ABSTRACT
The custom of viewing the body has been criticized as a primitive practice that has no place in the high-tech, highly-evolved intellectual world of today. However, it is just because viewing the body meets basic human needs that it’s value transcends time and the dominance of logic over body and emotion. Physician and educator, Maria Montessori, explained her underlying philosophy of what has become known as the “Montessori method.” It emphasizes that the more senses used in any learning situation, the deeper the integration of that learning. The bereaved have to “re-learn” the world as a place where the dead loved one is no longer physically among us. An obstacle on the path of adapting to this changed world is the desire for the fact of the death to be untrue. Viewing the body helps to use the senses in integrating on many levels the fact of death. Logic may try to overrule or underrate the use of the senses in accepting the death, but the logical level is just one connection that needs to be made in addition to the memory, emotional, social, and physical nexuses to the change. “Clearly the body of the deceased is the best symbol of the individual and, therefore, the most effective one to focus upon in attempting to perceive the deceased in a new relationship, as someone who is no longer alive and will only exist in memory [6, pp. 180-1811.
