Contents
Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, the creator of the concept of psychological assistance to dying patients, teaches the value of life. Her approach to caring for dying patients, revolutionary for the late 60s of the last century, has not lost its relevance today. Contrary to the established practice of isolating hopeless patients, Kubler-Ross begins to communicate with them, listens to their confessions. “Death is the key to life,” she said.
1945, the war has just ended. The Allies rescue the prisoners of the concentration camps, those who are lucky enough to be alive. A young medical student at the University of Zurich, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, is traveling to the occupied territories as part of the International Volunteer Service for Peace. A girl from prosperous Switzerland ends up in the Majdanek death camp in Poland. Kübler-Ross is impressed by the children’s drawings of butterflies on the walls of the camp, where the prisoners spent their last hours of life. From that moment on, the future doctor became interested not only in medicine as a way to save lives, but also in the possibility of psychological assistance to terminally ill patients, studying the phenomenon of death.
The reason for any aggression, she considered “weakening of the ability to face death with humility and dignity.” In her books, Kubler-Ross urged “to try to imagine your own death.” “By openly meeting the inevitability of our own death, resigning ourselves to it, we will finally be able to achieve peace – and peace of mind, and peace between peoples,” she wrote in the book “On Death and Dying” (Sofia, 2001).
Her dates
- July 8, 1926: Born in Zurich, Switzerland.
- 1945: As a representative of the International Volunteer Service for Peace, she traveled to the Majdanek concentration camp in Poland.
- 1957: Graduated from the Medical Faculty of the University of Zurich.
- 1958: Moved to the US, began working at Manhattan State Hospital.
- 1967: Kübler-Ross becomes assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of Chicago School of Medicine. Develops a series of seminars based on conversations with the dying.
- 1969: Kübler-Ross’s first book, On Death and Dying, becomes a bestseller. Subsequently, more than two dozen books and publications by Kübler-Ross will be released, including On Grief and Grief, Children and Death, and AIDS: The Last Challenge.
- 1977: Established the House of Peace (Shanti Nilaya) medical center for the dying and their families near San Diego, California.
- 1995: After a series of strokes, she retired and settled on her farm in Scottsdale, Arizona.
- August 24, 2004: She died, as she wanted, in her home, surrounded by family and friends.
Read more:
- When they leave…
Keys to Understanding
“You should only do what really hurts you”
Elisabeth Kübler-Ross knew from her experience of dealing with the dying that how a person meets death depends largely on the quality of his life. “It’s better to make a lot of mistakes than not live at all,” she said in an interview. The most unfortunate of the dying, she said, were people who did not listen to their dreams. She tried to live by her dreams. One of Kübler-Ross’ biggest ambitions was to build a hospice for children with HIV. In the mid-80s, she tries to create such a center in the United States on her own farm in Virginia, but the locals are categorically against it. Members of the local community call her “Madame AIDS” behind her back. The building of the center and all property was destroyed by fire in 1994. Kübler-Ross was sure that attitudes towards death and the terminally ill would begin to change over time: “Even if I don’t live to see it, at least I planted the seeds.”
Read more:
- Why talk about death
“Madam AIDS”
With the work of Dr. Kübler-Ross, a mass movement for the establishment of hospices began in the USA. Unlike her colleagues, she sat at the bedside of dying patients for a long time, listening to their confessions. These revelations first became the basis for a course of lectures, then for books and seminars. Kubler-Ross believed that the patient has every right to know his diagnosis and make decisions about his fate. However, “the ability to communicate painful news to a patient is a great art.” The psychotherapist insisted that medical students should be taught not only knowledge of scientific technologies, but also the art of human relationships, caring for a person in general and for a patient in particular. And Kübler-Ross succeeded in doing this – her books became textbooks for all professionals working with dying patients. Her five stages that a person goes through after learning about a terminal diagnosis (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance) are applied in the psychology of grief.