《(Psychology) Personality》.pdfVIP

Personality, Lifestyle, and Death Richard S. Perrotto In the history of mankind, it is difficult to find a topic more ancient than death and dying. This topic has persistently occupied the thoughts of philosophers, theologians, scientist, and most certainly the average human being. Scientific investigation of this topic did riot begin in earnest until the mid-1950s for reasons yet open to conjecture. Certainly, the Freudian notion that we cannot accept our own mortality since we cannot know death has provided a quick and convenient rationale for skirting the issue (Freud, 1915, 1917). The idea that we cannot know death is also found in the writings of the eminent suicidologist Edwin Shneidman who wrote that people can only know death as one experience the death of another, or as one anticipates it for himself (1973). The latter is what Sneidman calls knowledge through the Postself; the current anticipation of what the world will be like when the person is absent from it and how his fame, reputation, and impact. will be perceived. The Postself may be inscribed in: a. the memories of others; b- the stimulation of the works and deeds of others through ones own works; c. the bodies of others through organ transplantation; d. the genes of ones progeny and e. the cosmos as part of the universe. According to Shneidman, if one could experience death directly, one would not be dead! This attitude toward death has helped foster the reputation of our society as death-defying and death-denying. It can be clearly seen in Judeo-Christian beliefs that stress eternal life even if corporeal existence is ephemeral, and in the euphemistic verbalizations that refer to death as expiration, being deceased, passing away, and in the usual device of avoiding referen