ABSTRACT
The mutual-pretense awareness context is perhaps less visible, even to its participants, than the closed, open, and suspicion contexts, because the interaction involved tends to be more subtle. The particular awareness context cannot exist, of course, unless both the patient and staff are aware that he is dying. The situation that involves a terminal patient is much more like a masquerade party, where one masked actor plays carefully to another as long as they are together, and the total drama actually emerges from their joint creative effort. The terminal patient may also fix up his room so that it looks and feels "just like home", an activity that supports his enactment of normalcy. For the patient, the pretense context can yield a measure of dignity and considerable privacy, though it may deny him the closer relationships with staff members and family members that sometimes occur when he allows them to participate in his open acceptance of death.
