The Dying Process

Taking as its focus a highly emotive area of study, The Dying Process draws on the experiences of daycare and hospice patients to provide a forceful new analysis of the period of decline prior to death. Placing the bodily realities of dying very firmly centre stage and questioning the ideology central to the modern hospice movement of enabling patients to 'live until they die', Julia Lawton shows how our concept of a 'good death' is open to interpretation. Her study examines the non-negotiable effects of a patient's bodily deterioration on their sense of self and, in so doing, offers a powerful new perspective in embodiment and emotion in death and dying. A detailed and subtle ethnographic study, The Dying Process engages with a range of deeply complex and ethically contentious issues surrounding the care of dying patients in hospices and elsewhere.

Lawton, Julia

Preface and acknowledgements, 1. Introduction, 2. Day care: a safe retreat, Preface to Chapters 3 and 4 - changing contexts: entering the hospice, 3. 'Body-subject' to 'body-object': hospice care and the dying patient, 4. Inpatient hospice care: the sequestration of the unbounded body and 'dirty dying', 5. Invisible suffering: the social death, 6. Final reflections, Appendix A, Appendix B, Notes, Bibliography, Name index, Subject index