in the life of one whose earnings and role as head of the family provide stability for the family that serves as the very foundation of life insurance. Thus, as Dublin and Lotka note, “A fixed principle of the life insurance business . . . requires that the person insuring the life of another shall have a financial interest in the continuance of the life insured” (p. 5). It is through life insurance that the economic value of a person on whom family members are dependent is protected (Dublin and Lotka 1946:159). Symbolically, life insurance is a gift intended to ensure that survivors are able to maintain a lifestyle similar to that

they had during the life of the insured. Life insurance is the purchase of futures. It is planning for the future, albeit a future in which the insured will not share. In receiving the largesse provided through a life insurance policy, family members can avoid the loss of any status achieved for the family by the insured—that is, any status in the community that he or she achieved prior to death. Such status is, according to Starlard (1986), one of inequality, an inequality often based on sex, age, and, as Gollin (1966) and Zelizer (1981) note, race. In addition, as noted above, the use of life insurance by lower-class parents to assure their family welfare in the event of the loss of their working children was at one time an area of considerable controversy in American society (Zelizer 1981). The inequality of the sexes in terms of life insurance is reflected in the greater numbers of policies sold to men versus women as well as in the amounts for which policies are written. Women are far less likely than men to have life insurance policies, and women who do have life insurance generally have policies that pay considerably less than most men’s policies. Age is a factor in light of life expectancy at either end of the age continuum; those who are younger pay relatively low premiums, whereas premiums are quite high for older insurees. Race is a relevant factor only in the context of groups targeted by the industry as potential buyers of life insurance policies. In this area, many black Americans in the past were similar to today’s French and British, who are inclined to purchase small amounts of insurance for burial purposes only. Working-class American laborers in the past generally held small amounts of disability and burial insurance, paying the premiums weekly to insurance agents who stopped by their homes to “collect the debit.” The historical debate as to the economic value of human life continues, given that this value orientation now includes notions related to aesthetic and sentimental values. Although the present debate is focused on public policy issues directly related to human health and safety, central to this debate is the valuation of human life. Known as the “human capital approach” to valuing human life, this debate has a long history, dating back to the late 17th century. At present, the debate pertains to risk and cost-benefit analyses used to evaluate programs that attach monetary values of risks to life. In recent years this debate has included arguments concerning the value of lives lost owing to lack of occupational safety and human negligence (see, e.g., Dardis 1980; Landefeld and Seskin 1982; Miller 1990).

OTHER DYNAMIC ASPECTS OF LIFE INSURANCE Despite most Americans’ strong acceptance of life insurance, some reservations of the past continue to the present. As one critic notes: “Life insurance can do a great deal of good for the policyholder and his family. But, strange as it

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may seem, it can do him considerable harm, and his family and beneficiaries as well” (Hendershot 1957:9). Some critics have expressed concern that the industry overcharges for premiums and achieves excessive, nontaxable profits by limiting the amounts of coverage provided; they assert that such practices represent harm to both individual purchasers and the entire society. Gollin (1966), for example, refers to the insurance industry as “the worst-managed Big Business in America” (p. 141). Other charges that have been leveled against the industry in the years since it was established concern the practice of paying high commissions to sales personnel, the use of premiums for lobbying purposes, the presence of nepotism in hiring and internal managerial conflicts of interest, and, during the late 19th century, the writing of tontine policies, a practice that placed policyholders into a form of gambling pool (Jones [1999] 2002:104–5). (Tontine insurance was not a true form of insurance, however; see Jack 1912:196.) Drawing on one frequent theme promoted at annual insurance conventions, Gollin (1966), who was once a successful life insurance agent, summarizes the industry propaganda in the following manner: “Life insurance is the greatest concept society has ever produced; all life insurance men have a great mission” (p. 139). Taylor and Pellegrin (1959) also identify this theme; they report that advocates of the humanitarian approach to the sale of life insurance hold a religious fervor for the occupation and believe that through their efforts they render a great service to all people, regardless of their socioeconomic class status. That the insurance industry is successful is not in dispute, but, its acknowledged growth and fiscal vitality notwithstanding, the real reasons for the wealth of the industry may lie elsewhere. Reflecting on the preceding half century, Gollin (1966) offers a personal insider assessment of the reasons for the success of the life insurance industry: “Better medical care, a higher standard of living, and a prosperous economy—not any outstanding effort on the industry’s part—are the real reasons for the industry’s great post-war success” (p. 154). Despite the fact that state regulation of the life insurance industry began as far back as the 1850s (Jones [1999] 2002:77), it appears that yet another element is critical to the industry’s success. As Gollin (1966) observes: Life insurance companies are so powerful that they help write the laws under which they’re regulated. As a result the laws don’t regulate them very well. Neither ownership nor customer groups influence management behavior, so the industry is largely exempt from the checks and balances that govern our business industry. (P. 135)

And despite charges of extravagance, inefficiency, and lack of business acumen on the part of industry leaders, the fact that some companies used policyholder premiums to make investments in speculative ventures, and the pressures of certain regulatory mandates, the past failures of the life

insurance industry are not necessarily attributed to these problems. Rather, industry setbacks may have been the results of the more general collapse of financial markets experienced during economic depression and caused, at least indirectly, by the passage of the regulatory New York State Law of 1851 (Jones [1999] 2002). One example of such a collapse occurred during the 1870s, when a large number of newly formed companies ceased to exist (Zelizer 1979; see also American Council of Life Insurance 1996:108). Lack of sales was responsible for some of these failures, but it is also probable that some companies failed because they were unable to meet the $100,000 deposit required by the New York State Legislature. In general, these companies were located outside the boundaries of New York State, which led to yet another charge that the large life insurance companies influenced the shaping of industrywide regulations to protect their own interests against competition. Yet another, less controversial, conclusion is that the New York State Insurance Code was passed in the public’s best interest, with the intent of placing the life insurance industry firmly under state regulation (Jones [1999] 2002:119–21). The criticism that life insurance companies make huge profits by investing the premiums paid by clients may hold some salience during limited periods of intense media coverage and public scrutiny of insurance company activities. Such inquiry has periodically led to the creation of state legislative investigative committees. However, with few exceptions—such as the 1869 Supreme Court opinion affirming state regulation of insurance, the New York Insurance Code of 1906, the federally legislated McCarran-Ferguson Act of 1945, and the Tax Reform Act of 1884—the life insurance industry appears to be free of intense regulation. Regulatory efforts generally have only a modicum of success given the effectiveness of the insurance lobby interests in the legislative process (American Council of Life Insurance 1996:130–34; Jones [1999] 2002:102–7). There is little reason to believe the situation has changed during the past half century. As Jones ([1999] 2002:80–126) has noted recently, during the period of 1950–80 a slow and deliberate liberalization of prohibitions previously placed on the industry took place, and many of the strict controls and compliance regulations that were created during the 1920–50 period were removed.

CONCLUSION The evolution of the life insurance industry in the United States has included experiences that have differed from dynamics elsewhere in the world, particularly in Western Europe and Scandinavian countries, where the concept of life insurance developed slowly over the period of several hundred years. Perhaps the success of life insurance in the United States can be attributed to the spirit of capitalism (and Yankee ingenuity), as Fingland A. Jack (1912) has suggested: “It is to modern capitalism more than anything

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else that we owe the insurance fabric as it stands to-day” (p. 245). But if life insurance has become an important capitalist enterprise, it is important to note also that the industry may not have been possible without the new science of life contingencies (Jack 1912:216–22). Despite the fact that in the past the idea of benefiting financially from the death of loved ones was not culturally acceptable, with the beginnings of life insurance the value of human life became measurable. As this valuation gained general public acceptance, the future of the American life insurance industry was assured. From its most humble beginning in the late 18th century, and despite the scandals that were uncovered during the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the American life insurance industry represents a story of extraordinary success. In 1759, the first American life insurance company was founded, and it was joined in 1770 by its first competitor. By 1800, the number of extant life insurance companies doubled in size, to total four. Thereafter, the potential for and growth of the industry has been shown to be quite dynamic. The rapid growth of the insurance industry in the United States is clear from a review of the data. A selective listing of the number of U.S. insurance companies by year and number illustrate the nature of the industry: in 1850, there were 48 companies; in 1870, 129; in 1880, 59; in 1900, 84; in 1925, 379; in 1950, 649; in 1955, 1,107; in 1975, 1,746; in 1985, 2,261; and in 1990, 2,195. At the end of 1995, there were 1,715 insurance companies operating in the United States (American Council of Life Insurance 1996). One of these, the New York Life Insurance Company, founded in 1845, enjoys the status of being a Fortune 100 company (see All Quotes Insurance 2002). Operating revenues of more than $13 billion allow the company to create surplus and investment reserves of more than $8.7 billion. This latter figure represents the funds that finance growth and protect the interests of the holders of the company’s policies. However vast the number, this amount only brings this particular company into standing as one of the strongest in the industry. The total figures for the U.S. life insurance industry are even more enlightening, if not astonishing. With the acceptance of life insurance among the growing middle class throughout the 20th century, and especially during the second half of the century, life insurance as an investment form has not only served to protect the future lifestyles of policyholders’ family members, it has enhanced the growth of the American economy. For example, in 1900, there was a little more than $7.5 billion of life insurance in force in the United States. By 1950, life insurance purchases in the United States exceeded $28.7 billion. In 1995, Americans purchased approximately $1.6 trillion worth of individual and group life insurance; for that same year there was more than $12.5 trillion worth of life insurance in force (American Council of Life Insurance 1996:10). In 2001, the amount of new life insurance coverage exceeded $2.7 trillion. During that same year, more than $16.2 trillion in

individual and group life insurance was in force in the United States (American Council of Life Insurance 2002). Although some individuals prefer to invest their money in a variety of markets outside the insurance industry, most Americans tend to take for granted the purchase of life insurance as one of the essential aspects of life. Wives expect their husbands and the fathers of their children to plan for the future. A part of this planning includes the provision of the gift of life insurance, a form of social exchange intended to assure that widowed spouses and orphans will remain economically functional should the head of household die. There appears also to be a legacy involved in the purchase of life insurance. To quote the eminent scholar who serves as editor in chief of this handbook: “The main point of the entry should be: The bad news is you are dead, but the good news is that your heirs get a big chunk of money, and thus, your life had meaning.” Need any more be stated?

REFERENCES All Quotes Insurance. 2002. “Life Insurance.” New York: Cyber Financial Network. Retrieved November 3, 2002 (http:// www.allquotesinsurance.com). American Council of Life Insurance. 1996. Life Insurance Fact Book: 1996. Washington, DC: American Council of Life Insurance. ———. 2002. Life Insurance Fact Book: 2002. Washington, DC: American Council of Life Insurance. Baker, T. 2001. “Insurance and the Law.” Pp. 7587–91 in International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences, vol. 11, edited by Neil J. Smelser and Paul B. Baltes. Amsterdam: Elsevier. Clough, Shepard B. 1946. American Life Insurance: A History of the Mutual Life Insurance Company of New York, 1843–1943. New York: Columbia University Press. Dardis, Rachel. 1980. “The Value of a Life: New Evidence From the Marketplace.” American Economic Review 70:1077–82. Dublin, Louis L. and Alfred J. Lotka. 1946. The Money Value of a Man. New York: Ronald. Empey, LaMar T. and Mark C. Stafford. 1991. American Delinquency: Its Meaning and Construction, 3rd ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. Fogel, Robert William. 2000. The Fourth Great Awakening and the Future of Egalitarianism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Gollin, James. 1966. Pay Now, Die Later. New York: Random House. Hendershot, Ralph. 1957. The Grim Truth About Life Insurance. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons. Jack, Fingland A. 1912. An Introduction to the History of Life Insurance. New York: E. P. Dutton. Jones, Daniel Lee. [1999] 2002. “Organizing Risky Business: The Social Construction and Organization of Life Insurance, 1810–1980.” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Arizona. Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Dissertation Services, ProQuest. Landefeld, J. Steven and Eugene P. Seskin. 1982. “The Economic Value of Life: Linking Theory to Practice.” American Journal of Public Health 72:556–66.

158– • –DEATH AND SOCIAL EXCHANGE Lindesmith, Alfred R., Anselm L. Strauss, and Norman K. Denzin. 1988. Social Psychology, 6th ed. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Manis, Jerome G. and Bernard N. Melzer. 1978. Symbolic Interaction: A Reader in Social Psychology, 3d ed. Boston: Allyn & Bacon. Mauss, Marcel. 1967. The Gift: Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies. New York: W. W. Norton. Miller, Ted R. 1990. “The Plausible Range for the Value of Life: Red Herrings Among the Mackerel.” Journal of Forensic Economics 3(3):17–39. Starlard, Gwendolyn. 1986. “Life Insurance Purchase: A Measure of the Social Value of Life.” Free Inquiry in Creative Sociology 14:105–8. Stevenson, John Alford. 1927. Life Insurance: Its Economic and Social Relations. New York: D. Appleton. Stuart, M. S. 1940. An Economic Detour: A History of Insurance in the Lives of American Negroes. New York: Wendell, Malliet.

Taylor, Lee M. and Roland J. Pellegrin. 1959. “Professionalism: Its Functions and Dysfunctions for the Life Insurance Occupation.” Social Forces 38:110–14. Titmuss, Richard M. 1971. The Gift Relationship: From Human Blood to Social Policy. New York: Pantheon. Whaples, Robert and David Buffum. 1991. “Fraternalism, Paternalism, the Family and the Market: Insurance a Century Ago.” Social Science History 15:97–122. Zelizer, Viviana A. 1978. “Human Values and the Market: The Case of Life Insurance and Death in 19th-Century America.” American Journal of Sociology 84:591–610. ———. 1979. Morals and Markets: The Development of Life Insurance in the United States. New York: Columbia University Press. ———. 1981. “The Price and Value of Children: The Case of Children’s Insurance.” American Journal of Sociology 86:1036–56. ———. 1985. Pricing the Priceless Child: The Changing Social Value of Children. New York: Basic Books.

“FULL MILITARY HONORS” Ceremonial Interment as Sacred Compact

TIMOTHY W. WOLFE CLIFTON D. BRYANT HERE RESTS IN HONORED GLORY AN AMERICAN SOLDIER KNOWN BUT TO GOD —Inscription on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, Arlington National Cemetery

f Ulysses S. Grant was correct in his observation that “war is hell!” then soldiers live on the edge of hell. The warrior’s duty is to wage war or be prepared to do so. Behind the facade of military parade pageantry and the pomp and circumstance of formal reviews and ceremonies; behind the military bands blaring martial music, the shrill clarion call of the bugle, and the staccato beat of the drums; behind the military costumes and the rainbow of colored ribbons and decorations—behind all these lies the existential truth of the military experience. Constituent to this truth are the ennui of garrison duty and the psychological trauma of combat. Gallantry in action and the unselfish heroic bravery of the battlefield belie the ubiquitous reality of combat death and dismemberment. The universal soldier has historically and stoically faced the prospect of death with studied equanimity, enduring the anxiety, fear, and uncertainty that precede battle.1 Almost overriding soldiers’ fear of combat death is their concern about the fate of their remains. There can be dignity in dying, but there is no dignity in having one’s corpse left on the battlefield, at the mercy of the elements,

unattended, uncared for, and unconnected to others. Soldiers cannot easily accommodate or assimilate the prospect of their abandoned bodies lying in desolation, subject to desecration, deterioration, desiccation, or disintegration. Confronted with this foreboding scenario, soldiers enter into an unspoken, but implicit, compact with their nation and their comrades. They will readily sacrifice their lives for their country, their people, or their comrades in arms, as long as they are secure in the knowledge that their remains will be reverently tended and that they will be laid to rest with proper respect, honor, and sincere ceremonial recognition of their supreme sacrifice—with “full military honors,” as it were. This is a compact that the nation dutifully fulfills.

THE DEAD AS RESIDUE OF WAR A product of war is death and the dead are its by-product. Prompt disposal or disposition of the dead is essential for several compelling reasons. Bodies deteriorate rapidly,

1. The term soldier technically refers to a member of the U.S. Army, whereas the Navy has sailors, the Marine Corp has marines, and the Air Force has airmen and airwomen. However, in this chapter we use soldier in a generic sense, to refer to any member of the military from any and all branches. It is less cumbersome than service member or military member (although we use these terms sometimes), and it reflects our personal biases resulting from our own service in the U.S. Army.

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especially in hot weather, and there is the immediate concern with aesthetic consideration. The stench of death can affect even hardened soldiers and can have severe impacts on their morale as well as their sensibilities. Dead bodies attract animals and insects, and the attendant desecration of the dead by such creatures can also be profoundly disturbing to the living, as well as an insult to the memory of the dead. Of course, health considerations also make disposition of the dead an important priority. Disease propagated by decaying bodies, insects, and water pollution can threaten the living and may ravage whole armies if left unchecked. If not removed, the dead can even become a handicap to movement and maneuver. Finally, the living need to identify the dead before deterioration renders this impossible. Battlefield exigencies can necessitate the disposal of the dead in ways that are highly distasteful. For example, in his historical account of the American invasion of Tarawa in World War II, Hoyt (1978) describes this scene: The mopping up on Tarawa was easy enough. On the fourth day it was the stink that bothered the men. Some 5,000 dead bodies lay rotting in the sun. The Marines could deal with the Japanese rapidly, and they did. The enemy bodies were collected in piles, hauled out to sea in Higgins boats, and dumped into the water. In its way it was not an unfitting end for these sailor-soldiers of an island kingdom. (P. 149)

Failure to remove the dead, or to bury them promptly, is to run the risk of having bodies simply disintegrate into unrecognizable remains that commingle with the earth. In World War I, during the siege of Verdun in France there were almost a million deaths on the battlefields around the town, and the months-long battles prevented the prompt removal of bodies. Webster (1994) describes the end result: “In what may be the most grisly statistic ever, fewer than 160,000 identifiable bodies were recovered. The rest were impossible to recognize or had simply been swallowed up by the explosions and mud” (p. 36). After the war, a French national cemetery was established at Louvemont, France, near the battlefields. A huge ossuary was constructed and filled with fragments of skeletal material recovered from the surrounding areas. The bones are arranged in alcoves built into the ossuary walls. They are identified only by the sector of the Verdun battlefield from which they were recovered. Even today, more than 80 years later, bones are still found in the ground around Verdun and placed in the ossuary (Webster 1994). In the view of the urgency of disposing of the mass of dead bodies after a battle, the thought arises that burning the bodies on funeral pyres might resolve the problem. This arrangement has been and continues to be used in cases of mass death, particularly where the deaths have been caused by disasters or epidemic disease. The burning of bodies like refuse, however, is considered to be a repugnant option for fallen warriors. Instead, throughout history,

GRASS Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo. Shovel them under and let me work— I am the grass; I cover all. And pile them high at Gettysburg And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun. Shovel them under and let me work. Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor: What place is this? Where are we now? I am the grass. Let me work. —Carl Sandburg, 1918

with few exceptions, battlefield burial (or burial at sea for sailors) has become institutionalized as the appropriate disposition of the bodies of war dead. For untold centuries, however, the practice of battlefield burial was not institutionalized as an official and standardized function of the military. Instead, various informal procedures evolved. In the time of the Caesars, for example, Roman legionnaires would have small sums deducted from their pay as dues to a burial club. This burial club would arrange for and pay the expenses of members’ funerals should they be killed in battle (Robinson 1971:18, 31). Alternatively, after battles the Roman legionnaires would compel captured warriors and/or civilians to bury the Roman dead. In many other cases, fellow soldiers or buddies would simply bury their comrades as a matter of final respect and affectionate responsibility. Most frequently, the impetus for battlefield burial was command decision because of exigency. Sometimes, however, such burials were accompanied by relatively elaborate military ceremonial behavior. The ceremonies might be traditional or impromptu. Historian John Wright (1975) describes the military burial ceremonies that the American troops conducted during the Revolutionary War: Military Funerals were conducted with dignity and solemnity. Those slain in battle were buried where they fell, the most honorable resting places for a soldier. Men who died in camp were buried on the color line, in front of camp, their bodies facing the enemy. (P. 24)

Wright goes on to detail a particular ceremony held for a slain lieutenant colonel, an artillery officer from South Carolina; it involved an honor guard with reverse muskets, flags, muffled drums and musical instruments, a marching formation, and three volleys fired over the grave.

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In most instances, however, the commander of a military unit would simply order the burial of the dead (including the fallen enemy soldiers) as an expedient means of disposing of the problem. As American Civil War historian James Robertson, Jr. (1988) notes, “A necessary task after every battle was the burial of the dead; and with the summer’s heat working rapidly on hundreds of corpses, the gruesome and nauseous job was done with haste rather than reverence” (p. 225). In such circumstances, the dead might be buried in rows, trenches, or even mass graves. Retreating enemies might necessarily have to leave their dead behind. Sometimes, according to Robertson, civilians were impressed to bury the dead. In instances of inadequate or shallow burial, the graves might be washed out by heavy rains, and sometimes hogs would root out the bodies (p. 225). By the time of the Napoleonic Wars, fought by mass armies of up to a million men, the huge death tolls of battles greatly exacerbated the problem of after-battle body disposal (we discuss the history and evolution of military funerals in greater detail in a later section). Insight into the need for reestablishing equilibrium after death is requisite to an understanding of military funeralization, however.

THE NEED TO REESTABLISH EQUILIBRIUM When an individual passes from the world of the living to the world of the dead, this event creates disruption and social disequilibrium, not only for the relatively small group of persons directly involved with the deceased (e.g., immediate family, other members of the military unit) but for the larger social entity. The groups to which the deceased formerly belonged are obviously no longer the same groups after his or her demise. If the deceased was someone of special importance, perhaps a leader or some kind of celebrity, the disruption and social imbalance that results from his or her death is even greater. War represents, then, a time of tremendous social upheaval, as the specter of death is always present and potentially disruptive. Obviously, it is important that there be in place a cultural (or subcultural) response to death that can dilute the fears of individuals or otherwise assist them in coping with death while also maintaining a degree of social stability and cohesion. Indeed, some students of death and dying contend that it is imperative that cultures develop social mechanisms for dealing with the disruption and anxiety that death precipitates (Riley 1983:192). It would appear

that such a mechanism exists in the military in the form of burial with “full military honors.” Such ceremonial behavior helps to mitigate soldiers’ fears and anxieties inasmuch as it bestows a degree of symbolic immortality. It also provides closure to the soldier’s life, helps to restore group equilibrium, and fulfills the social compact. Within the complex of fears with which soldiers must cope are fear of an unnoted death, fear of a lost or mutilated corpse, and fear of dying in a far-off land. All of these fears are made more manageable for soldiers through the promise that, in the event of their deaths, their comrades will make every effort to locate and retrieve their corpses, to care for and treat their bodies with reverence, to return them home (or to a suitable military cemetery), and to place them into the aggregate of fallen warriors. Although this is clearly not a “fair exchange,” in the sense that infinite honor and respect cannot restore life, it is a significant social exchange insofar as it affords important symbolic rewards for soldiers and their families.2 As one marine graves registration officer put it, “We want everybody accounted for, that will make the healing process quicker” (quoted in United Press International 1991). An enlisted Army graves registration specialist has described his job as follows: We’re the guys who send our soldiers home. We’re the ones who get them out of here so their families can have them back again. All the parents and relatives don’t accept the fact their son or daughter might be dead until they see the remains. I feel like I’ve done something for them and their families. (quoted in Lamb 1991)

Throughout humankind’s existence, people have developed various social arrangements and behavioral configurations to assist them in their efforts to understand, accept, and transcend death and dying. One of the most important and universal cultural responses to death involves the social creation, assembly, and manipulation of death symbols and, thus, the very conceptualization and meaning of death itself. The military, as a formal organization and social institution, has developed over time its own symbolic approach to the need to confront death and dying. In effect, although soldiers face the possibility of death and the very real chance that their bodies may be mutilated in far-off lands, the U.S. military guarantees that every possible effort will be made to locate and secure their corpses, return them home in the best possible condition, and provide for them funerals and places of interment that are compelling and memorable in terms of dignity and honor (Risch 1989).3 The implications of the changes that

2. The family, along with the fallen soldier, is also honored in a military funeral, which confers special status on the members of the family and especially the parents. During World War II in the United States, any mother who had a son (or daughter) serving in the military was entitled to display a small banner with a blue star in the window of her home. When a mother lost a son (or daughter) in the service, she would proudly and sadly display a banner with a gold star. The designation of “Gold Star Mother” carried a special prestigious status and elicited appropriate empathy and sympathy from other members of the community. 3. Note that viewing the corpse is a historically important social funerary custom in U.S. society.

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have occurred over time in the military’s handling of the dead are significant, both for individuals and for the larger social entity. Death in the military context is unique.

DEATH IN THE MILITARY CONTEXT Changes over time in the nature, extent, and consequences of war have necessitated certain structural changes in the military’s handling of body disposition and burial practices (Risch 1989). For example, the increasing numbers of dead, the fact that fields of battle have become farther away from soldiers’ homes, and the increasing destruction and devastation wrought by modern weaponry have altered the nature and consequences of death in warfare. Before we examine specifically the changing military response to death, we believe it is appropriate to consider death in the military within an understanding of the special circumstances and considerations that confront those who engage in battle.

The Importance of Comrades The U.S. military has identified the crucial factor that successfully motivates intelligent and rational human beings to risk their lives: It is well documented that American soldiers (as well as soldiers from the Middle East, Asia, and Europe)4 fight and die not so much for political ideas, or love of country, or any other such lofty abstractions, but instead for their comrades in arms—their buddies (Henderson 1985). The fact that motivation for fighting is to be found in the intimate, interpersonal relationships among soldiers provides a potentially important insight regarding how soldiers cope with death and dying. A major impetus for soldiers facing death in battle is their concern for one another (Coser 1956; Elder and Clipp 1988; Henderson 1985). It has also been well documented that the emotional bonds formed in combat, especially if the survivors have witnessed many deaths, not only help to sustain soldiers during the stressful time of combat but can last an entire lifetime. In fact, one important way in which combat soldiers can learn to cope with their residual postmilitary trauma is by maintaining ties with members of their former units. As Elder and Clipp observe (1988): “The loss of comrades in battle frequently reinforces social bonds among surviving members of a unit. These relationships and their social support can lessen the psychological impairment of combat trauma” (p. 178). In addition to providing the motivation to risk life and limb, as well as the social support needed to cope with past trauma, comradeship provides symbolic immortality. As Elder

and Clipp write: “The sacrifice of life in the spirit of comradeship ensures a measure of immortality as the fallen live through the memories of survivors” (p. 180). They further comment: When men fight for each other and their common survival, they also, in this sense, die and suffer wounds for each other. Some pledges in life become commitments between the living and the dead, between survivors and the memory of fallen comrades. There is an insistent obligation to remember, honor, and preserve the highest meaning of their sacrifice. Remembrance of the men who died unifies war comrades in a community of memory. (P. 183)

The Fear of Mutilation and an Unnoted Death Not only do soldiers have to face the ever-present specter of death, they have to face the possibility that their dead bodies may be mutilated, lost, or even completely destroyed. As Dinter (1985) notes: Even more revealing is the disproportionately strong psychological effect of the bayonet, or the Moroccan soldiers at Cassino who mutilated their victims, and were therefore particularly feared by the defending German soldiers. We are deeply afraid of losing our physical integrity by being mutilated. This fear is so great that mutilation even after death still scares us. Fear of mutilation is certainly greater than the fear of death itself. (P. 25)

In addition to the fear of death itself, and the possibility that their corpses may be mutilated if not completely lost or missing, soldiers in combat must contend with the fear of unnoted death. This fear is not so much one of no longer being alive as it is a fear of being forgotten forever. Put differently, an unnoted death means that the postself career— that is, the reputation and symbolic social presence that an individual has after death—may never proceed or grow, so to speak, for the fallen warrior. The importance that Americans place on keeping the memories of the dead alive is illustrated by our society’s emphasis on publicly and properly noting individual deaths, remembering the dead through various types of memorials, and marking the final resting places of the dead to ensure their symbolic presence in the social entity. The anxiety that soldiers face, then, as they contemplate the possibility of an unnoted death, an unmarked grave, and the lack of symbolic presence in the social entity, is burdensome indeed. The U.S. military, correctly recognizing this set of fears, has addressed the task of ameliorating or at least minimizing these concerns and providing some means of assuring soldiers, their families, and society at large that those who serve their country will not be forgotten.

4. After World War II, American behavioral scientists who examined and analyzed data based on the combat behavior of German soldiers and small unit solidarity convincingly demonstrated that interpersonal relationships in small military units—the primary group—are significant influences on individual behavior (Shils and Janowitz 1948).

“Full Military Honors”– • –163

As war itself has evolved, so too has the military’s response to the death and dying of its members. In the next section, we discuss certain aspects of the military history of the United States, with particular attention to the numbers of war dead, modes of body disposition, and funeral customs. Space limitations necessitate our limiting the amount of detail we can present in this historical discussion. Our intent here is to provide an overview of how military customs and practices of body disposition have changed over time, with an emphasis on the social import of such changes.

THE MILITARY RESPONSE TO DEATH Historical Changes When death comes to a military member—obviously not an uncommon situation during time of war—the body is handled and disposed of in prescribed ways, and there are customs in place to respond to the emotional and psychosocial needs of the deceased’s loved ones and, indeed, the functional needs of society. Today, soldiers who are killed in combat and veterans of the military are given not just “decent” burials but “inspiring funeral service[s] of great dignity” (Hinkel 1970:168). As we have noted, over time the American military has changed the ways in which it responds to the death of a members. Today’s military funeral—complete with a flag-draped casket, the playing of “Taps,” and a rifle or canon salute—has evolved slowly. The Civil War and World War I serve as important historical markers in this regard. Several factors are responsible for the changes in the way the U.S. military responds to death; these include the locations of battlefields vis-à-vis soldiers homes, the numbers of war dead, and the military’s institutional ability and inclination to process the dead. As we have mentioned, the earliest wars in which the United States was involved were typically fought relatively near the homes of soldiers. In the war of the American Revolution (1775–83), fought mostly by provincial troops and state militias (Addington 1994:12), the American soldiers were typically not very far from their homes, and the families of those who died could reasonably be expected to make whatever funeral arrangements they desired. This first U.S. war saw some 100,000 men fight throughout the entire war effort, but there were never more than 35,000 American troops fighting against the British at any one time. The loss of life for gaining independence was quite high, as some 25,000 American soldiers died in this war (Addington 1994:19). Although there were no formalized or routinized military funeral customs at this time, fallen soldiers, especially officers, were interred with respect and dignity (“Horses of Arlington” 1971:24). The next major war in which the United States was involved was the Anglo-American War of 1812 (1812–15). In this campaign, the American Army made a rather poor

showing, as mobilization of troops was poorly handled and military leadership was relatively weak. American troops traveled farther from their home bases than they did during the Revolutionary War, but the American losses were relatively light, with only 7,000 dead as a result of the war (Addington 1994:35). The handling of the dead in this conflict was again left to the idiosyncratic inclinations of unit commanders or to whatever prior arrangements individual soldiers had made. At this time, there were still no institutionalized arrangements for formal military burials or ceremonial observance of interments. The battlefield often became the graveyard. Writing about the U.S. military’s burial practices even up to the Civil War, Risch (1989) notes in her history of the Army’s Quartermaster Corps: The return of the remains of deceased officers was an exception to the general practices followed in campaigns. Most officers and all enlisted personnel who died in battle were buried where they fell. For the most part, too, burial sites went unmarked and no records were kept other than the report of those killed in action. (Pp. 463–64)

After the War of 1812 and before the Civil War, the United States was involved in a war with Mexico over Texas (1846–48). This war saw soldiers from the East traveling to Texas and points south and west. Some 14,000 U.S. troops died as a result of this campaign, but only 2,000 of those deaths resulted from actual combat. The majority of deaths were caused by exposure, disease, and capital punishment meted out for desertion and war atrocities (Addington 1994:61). At this time there still were no formalized structu

Clifton D. Bryant (Editor)-Handbook of Death and Dying (2 Vol. Set)-SAGE Publications (2003) - PDFCOFFEE.COM (2024)