ABSTRACT
The main purpose of this chapter is to examine the relationships between the meaning of life and death, on the one hand, and death attitudes as expressed in emotional reactions toward death, on the other hand. Following a short examination of the concept of meaning, the chapter introduces the concept of death attitudes. The next two sections are devoted to an empirically driven discussion of the relationships between different types of death attitudes and between death attitudes and the personal meaning of death. The theories dealing with death attitudes are here somewhat arbitrarily divided into theories of fear (or death rejection) and theories of death acceptance and are examined in the next sections, with special attention to the concept of meaning. The way meaning is being used in coping with the “death of other” is also briefly examined, as is the use of meanings in dealing with death in terminally ill patients. The chapter ends with a discussion of “unified theories” that attempt to account for several types of death attitudes, in an effort to explain, in particular, in the confines of one theoretical framework both fear and acceptance of death.
