Death and Spirituality

Kenneth Doka, John Morgan, Kenneth J. Doka, John D. Morgan

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Topic: Psychology
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351868334
• Subtopic: Mental Health in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

An elderly Chinese immigrant, hospitalized with terminal disease, requests to burn incense. A 30-year-old Roman Catholic gay male, dying of AIDS, is consumed by deepening moral guilt, troubled by beliefs he thought he abandoned years ago. A mother whose teenage son died of an aneurism is angry at God over his death yet fearful of expressing that anger lest He 'punish her again.' A young widower seemingly has difficulty expressing grief believing it to be a sign of weak faith. All of these examples illustrate the kinds of issues that clinicians and counselors constantly encounter. For although North American society has long been characterized as secular, this does not deny the potency of spiritual concerns and religious values on the individual level. Polls affirm that vast majorities of North Americans both believe in God and consider religion important in their lives. This is clearly evident when one faces the crisis of dying or bereavement. For, one of the strengths of belief is that it provides support and succor at a time when secular explanations are largely silent. For these reasons, educators and clinicians have long recognized the significance that religious and spiritual themes have in counseling with the dying and bereaved. Yet, in cultures as religiously diverse as the U.S. and Canada, caregivers and educators may feel inadequate to the task. Death and Spirituality addresses this need. Specifically it seeks to reach two, perhaps overlapping, audiences. First, it considers the needs death-related counselors and educators, seeking to provide them with both a sense of the norm of religious tradition and the religious and spiritual issues that might arise in illness and bereavement, as well as suitable interventions, approaches, and resources that might be useful in assisting clients in examining and resolving such issues. The book also speaks to the complementary needs of clergy who also may wish to assist parishioners and others as they face the spiritual and psychological crisis of dying and grief.

PART I

Introduction

• An elderly Chinese immigrant, hospitalized with terminal disease, requests to burn incense.

• A 30-year-old Roman Catholic gay male, dying of AIDS, is consumed by deepening moral guilt, troubled by beliefs he thought he abandoned years ago.

• A mother whose teenage son died of an aneurism is angry at God over his death yet fearful of expressing that anger lest He ‘punish her again.’

• A young widower seemingly has difficulty expressing grief believing it to be a sign of a weak faith.

All of these examples illustrate the kinds of issues that clinicians and counselors constantly encounter. For although North American society has long been characterized as secular, this does not deny the potency of spiritual concerns and religious values on the individual level. Polls affirm that vast majorities of North Americans both believe in God and consider religion important in their lives. This is clearly evident when one faces the crises of dying or bereavement. For, one of the strengths of belief is that it provides support and succor at a time when secular explanations are largely silent.

For these reasons, educators and clinicians have long recognized the significance that religious and spiritual themes have in counseling with the dying and bereaved. Yet, in cultures as religiously diverse as the U.S. and Canada, caregivers and educators may feel inadequate to the task.

This book addresses this need. Specifically it seeks to reach two, perhaps overlapping, audiences. First, it considers the needs of death-related counselors and educators, seeking to provide them with both a sense of the norm of religious tradition and the religious and spiritual issues that might arise in illness and bereavement, as well as suitable interventions, approaches and resources that might be useful in assisting clients in examining and resolving such issues. The book also speaks to the complementary needs of clergy who also may wish to assist parishioners and others as they face the spiritual and psychological crisis of dying and grief.

The book begins with two opening chapters. In the first, John Morgan explores the basis of spirituality. In an earlier essay, Morgan identified spirituality with specialness [1]. To Morgan, the term “spirit” refers to non-material aspects of a person, that which makes the person unique and special. Human thinking, willing and deciding which are distinct from bodily function and sensation are the heart of spirituality to Morgan. In Chapter 1, Morgan expands upon that perspective. As beings that think, feel, and decide, we are engaged in a perpetual quest for meaning, an attempt to make sense out of life. Knowledge, ethics, creativity, and religion all emerge from that struggle for meaning. This quest for meaning engages one in a paradoxical encounter with death. As creatures capable of symbolic thought, we are able to transcend the immediacy of the present. Yet that transcendental ability also compels us to affirm mortality. To paraphrase Becker, we recognize that we have the minds of angels but the finite bodies of worms [2]. To Morgan then, this attempt to understand and give meaning to death underlies that death is much more than a medical, psychological and social event. It is a spiritual crisis as well and spiritual needs too, must be addressed.

This perspective underlies the second Chapter “Assumptions and Principles of Spiritual Care.” These principles, developed by the International Work Group (IWG) on Death and Dying and Bereavement note that while death is a spiritual event, often the spiritual needs of patients and clients are neglected. Beginning then with a recognition of that spiritual side, the IWG offers sets of principles that assist caregivers in addressing spiritual needs of patients and clients.

The IWG makes explicit a distinction implicit in Morgan’s work and generally followed throughout in this book. “Spirituality” is broadly defined as referring to the non-material aspects of human life. Thus, ethics, art, music, culture, literature and religion, transcend their material aspects and are manifestations of spirituality. “Religion” is more narrowly defined as a given system of beliefs. An underlying assumption is that while individuals may or may not profess a religion, all have spiritual needs and concerns that must be considered.

REFERENCES

1. J. Morgan, Death and Bereavement: Spiritual, Ethical and Pastoral Issues, Death Studies, 12, pp. 85–90, 199.

2. E. Becker, The Denial of Death, Free Press, New York, 1973.

CHAPTER 1
The Existential Quest for Meaning

John D. Morgan

THE UNIQUENESS OF THE PERSON

When Cecily Saunders began St. Christopher’s Hospice in London, she stated as one of the aims that there be relief of “total pain,” including the physical, emotional, psychological, social, economic and spiritual [1]. Since St. Christopher’s has an openly Christian orientation, there did not seem to be much question about the spiritual side of human experience. Since early hospices in North America were secular institutions, the stress was on the relief of physical and emotional pain and symptoms. There has been a great deal of literature in recent years dealing with the meaning of spiritual and its place in discussions of care for the dying and the bereaved.

In 1971, the White House Council on Aging defined spiritual concerns as “the human need to deal with sociocultural deprivations, anxieties, and fears, death and dying, personality integration, self-image, personal dignity, social alienation, and philosophy of life” [2]. This is such a broad use of the term “spiritual” that it does not help in the discussion of spiritual needs. It is important that the idea of the spiritual not be reducible to “none of the above.” I believe that there is a specific content to the word which is important for us to understand. In this chapter, I will explore the basis of human spirituality by looking at the uniqueness of the person and the effect that the knowledge of death has on the person.

The term spiritual is identified with religion, but it is not a term that has its roots in religion. The Hebrew bible does not use the term extensively. The word spirit comes from the Greek word pneuma which means breath. As thought emerged, our ancestors identified the word spirit with living things; that is, those who had breath. It was not until Plato that spiritual became identified with the immaterial [3–4].

THE UNIQUENESS OF THE INDIVIDUAL

When the World’s Fair was held in New York City in 1960, the Vatican gave the commissioners permission to bring the Pieta, Michelangelo’s statue, over to New York. People were worried with good reason. Boats do sink; not very often, but they do. If such an accident had happened the Pieta would have been lost. We are quite concerned over the loss of something precious, and something is precious precisely because it is rare.

The Pieta is a wonderful creation, but it is not by far the most precious thing in existence. The Pieta and similar artifacts are literally set in stone. They do not have the ability to be self-creations. Persons however are self-creations. Each one of us is a one-in-a-lifetime-in-the-universe event. Although our bodies and our instincts are structured by nature, and we are influenced by our parental guidance and our culture, we decide what person we shall be. We are unique.

One of the main differences between twentieth century thinking and that of previous generations is this emphasis on the uniqueness of the person [5, p. 192]. While the distinction between an individual (one of several similar things) and person (unique rational being) is at least as old as Boethius [6], the emphasis in prior cultures has been on human nature; that is, the similarities among individuals. It is only in the twentieth century that we have become really conscious of ourselves as unique beings. In our culture we think of ourselves as a unique being [7, p. 10].

Language is fundamentally objective. The structure of our language is to distinguish between subject and object. As a result we grow up thinking of ourselves in an objective manner. We go through an evolution of answers to the question ‘Who am I?” We start with “Daddy’s little boy,” and “Mommy’s little girl.” Then we become “so and so’s friend.” Then we think of ourselves as a “student at such and such a school,” or in “such and such a class.” Then we identify ourselves with a few good friends, girlfriends or boyfriends. In each case, we define ourselves in terms of something or someone else. We treat ourselves as objects.

None of us are really happy with being considered merely as objects. What existentialist philosophers such as Ortega y Gasset [8] or Jean-Paul Sartre [9] would have us believe is that our loneliness is a sign of our radical subjectivity [9, p. 37]. An object gets its meaning from something other than itself. We are the kind of being that has meaning in itself rather than takes its meaning from someone else. Subjectivity is the awareness that I am more than the sum total of the categories by which I define myself [9, p. 32]. I am me. That is the most important thing that I can say about myself.

One consequence of this uniqueness is the inability to be truly known by another persons. In moments of depression or sadness we may feel sorry for ourselves. We say to ourselves and to anyone who will listen, that “nobody really understands me.” The philosopher Jose Ortega y Gasset wou...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Part I: Introduction
• Part II: Perspectives on Death
• Part III: Spiritual Concerns in Counseling the Dying
• Part IV: Spiritual Issues in Bereavement
• Part V: Death and the Human Spirit
• Part VI: Resources
• Conclusion
• Contributors
• Index