Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

rikzilla

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

~~ Paul
 
Bump

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

-z
 
Re: Bump

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

The point being, I don't think it's surprising that there are similar elements to reported NDE's. They're probably as similar as one person's brain is similar to the next person's brain.
 
Sorry not to have commented on this sooner but I just saw it.

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

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

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

rikzilla said:
I'm surprised no one here has any comment on the good Dr.
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Well, since there's a vacuum...

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

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

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

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

-z
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I don't know anything about the lady, but it seems to me that it IS the same as alien abductions. Insofar as the reason for the convergence of similar elements in accounts is attributable to physiology as opposed to something paranormal happening. It seems she jumped to the conclusion that NDE's must represent life after death instead of a common physical symptom of nearly dying. Like sleep paralysis has been shown to be a common physical cause of someone thinking they've been abducted by aliens.
 
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Hexxenhammer said:
I don't know anything about the lady, but it seems to me that it IS the same as alien abductions. Insofar as the reason for the convergence of similar elements in accounts is attributable to physiology as opposed to something paranormal happening.
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She's most famous for a taxonomy the stages of coming to grips with dying. I can never remember the order, but they're something like denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.

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

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

Hexxenhammer said:
Didn't Homer go through these when he thought he was dying? Lisa was telling him the stages:
Lisa: The first stage is denial.
Homer:Pfft! I'm not dying.
Lisa: Then anger.
Homer: AAAARRRRGGGGHHH!
Lisa: Next is bargaining.
Homer: Lisa, you've gotta get me outta this. I'll make it worth your while.
Lisa: Depression.
Homer: Oh why me! Sob sob...
Lisa: And finally acceptance.
Homer: Oh well, we all gotta go sometime.
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A testament to the wide reach of her work. I think the Simpson's did a similar sequence with her stages when Marge and Homer split up with Bart going through the stages.
 
She has her own site.

As has been mentioned, in the late 1960's her experience of talking to thousands of dying patients and learning how how they were ill-treated, she wrote what was considered a revolutionary book on the subject. The sad part is that in 1995, she had a stroke and was diagnosed as having only a small chance of surviving. During her recovery she learned first hand that there are hospitals that are no different now than they were in the 1960's and that still treat terminal and possibly terminal patients with less dignity and honesty than they deserve.
 
Kübler-Ross apparantly had a ghostly encounter, in which the ghost wrote a letter to her in front of her eyes, which remained in physical space, and still remains intact today. I don't know if this experience can be accounted for naturalistically. She could have lied, I guess. But than she's so famous... Maybe she went into a dissassociative state? As a skeptic I am unsure what to make of it. Any ideas here?

"In her book, On Life After Death, Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, a pioneer in the study of the near-death experience (NDE), states that her first account of an NDE came from “a certain Mrs. Schwartz.” After being declared dead following 45 minutes of resuscitation attempts, Mrs. Schwartz began to show signs of life and was revived. She lived for another year-and-a-half, during which time she met Dr. Ross and related her experience during a seminar on death and dying at the University of Chicago.
Some 10 months after Mrs. Schwartz’s death, Dr. Ross decided to discontinue the death and dying seminar. After giving her lecture on death and dying in a classroom, she was discussing shutting down the seminar with a minister who had worked with her in the program. As they approached an elevator, where the minister would leave her, Ross noticed a woman standing in front of the elevator. The woman looked familiar, but Ross could not immediately place her. As soon as the minister got on the elevator, the woman, who Ross described as being somewhat transparent, approached her and asked her if she could accompany her to her office. Dr. Ross came to realize that it was Mrs. Schwartz and began to question her own awareness.
“This was the longest walk of my life,” Ross related. “I am a psychiatrist. I work with schizophrenic patients all the time, and I love them. When they would have visual hallucinations I would tell them.” She told herself that she was seeing Mrs. Schwartz but that it couldn’t be. She did a reality check on herself and wondered if she had seen too many schizophrenic patients and was beginning to see things herself. “I even touched her skin to see if it was cold or warm, or if the skin would disappear when I touched it. It was the most incredible walk I have ever taken, not knowing why I was doing what I was doing. I was both an observing psychiatrist and a patient.” When they reached Ross’ office door, Mrs. Schwartz opened it and told Ross that she had come back for two reasons, first to thank her and the Reverend Gaines, a former minister in the program, for the help they had given her, and, secondly, to ask her not to stop her work on death and dying. Ross got to her desk and did another reality check, touching her desk, chair, and a pen. “I was hoping she would disappear,” Ross continues the story. “But she didn’t. She just stood there and lovingly said, ‘Dr. Ross, did you hear me? Your work is not finished. We will help you and you will know when the time is right, but do not stop now. Promise?’”
As a further test of her awareness or sanity, Ross asked the woman if she would write a note to Reverend Gaines. Mrs. Schwartz complied. She then got up from her chair, and said, “Dr. Ross, you promise,” to which Ross replied, “I promise.” With that Mrs. Schwartz disappeared. Ross kept the note and later told the story to many friends and associates. She considered having fingerprint and handwriting experts examine the note to see if they matched up with the fingerprints and handwriting of Mrs. Schwartz, but she never got around to it and eventually gave the note to the Rev. Renford Gaines. Researcher Boyce Batey later contacted Gaines, who had changed his name to Mwalimu Imara, in line with his African heritage, at the Boston Center for Religion and Psychotherapy, Inc. Imara informed Batey that because of various confidentiality concerns relative to Mrs. Schwartz and her family, he could not provide a copy of the note. However, he provided Batey with the exact wording, viz. “Hello there, Dropped in to see Dr. Ross. One of two on the top of my ‘list’. You being the other. I’ll never find or know anyone to take the place of you two. I want you to know, as I’ve told her, I’m at peace at home now. I want you to know you helped me. The simple Thank you is not enough. But please know how much I mean it. Thank you again. Mary Schwartz."
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source:
http://michaelprescott.typepad.com/michael_prescotts_blog/2008/07/the-will-to-disbelieve.html
 
Was there any kind of methodical research behind her Stages of Grief, or did she just draw them up from daily observation?
 
Kubler-Ross was into all kinds of post-mortem woo according to this article by journalist Ron Rosenbaum written at the height of her notoriety.

If the afterlife entities can be warm and loving and intimate with the living, why would anyone hesitate to go to bed with the dead?... :eye-poppi

Considering this feverish eagerness to be in touch with entities one way or another, it's not surprising that some death 'n' dying cultists have carried worship of the dead to Stage 5: going to bed with the dead... :eek:

By the time the sexual scandal broke in 1980, Kubler-Ross seems to have been bewitched into buying every last spiritualist trick in the book. She had no less than four personal entities -- she called them "Mario," "Anka," "Salem," and "Willie" -- attending her. She now believed in reincarnation and claimed to have memories of being alive in the time of Jesus. Where once her seminars had helped the dying, their friends, and their relatives live with despair, she now offered them a grab bag of Big Rock Candy Mountain fantasies of "life after life" to escape from life. And, finally, she'd allied her personal organization with a local sect that called itself the Church of the Facet of Divinity, hailing its minister, faith healer and medium Jay Barham, as "the greatest healer in the world."
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Does anyone know where this story was first published? I cannot seem to find anything with Google.

Kinda hard to accuse her of hallucinating if the letter is still intact. The only explanation I can think of for this story is lying. But... she's Elizabeth Kubler Ross! would it be conspiratrial to accuse her of lying? And what about the note. I can't seem to find anything on the blasted note, other than her inability to present it as evidence.

Any reason to suppose she lied? Just how well respected was she in scientific and parapsychology circles?

EDIT: Actually, all this talk of spirit guides and guardian angels gives me a second hypothesis. Maybe she was severely deluded- like shizophrenic or something. Maybe she wrote the note herself and forgot, or compulsively lied, or something. This all seems possible considering her... less than normal beliefs.
 
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rikzilla said:
I have just finished reading her memoir titled: The Wheel of Life. She tells a compelling story, and has lived a very interesting and full life. Her book "On Death and Dying" led to an international revolution in hospice care, and seems to have spawned a new "ology" called Thanatology which is described as:

Link

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

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

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

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

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

Thanks,
-z
Click to expand...

Thanks for this, one of my friends is now working as a hospice Chaplain, I'm going to pass it on and see if she's read it, if so I'll get some feedback.


As to the topic, I agree with PA, I've never understood the leap from a shared phenomenon being anything more than the brain banging out a pattern as it goes.
 
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