- This book integrates compassionate-based approaches with current theories and practices in loss, grief, and bereavement to provide readers with new insights and understanding on supporting patients, families, and healthcare workers facing the many challenges associated with loss and grief. - This book provides a holistic overview on the theoretical foundations of compassion, with in-depth discussions on the essential components of compassion training, as well as practical examples on how compassionate-based approaches can be applied in situations of loss, grief, and bereavement. - This book consolidates and presents the most innovative and cutting-edge research, interventions, and techniques on compassionate-based approaches from international leaders in the field to offer diverse perspectives on the applications of compassion based approaches to a variety of settings relevant to loss and grief. -This book draws upon current practices in compassion that are readily applicable to both clinicians and their clients alike, helping to develop greater capacity and insight into the loss and grief that we experience in our lives.

Although many books are written about bereavement, very few are written about the fear of one's own death and most of these focus chiefly on terminal illness. In contrast, this book looks at the ways in which the fear of death operates on a back burner throughout our lives and how it influences the choices we make and the paths that we follow in life. The author presents a moral hierarchy' of behavior used in coping with the fear of death and dying.

This book presents a critical analysis and examination of the major theories and social issues in the social construction of aging and death. It is concerned with the impact of death and places how our experiences of death are transformed by the roles that truth and discourse about aging play in everyday life. A major element of the book is an examination of the way in which groups and individuals employ specific representations of mortality in order to construct meaning and purpose for life and death. To accentuate this, the book provides an investigation into the social construction of death practices across time and space. Special attention is given to the notion of death as a socially accomplished phenomenon grounded in a unique sociological introduction to the meaning of death throughout history to the present. The purpose of this book is to critically inform debates concerning the abstract and empirical features of death examined through the lens of sociological perspectives. This book explores the emergent biomedical dominance relating to ageing and death. An alternative is advocated which re-interprets ageing for Graduate schools. This innovative book explores the concept, history and theory of aging and its relationship to death. Traditionally, many books have focused on older people dying of 'natural causes', a biomedical explanatory framework. This book looks at alternative social theories and experiences with aging and relate to death in different countries, victims, crime, imprisonment and institutional care. Are these deaths avoidable? If so, what are the solutions the book addresses. This is one of the first books that re-interprets aging and its relationship of examples of death. It will be of essential reading for graduate students and researchers in understanding these different examples of aging and death across the globe.

In The Curse on Self-Murder, the second volume of his three-part Suicide in the Middle Ages, Alexander Murray explores the origin of the condemnation of suicide, in a quest which leads along the most unexpected byways of medieval theology, law, mythology, and folklore.

Looking at the cultural responses to death and dying, this collection explores the emotional aspects that death provokes in humans, whether it is disgust, fear, awe, sadness, anger, or even joy. Whereas most studies of death and dying treat the subject from an objective viewpoint, the scholars in this collection recognize their inherent connection with death which allows for a new and more personal form of study. More broadly, this collection suggests a new paradigm in the study of death and dying.

In 1846, Edgar Allen Poe wrote that 'the death of a beautiful woman is, unquestionably, the most poetic topic in the world'. The conjuction of death, art and femininity forms a rich and disturbing strata of Western culture, explored here in fascinating detail by Elisabeth Bronfen. Her examples range from Carmen to Little Nell, from Wuthering Heights to Vertigo, from Snow White to Frankenstein. The text is richly illustrated throughout with thirty-seven paintings and photographs. -- .

The study of death has the capacity to bring together a range of policy areas. Yet death is often overlooked within policy debates in the UK and beyond, and within gerontology. Bringing together a range of scholars engaged in policy associated with death, this collection provides a holistic account of how death factors in social policy. Within this, issues covered include inheritance, palliative care, euthanasia, funeral costs, bereavement support, marginalised deaths and disposal practices. At the heart of the book, the volume recognises that the issues identified are likely to intensify and expand over the next twenty years, as death rates continue to rise.

This enthralling book explores the experience of dying, death, grieving, and mourning in the years between 1830-1920. Drawing upon the abundance of Victorian letters, diaries, and death memorials, Pat Jalland explores the many aspects of death in the Victorian family including issues around children's deaths, funerals and cremations, widowhood, mourning rituals, and the roles of medicine and religion within society. This reveals a most fascinating and enlightening preoccupation with death, indicating that the Victorians have much to teach contemporary society in their practical and compassionate treatment of bereavement.

Based on a content analysis of writing assignments from a class on death and dying, this book focuses on the manner in which college students use religion to make sense of death and the dying process. Drawing on research spanning five years, the author considers the attitudes, concerns, and beliefs about death, exploring students' perspectives on the place of religion in end-of-life issues. With attention to questions related to death anxiety, suicide, mass homicide, and the death of young children, the author examines the ways in which students draw on religion to make sense of death, religion's function as both a source of comfort and empowerment and a source of distress, as well as the perceptions of those who resist religion. As such, Religion, Life, and Death will appeal to social scientists with interests in the sociology of young adults, and the sociology and psychology of religion, death, and dying.

In past centuries, human responses to death were largely shaped by religious beliefs. Ralph Houlbrooke shows how the religious upheavals of the early modern period brought dramatic changes to this response, affecting the last rites, funerals, and ways of remembering the dead. He examines the interaction between religious innovation and the continuing need for reassurance and consolation on the part of the dying and the bereaved.

- This book integrates compassionate-based approaches with current theories and practices in loss, grief, and bereavement to provide readers with new insights and understanding on supporting patients, families, and healthcare workers facing the many challenges associated with loss and grief. - This book provides a holistic overview on the theoretical foundations of compassion, with in-depth discussions on the essential components of compassion training, as well as practical examples on how compassionate-based approaches can be applied in situations of loss, grief, and bereavement. - This book consolidates and presents the most innovative and cutting-edge research, interventions, and techniques on compassionate-based approaches from international leaders in the field to offer diverse perspectives on the applications of compassion based approaches to a variety of settings relevant to loss and grief. -This book draws upon current practices in compassion that are readily applicable to both clinicians and their clients alike, helping to develop greater capacity and insight into the loss and grief that we experience in our lives.

In Sociology of Death and the American Indian, Gerry R. Cox examines dying, death, disposal, and bereavement as well describes these practices in various American Indian tribes both historically and currently, supplemented with oral histories from select tribes. The book focuses on what can be learned from the practices of traditional cultures, showing that understanding the ways of other cultures can enhance the understanding of one's own culture by comparing traditional and modern societies. Cox addresses that the centuries of injustices committed against American Indians have led to a neglect of learning about American Indian cultures and ways and attempts to fill the gaps in knowledge of American Indian dying, death, disposal, and bereavement practices.

"Ball's arguments are concise, compelling, and backed with considerable case law. This volume is highly recommended for upper-level undergraduates and above in law, philosophy, and the medical humanities interested in the 'right to die' debates. Summing up: Highly recommended." -Choice Over the past hundred years, average life expectancy in America has nearly doubled, due largely to scientific and medical advances, but also as a consequence of safer working conditions, a heightened awareness of the importance of diet and health, and other factors. Yet while longevity is celebrated as an achievement in modern civilization, the longer people live, the more likely they are to succumb to chronic, terminal illnesses. In 1900, the average life expectancy was 47 years, with a majority of American deaths attributed to influenza, tuberculosis, pneumonia, or other diseases. In 2000, the average life expectancy was nearly 80 years, and for too many people, these long lifespans included cancer, heart failure, Lou Gehrig's disease, AIDS, or other fatal illnesses, and with them, came debilitating pain and the loss of a once-full and often independent lifestyle. In this compelling and provocative book, noted legal scholar Howard Ball poses the pressing question: is it appropriate, legally and ethically, for a competent individual to have the liberty to decide how and when to die when faced with a terminal illness? At Liberty to Die charts how, the right of a competent, terminally ill person to die on his or her own terms with the help of a doctor has come deeply embroiled in debates about the relationship between religion, civil liberties, politics, and law in American life. Exploring both the legal rulings and the media frenzies that accompanied the Terry Schiavo case and others like it, Howard Ball contends that despite raging battles in all the states where right to die legislation has been proposed, the opposition to the right to die is intractable in its stance. Combining constitutional analysis, legal history, and current events, Ball surveys the constitutional arguments that have driven the right to die debate.

Death, like most experiences that we think of as 'natural', is a product of the human imagination: all animals die, but only human beings suffer Death; and what they suffer is shaped by their own time and culture. Tragedy was one of the principal instruments through which the culture of early modern England imagined the encounter with mortality. The essays in this book approach the theatrical reinvention of Death from three perspectives. Those in Part 1 explore Death as a trope of apocalypse - a moment of un-veiling or dis-covery that is figured both in the fearful nakedness of the Danse Macabre and in the shameful 'openings' enacted in the new theatres of anatomy. Separate chapters explore the apocalyptic design of two of the period's most powerful tragedies - Shakespeare's Othello, and Middleton and Rowley's The Changeling. In Part 2, Neill explores the psychological and affective consequences of tragedy's fiercely end-driven narrative in a number of plays where a longing for narrative closure is pitched against a particularly intense dread of ending. The imposition of an end is often figured as an act of writerly violence, committed by the author or his dramatic surrogate. Extensive attention is paid to Hamlet as an extreme example of the structural consequences of such anxiety. The function of revenge tragedy as a response to the radical displacement of the dead by the Protestant abolition of purgatory - one of the most painful aspects of the early modern re-imagining of death - is also illustrated with particular clarity. Finally, Part 3 focuses on the way tragedy articulates its challenge to the undifferentiating power of death through conventions and motifs borrowed from the funereal arts. It offers detailed analyses of three plays - Shakespeare's Anthony and Cleopatra, Webster's The Duchess of Malfi, and Ford's The Broken Heart. Here, funeral is rewritten as triumph, and death becomes the chosen instrument of an heroic self-fashioning designed to dress the arbitrary abruption of mortal ending in a powerful aesthetic of closure.

Loving and grieving are two sides of the same coin: we cannot have one without risking the other. Only by understanding the nature and pattern of loving can we begin to understand the problems of grieving. Conversely, the loss of a loved person can teach us much about the nature of love.

Love and Loss, the result of a lifetime's work, has important implications for the study of attachment and bereavement. In this volume, Colin Murray Parkes reports his innovative research that enables us to bring together knowledge of childhood attachments and problems of bereavement, resulting in a new way of thinking about love, bereavement and other losses. Areas covered include:

• patterns of attachment and grief
• loss of a parent, child or spouse in adult life
• social isolation and support.

The book concludes by looking at disorders of attachment and considering bereavement in terms of its implications on love, loss, and change in a wider context.

Illuminating the structure and focus of thinking about love and loss, this book sheds light on a wide range of psychological issues. It will be essential reading for professionals working with bereavement, as well as graduate students of psychology, psychiatry, and sociology.

This book looks to existential thinkers for reasons to hope immortal life could be worth living. It injects new arguments and insights into the debate about the desirability of immortality, and tackles related issues such as boredom, personal identity, technological progress, and the meaning of life.

Within popular culture, death is not the end, but instead a space where the dead can exert agency whilst entertaining the consumer. Popular culture enables the dead to be consumed by the living on a mass global scale, actively engaging them with issues of mortality. This book develops the sociological intersectionality between death, the dead and popular culture by examining the agency of the dead. Drawing upon the posthumous careers of the celebrity dead and organ transplantation mythology in popular culture the dead are shown to not be hampered by death but to benefit from the symbolic and economic value they can generate. Meanwhile the fictional dead - the Undead and the dead in crime drama - are conceptualised through morbid sensibility and morbid space to mobilise consumer consideration of mortality and even challenge the public wisdom that contemporary Western society is in death denial and that death is taboo. Death and the dead, within the parameters of popular culture, form a palatable and normative bridge between viewers and mortality, iterating the innate value and hidden depths of popular culture in the study of contemporary society. This book will be of interest to anybody who researches death, popular culture and questions of mortality.

Mortality remains a taboo topic in much of Western society, but death and violence continue to be staples of popular television. We can better understand the appeal of violence by investigating psychological theories surrounding anxiety about death and the defenses we use to manage that anxiety. This book examines five recent television series--Game of Thrones,The Punisher, Jessica Jones, Sons of Anarchy and Hannibal--and shows how fictional characters' motivations teach viewers about both the constructive and destructive ways we try to deal with our own mortality. Instead of dismissing violent television as harmless entertainment or completely condemning it as a dangerous trigger of hostile behavior, this book shows its effects on viewers in a more nuanced manner. It provides a new perspective on the enjoyment of violent television, enhancing fans' appreciation and sparking ongoing discussions about their value to both the individual and society.

In the 1890s, Amos Lunt served as the San Quentin hangman, tying the nooses that brought the most dangerous criminals in the Wild West to their deaths. A former police chief who became the hangman of San Quentin due to an unfortunate turn of events, Lunt stood on the gallows alongside bank robbers, desperadoes and assassins throughout a five-year career. This book follows Lunt's trail from the Santa Cruz police department to the San Quentin State Prison. Covering his interesting friendship with a series of death row inmates to the gradual deterioration of his sanity, it is a one-of-a-kind biography that profiles an American executioner. Also profiled are his subjects-twenty of the West's most heinous criminals-as well as Lunt's preparations for their hangings and their final moments on the gallows.

The Funerary International series comprises essential reference texts for policy-makers, practitioners and academics with an interest in funerary practices globally. Each book has a country or region specific focus, addressing a standard framework of questions to aid comparison. This book sets English and Welsh funerary practice in its wider legal, national and local governance framework, including the continuing role of the Church of England. It provides the historical context for current practice, provides data on new trends in burial and cremation and examines recent developments including direct cremation and alkaline hydrolysis. It provides detail of current practice and includes a detailed description of a typical funeral, including commemorative practice, and discussion of funeral costs. Chapters address the legalities and technicalities of burial and cremation, explaining the concept of burial rights and the technicalities of grave construction, and outlining cremation certification requirements and the process of cremation. This book is a valuable desk-top resource to give a broader frame of reference for policy makers, and to provide explanation of key concepts for practitioners who may be new to this area of work. The text will be of particular value to academics that may be unfamiliar with the legal, technical and professional aspects of the funerary industry. The text is fully referenced, with an additional bibliography of further reading, and includes illustrations, charts, tables, diagrams and boxed text including key information.

New Developments in the Bioarchaeology of Care evaluates, refines and expands existing concepts and practices in the developing field of bioarchaeological research into health-related care provision in the past. Evidence in human remains that indicates an individual survived with, or following, a serious pathology suggests this person most likely received some form of care from others. This observation was first made half a century ago, but it is only in the last five years that health-related caregiving has been accepted as a topic for bioarchaeology research. In this time, interest has grown exponentially. A focus on care provides a dynamic framework for examining the experiences of disease and disability in the past - at the level of the individual receiving care, and that of the community providing it. When caregiving can be identified in the archaeological record, bioarchaeologists may be able to offer unique insights into aspects of past lifeways. This volume represents the work of an international, diverse, cross-disciplinary group of contributors, each bringing their own particular focus, style and expertise to analyzing past health-related care. Nineteen chapters offer content that ranges from an introduction to the basic 'bioarchaeology of care' approach, through original case studies of care provision, to new theoretical perspectives in this emerging area of scholarship. This book creates a synergy that challenges our thinking about past health-related care behaviors and about the implications of these behaviors for understanding the social environment in which they took place.

This book offers the first systematic study of death in the later novels of Don DeLillo. It focuses on Underworld to The Silence, along with his 1984 novel White Noise, in which the fear of death dominates the protagonists most hauntingly. The study covers eight novels, which mark the development of one of the most philosophical and prestigious novelists writing in English. Death, in its close relation to time, temporality and transience, has been an ongoing subject or motif in Don DeLillo's oeuvre. His later work is shot through with the cultural and sociopsychological symptoms and responses death elicits. His "reflection on dying" revolves around defensive mechanisms and destruction fantasies, immortalism and cryonics, covert and overt surrogates, consumerism and media, and the mortification of the body. His characters give themselves to mourning and are afflicted with psychosis, depression and the looming of emptiness. Yet writing about death also means facing the ambiguity and failing representability of "death." The book considers DeLillo's use of language in which temporality and something like "death" may become manifest. It deals with the transfiguration of time and death into art, with apocalypse as a central and recurring subject, and, as a kind of antithesis, epiphany. The study eventually proposes some reflections on the meaning of death in an age fully contingent on media and technology and dominated by financial capitalism and consumerism. Despite all the distractions, death remains a sinister presence, which has beset the minds not only of DeLillo's protagonists.

Die fachliche und kulturelle Vielfalt der Praxis der Sozialen Arbeit und der Sozialpadagogik in Polen, Rumanien und Deutschland wird in diesem Tagungsband deutlich. Grundlagenthemen der Sozialen Arbeit, spezifische Ausbildungsaspekte, Aufsatze zum Themenfeld Gesundheit und Aufsatze zu spezifischen Praxisansatzen in der Sozialen Arbeit sind in diesem Band enthalten.