Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (July 8, 1926 – August 24, 2004) was a Swiss-American psychiatrist, a pioneer in near-death studies, and author of the internationally best-selling book, On Death and Dying (1969), where she first discussed her theory of the five stages of grief, also known as the "Kübler-Ross model".[1]

Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
Born(1926-07-08)July 8, 1926
Zürich, Switzerland
DiedAugust 24, 2004(2004-08-24) (aged 78)
Scottsdale, Arizona, United States
CitizenshipUSA, Swiss
Alma materUniversity of Zürich
Known forKübler-Ross model
Spouse(s)Emanuel Ross (1958–1979)
ChildrenKen Ross
Barbara Ross
AwardsNational Women's Hall of Fame, TIME Magazine "Top Thinkers of the 20th Century", Woman of the Year 1977, New York Library: Book of the Century
Scientific career
FieldsPsychiatry, hospice, palliative care
InstitutionsUniversity of Chicago
InfluencesKarl Jung, Viktor Frankl, Mahatma Gandhi
InfluencedCaroline Myss, Vern Barnet, Bruce Greyson, Sogyal Rinpoche, Neale Donald Walsch

Kübler-Ross was a 2007 inductee into the National Women's Hall of Fame,[2] she was named by Time (magazine) as one of the "100 Most Important Thinkers" of the 20th Century[3] and she was the recipient of nineteen honorary degrees. By July 1982, Kübler-Ross taught 125,000 students in death and dying courses in colleges, seminaries, medical schools, hospitals, and social-work institutions.[4] In 1970, she delivered an Ingersoll Lecture at Harvard University on the theme On Death and Dying.

Birth and education

Elisabeth Kübler was born on July 8, 1926, in Zürich, Switzerland, into a Protestant Christian Family. She was one of a set of triplets, two of which were identical.[5] Her survival was jeopardized due to complications after birth.[6] Her father wanted her to run his small business. She went to the University of Zurich to study medicine and graduated in 1957.

During World War II she worked with refugees, in Zürich, and following the war, did relief work in: France, Germany, Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, Czechoslovakia, and Poland. She would later visit Maidanek death camp which sparked her interest in the power of compassion and resilience of the human spirit. The horror stories of the survivors left permanent impressions on Elisabeth.[7]

She was profoundly affected by a visit to the Maidanek extermination camp in Poland and the images of hundreds of butterflies carved into some of the walls there. To Kübler-Ross, the butterflies—these final works of art by those facing death—stayed with her for years and influenced her thinking about the end of life.[8]

Personal life

In 1958, she married a fellow medical student from America, Emanuel ("Manny") Ross, and moved to the United States. Becoming pregnant disqualified her from a residency in pediatrics, so she took one in psychiatry. After suffering several miscarriages, she had a son, Kenneth, and a daughter, Barbara, in the early 1960s.[9] Her husband requested a divorce in 1979.

Academic career

Kübler-Ross moved to New York in 1958 to work and continued her studies.

She began her psychiatric residency in the Manhattan State Hospital in the early 1960s, she began her career working to create treatment for those who were schizophrenic along with those faced with the title "hopeless patient". These treatment programs would work to restore the patient's sense of dignity and self-respect. Elisabeth also intended to reduce the medications that kept these patients overly sedated, and found ways to help them relate to the outside world[7] During her time at the hospital, she realized how appalling the treatments of the imminently dying patients were. This realization made her strive to make a difference in the lives of these individuals.

In 1962, she accepted a position at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. There, Elisabeth was a junior faculty member and gave her first interview of a young terminally ill woman in front of a roomful of medical students. Her intentions were not to be an example of pathology, but Kübler-Ross wanted to depict a human being who desired to be understood as she was coping with her illness and how it has impacted her life. [7] She states to her students,

"Now you are reacting like human beings instead of scientists. Maybe now you'll not only know how a dying patient feels but you will also be able to treat them with compassion the same compassion that you would want for yourself"[7]

Kübler-Ross completed her training in psychiatry in 1963, and then moved to Chicago in 1965. She sometimes questioned the practices of traditional psychiatry that she observed. She also undertook 39 months of classical psychoanalysis training in Chicago. She became an instructor at the University of Chicago's Pritzker School of Medicine where she began to conduct a regular weekly educational seminar that consisted of live interviews with terminally ill patients. She had her students participate in these despite a large amount of resistance from the medical staff.[7].

A Life magazine ran an article on Kübler-Ross in November 1969, bringing public awareness to her work outside of the medical community. The response was enormous and influenced Kübler-Ross’s decision to focus on her career on working with the terminally ill and their families. The intense scrutiny her work received also had an impact on her career path. Kübler-Ross stopped teaching at the university to work privately on what she called the “greatest mystery in science”—death.[10]

Healing Center

Kübler-Ross was one of the central figures in the hospice care movement, believing that euthanasia prevents people from completing their 'unfinished business'.

In 1977 she persuaded her husband to buy forty acres of land in Escondido, California, near San Diego, where she founded "Shanti Nilaya" (Home of Peace). She intended it as a healing center for the dying and their families. She was also a co-founder of the American Holistic Medical Association.

In the late 1970s, she became interested in out-of-body experiences, mediumship, spiritualism, and other ways of attempting to contact the dead. This led to a scandal connected to the Shanti Nilaya Healing Center, in which she was duped by Jay Barham, founder of the Church of the Facet of the Divinity. Claiming he could channel the spirits of the departed and summon ethereal "entities", he encouraged church members to engage in sexual relations with the "spirits". He may have hired several women to play the parts of female spirits for this purpose.[11] Kubler-Ross' friend Deanna Edwards attended a service to ascertain whether allegations against Barham were true. He was found to be naked and wearing only a turban when Edwards unexpectedly pulled masking tape off the light switch and flipped on the light.[12][13][14] Kübler-Ross announced the ending of her association with both Marty and Jay Barham in her “Shanti Nilaya Newsletter” (issue 7) on June 7, 1981.

Investigations on near death experiences

Kübler-Ross also dealt with the phenomenon of near-death experiences. Her reputation began to decline when she began researching the controversial subject of near-death experiences. Elisabeth was also an advocate for spiritual guides and afterlife,[7] serving on the Advisory Board of the International Association for Near-Death Studies (IANDS)[3] Elisabeth reported her interviews with the dying for the first time in her book, On Death and Dying: What the dying have to teach doctors, nurses, clergy, and their own families (1969)[15][16] Elisabeth went on to write more about near death experiences (NDEs) in her books, "On Life After Death" 1991, and "The Tunnel and The Light" 1999.

AIDS work

One of her greatest wishes was her plan to build a hospice for abandoned infants and children infected with HIV to give them a lasting home where they could live until their death. Elisabeth attempted to do this in 1985 in Virginia, but local residents feared the possibility of infection and blocked the necessary re-zoning. In 1994, she lost her house and possessions to an arson fire that is suspected to have been set by opponents of her AIDS work.[17]

She conducted many workshops on life, death, grief, and AIDS in different parts of the world. In 1990, she moved the Healing Center to her own farm in Head Waters, Virginia, to reduce her extensive traveling.

Death

Kübler-Ross suffered a series of strokes in 1995 which left her partially paralyzed on her left side, in the meantime "The Healing Waters Farm" and the Elisabeth Kübler-Ross Center closed. She found herself living in a wheelchair, slowly waiting for death to come, and wished to be able to determine her time of death.[18]. In 1997 Oprah flew to Arizona to interview her and discuss with Elisabeth if she herself was going through the Five Stages of Grief. Further, in a 2002 interview with The Arizona Republic, she stated that she was ready for death and even welcomed it, calling God a "damned procrastinator."[3] Elisabeth died in 2004 at a nursing home in Scottsdale, Arizona, in the presence of her son, daughter, and two family friends.[3] She was buried at the Paradise Memorial Gardens Cemetery in Scottsdale, Arizona. In 2005 her son, Ken Ross founded the Elisabeth Kübler-Ross Foundation in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Contributions

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross was the first individual to transfigure the way that the world looks at the terminally ill, she pioneered hospice-care and near-death research, and was the first to bring terminally ill individuals' lives to the public eye.[7] Elisabeth was the driving force behind the movement for doctors and nurses alike to “treat the dying with dignity”.[3] Her extensive work with the dying led to the internationally best-selling book On Death and Dying in 1969, she proposed the, now famous, Five Stages of Grief™ as a pattern of adjustment: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. In general, individuals experience most of these stages when faced with their imminent death. The Five Stages of Grief have since been adopted by bereavement as applying to the survivors of a loved one's death as well alike. After 2000 an increasing number of companies began using the Five Stages to explain reactions to change and loss. This is now known as the Kübler-Ross Change Curve™ and is used by a large variety of Fortune 500 Companies in the US and internationally. In 2018 Stanford University acquired the Kübler-Ross archives from her family and intends to build a digital library of her papers, interviews and other archival material. The American Journal of Bioethics devoted it's entire December 2019 issue to the 50th anniversary of, "On Death and Dying." The Elisabeth Kubler-Ross Foundation continues her work through a series of international chapters around the world.

Elisabeth wrote over 20 books on death and dying. [3] At the end of her life she was mentally active, co-authoring two books with David Kessler including "On Grief and Grieving".[3]

Selected bibliography
  • On Death & Dying, (Simon & Schuster/Touchstone), 1969
  • Questions & Answers on Death & Dying, (Simon & Schuster/Touchstone), 1972
  • Death: The Final Stage of Growth, (Simon & Schuster/Touchstone), 1974
  • Questions and Answers on Death and Dying: A Memoir of Living and Dying, Macmillan, 1976. ISBN 0-02-567120-0.
  • To Live Until We Say Goodbye, (Simon & Schuster/Touchstone), 1978
  • The Dougy Letter -A Letter to a Dying Child, (Celestial Arts/Ten Speed Press), 1979
  • Quest, Biography of EKR (Written with Derek Gill), (Harper & Row), 1980
  • Working It Through, (Simon & Schuster/Touchstone), 1981
  • Living with Death & Dying, (Simon & Schuster/Touchstone), 1981
  • Remember the Secret, (Celestial Arts/Ten Speed Press), 1981
  • On Children & Death, (Simon & Schuster), 1985
  • AIDS: The Ultimate Challenge, (Simon & Schuster), 1988
  • On Life After Death, (Celestial Arts), 1991
  • Death Is of Vital Importance, (Out of Print- Now The Tunnel and the Light), 1995
  • Unfolding the Wings of Love (Germany only - Silberschnur), 1996
  • Making the Most of the Inbetween, (Various Foreign), 1996
  • AIDS & Love, The Conference in Barcelona, (Spain), 1996
  • Longing to Go Back Home, (Germany only - Silberschnur), 1997
  • Working It Through: An Elisabeth Kübler-Ross Workshop on Life, Death, and Transition, Simon & Schuster, 1997. ISBN 0-684-83942-3.
  • The Wheel of Life: A Memoir of Living and Dying, (Simon & Schuster/Scribner), 1997
  • Why Are We Here, (Germany only - Silberschnur), 1999
  • The Tunnel and the Light, (Avalon), 1999
  • Life Lessons: Two Experts on Death and Dying Teach Us About the Mysteries of Life and Living, with David Kessler, Scribner, 2001. ISBN 0-684-87074-6.
  • On Grief and Grieving: Finding the Meaning of Grief Through the Five Stages of Loss, with David Kessler. Scribner, 2005. ISBN 0-7432-6628-5.
  • Real Taste of Life: A photographic Journal

References
  1. Broom, Sarah M. (Aug 30, 2004). "Milestones". TIME.
  2. "Elisabeth Kübler-Ross". Women of the Hall. National Women's Hall of Fame. Archived from the original on 1 March 2008.
  3. [(https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc799085/ "Obituaries: Elisabeth Kubler-Ross"] Check |url= value (help). Journal of Near Death Studies. 2004.
  4. "Turn on, tune in, drop dead" by Ron Rosenbaum, Harper's, July 1982, pages 32-42
  5. Gill, Derek (1980). Quest: The Life of Elisabeth Kubler-Ross. United States of America: Harper & Row. pp. 2–3. ISBN 0-06-011543-2.
  6. Newman, Laura. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross. (2004). British Medical Journal, 329 (7466), 627. Retrieved November 17, 2006.
  7. Blaylock, B (2005). "In memoriam: Elisabeth kubler-ross, 1926-2004". Families, Systems, & Health. 23: 108–109 – via EBSCO.
  8. https://www.biography.com/scientist/elisabeth-kubler-ross. Missing or empty |title= (help)
  9. Kübler-Ross, Elisabeth
  10. https://www.biography.com/scientist/elisabeth-kubler-ross. Missing or empty |title= (help)
  11. Sex, Visitors from the Grave, Psychic Healing: Kubler-Ross Is a Public Storm Center Again by Karen G. Jackovich. In People, October 29, 1979, page found 2011-03-05.
  12. Playboy Interview with Elizabeth Kubler-Ross's' Playboy Magazine, May, 1981
  13. TIME.com, The Conversion of Kubler-Ross, TIME, November 12, 1979
  14. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross in the Afterworld of Entities by Kate Coleman, New West, 30 July 1979
  15. Video: Elisabeth Kübler-Ross über Nahtoderfahrungen (1981) , abgerufen am 14. März 2014
  16. Bild der Wissenschaft: Sind Nahtod-Erfahrungen Bilder aus dem Jenseits? abgerufen am 16. März 2014.
  17. Kinofenster.de (in German)
  18. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, On life After Death, Foreword by Caroline Myss p.vii. Celestial Arts. ISBN 9781587613180

Further reading
  • Quest: The Life of Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, by Derek Gill. Ballantine Books (Mm), 1982. ISBN 0-345-30094-7.
  • The Life Work of Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross and Its Impact on the Death Awareness Movement, by Michèle Catherine Gantois Chaban. E. Mellen Press, 2000. ISBN 0-7734-8302-0.
  • Elisabeth Kubler-Ross: Encountering Death and Dying, by Richard Worth. Published by Facts On File, Inc., 2004. ISBN 0-7910-8027-7.
  • Tea With Elisabeth tributes to Hospice Pioneer Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, compiled by Fern Stewart Welch, Rose Winters and Ken Ross, Published by Quality of Life Publishing Co 2009 ISBN 978-0-9816219-9-9
  • Recollections of Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross at the University of Chicago (1965–70), by Mark Siegler, MD. Published by the American Journal of Bioethics, 2019
  • Experiências contemporâneas sobre a morte e o morrer: O legado de Elisabeth Kübler-Ross para os nossos dias (Portuguese language) by Rodrigo Luz and Daniela Freitas Bastos, 2019

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