Life's End

The explicit purpose of this book is to analyze dying and death in the cosmopolitan, modern setting. There is, however, an additional theme that is implicit in the analysis and observations. The portrait of dying, which is provided in the pages of the book, also tells us a great deal about life. It demonstrates that the foundation for the medicalization of death that piercingly shapes the life experience of dying persons and loved ones is a product of the ways of life in the broader culture.

David Wendell Moller

CHAPTER 1 Encountering M ortality: Prelim inary Reflections, CHAPTER 2 Contemplating Death: Human Voice, CHAPTER 3 The Problem of Meaning: Dying in an Age of Spiritual Longing, CHAPTER 4 Fear and Denial in the Modern Context, CHAPTER 5 Technological Medicine, Technocratic Physicians and Human Dying, Fellowship and Dying: The Problem of Detachment, CHAPTER 7 Impersonalism, Dying, and Social Organization of the Hospital, CHAPTER 8 The Stigma of Dying, CHAPTER 9 Approaching Omega: The Roller Coaster of Dying, CHAPTER 10 A Concluding Statement: Technicism, Social Isolation, Medicalization, and Remedicalization of Dying.