ABSTRACT

This chapter analyses the voluminous literature, in an attempt to winnow out of the profusion of reports those “facts” about death anxiety that have been fairly well established. From its inception, thanatology has been a multidisciplinary field, including contributions by philosophers, sociologists, physicians, nurses, psychologists, anthropologists, lawyers, educators, theologians, and even political scientists and art historians. In contrast to this trend, research on death anxiety has been conducted mainly by psychologists, with occasional contributions from other social scientists and medical professionals. As death anxiety research moved into the 1980s, there was a plateauing of interest followed by another surge of growth and eventual decline. As persuasive as these arguments may be, a distinction between fear and anxiety is not compelling on conceptual or practical grounds. Theoretically, the distinction has always received its strongest support from the psychoanalytic camp, who link the experience of anxiety with the expression of unconscious conflicts.