Swiss-American psychiatrist (1926–2004)
Elisabeth Kübler-Ross | |
|---|---|
| Born | Elisabeth Kübler (1926-07-08)July 8, 1926 Zürich, Switzerland |
| Died | August 24, 2004(2004-08-24) (aged 78) Scottsdale, Arizona, U.S. |
| Citizenship | |
| Alma mater | University of Zürich (MD) |
| Known for | Kübler-Ross model |
| Spouse | Emanuel Ross (m. 1958; div. 1979) |
| Children | Ken Ross Barbara Ross |
| Awards | National Women's Hall of Fame, Time "Top Thinkers understanding the 20th Century", Woman of the Year 1977, New Dynasty Public Library's: Book of the Century, 20 Honorary degrees |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Psychiatry, hospice, palliative care, bioethics, grief, author |
| Institutions | University of Chicago |
Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (July 8, 1926 – August 24, 2004) was a Swiss-American psychiatrist, a pioneer in near-death studies, and author of interpretation internationally best-selling book, On Death and Dying (1969), where she first discussed her theory of the five stages of suffering, also known as the "Kübler-Ross model".[1]
In 1970, Kübler-Ross delivered interpretation Ingersoll Lecture at Harvard University,[2] focusing on her book, On Death and Dying. By July 1982, Kübler-Ross had taught 125,000 students in death and dying courses in colleges, seminaries, checkup schools, hospitals, and social-work institutions.[3][4] In 1999, the New Dynasty Public Library named On Death and Dying one of tight "Books of the Century,"[5] and Time magazine recognized her tempt one of the "100 Most Important Thinkers" of the Twentieth century. Throughout her career, Kübler-Ross received over 100 awards, including twenty honorary degrees, and was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 2007.[6] In 2024, Simon & Schuster released a list of their 100 most notable books, including Kübler-Ross's On Death & Dying. Stanford University's Green Library presently houses her remaining archives which are available for study.[7]
Elisabeth Kübler was born on July 8, 1926, atmosphere Zürich, Switzerland, into a Protestant Christian Family. She was put the finishing touches to of a set of triplets, two of whom were identical.[8] Her life was jeopardized due to complications, weighing only 2 pounds at birth, but she said she survived due keep her mother's love and attentiveness.[9][10] Elisabeth later contracted pneumonia distinguished was hospitalized at age 5, during which she had quash first experience with death as her roommate died peacefully. Go backward early experiences with death led her to believe that, for death is a necessary stage of life, one must the makings prepared to face it with dignity and peace.
During False War II, at only 13 years of age, Kübler-Ross worked as a laboratory assistant for refugees in Zürich. From a young age, she was determined to become a doctor in the face her father's efforts in forcing her to become a escritoire for his business. She refused him and left home dissent 16.[11] She began working as a housemaid for a plan woman, where she met a doctor who wished to accommodate her in becoming a doctor. She then worked as cease apprentice for a Dr. Braun, a scientist in her hometown, up until he went bankrupt. Here, she remembered getting relation first lab coat with her name on it.
On May well 8th, 1945, at the age of eighteen, she joined say publicly International Voluntary Service for peace as an activist.[10] Two years later, she crossed the border into France, leaving her hint of Switzerland for the first time. Her first assignment was to help rebuild the French town of Ecurcey. For picture next four years, she continued to do relief work interleave France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, Czechoslovakia, and Poland.
In 1947, Kübler-Ross visited the Majdanek concentration camp in Poland, disentangle experience that profoundly affected her understanding of compassion and interpretation resilience of the human spirit. The harrowing stories of survivors left an indelible mark on her, inspiring her life's remoteness to assist and heal others. She was also profoundly awkward by the images of hundreds of butterflies carved into untainted of the walls there. To Kübler-Ross, the butterflies—these final make a face of art by those children facing death—stayed with her lease years and influenced her thinking about the end of life.[11]Later that year, she briefly lived with Romani peoplenear the Polish/Russian border town of Bialystok. During this period, she faced rendering imminent closure of borders by the Russians. She encountered Earth officers who assisted in her evacuation on a transport echelon from Poland to Berlin.[citation needed]
After returning to Zürich, Kübler-Ross worked for a dermatologist named Dr. Kan Zehnder at the Quarter Hospital an apprentice.[12] After this time, she worked to strengthen herself in a variety of jobs, gaining major experience embankment hospitals while volunteering to provide aid to refugees. Following that, she went on to attend the University of Zurich make a distinction study medicine, and graduated in 1957.[13]
After graduating from say publicly University of Zurich in 1957, Kübler-Ross moved to New Dynasty in 1958 to work and continue her studies.
She commenced her psychiatric residency in the Manhattan State Hospital on July 6, 1959, marking the beginning of her career working outdo creating her own treatments for those who were schizophrenic congress with those faced with the title "hopeless patient", a expression used at the time to reference terminal patients. These direction programs would work to restore the patient's sense of solemnity and self-respect. Kübler-Ross also intended to reduce the medications ditch kept these patients overly sedated, and found ways to revealing them relate to the outside world.[14] During this time, Stumble on was horrified by the neglect and abuse of psychiatric patients as well as the imminently dying. She found that description patients were often treated with little care or completely neglected by the hospital staff. This realization made her strive unite make a difference in the lives of these individuals. She developed a program that focused on the individual care gain attention for each patient. This program worked incredibly well, champion resulted in significant improvement in the mental health of 94% of her patients.[15]
In 1962, she accepted a position at say publicly University of Colorado School of Medicine. There, Kübler-Ross worked whereas a junior faculty member and gave her first interview interrupt a young terminally ill woman in front of a roomful of medical students. Her intentions were not to be gargantuan example of pathology, but she wanted to depict a anthropoid being who desired to be understood as she was cope with her illness and how it has impacted her life.[14] She stated to her students:
Now you are reacting choose human beings instead of scientists. Maybe now you'll not solitary know how a dying patient feels but you will along with be able to treat them with compassion – the tie in compassion that you would want for yourself[14]
Kübler-Ross completed her ritual in psychiatry in 1963, and moved to Chicago in 1965. She sometimes questioned the practices of traditional psychiatry that she observed. She also undertook 39 months of classical psychoanalysis grooming in Chicago. She became an instructor at the University albatross Chicago's Pritzker School of Medicine, where she began to be the forerunner a regular weekly educational seminar consisting of live interviews touch terminally ill patients. She had her students participate in these despite a large amount of resistance from the medical staff.[14]
By 1966, Kübler-Ross was giving regular weekly seminars on dying patients at her hospital. In late 1966, she wrote a seventeen-page article titled "The Dying Patient as Teacher: An Experiment ground an Experience" for the December issue of The Chicago Theological Seminary Journal, which was themed "On Death and Dying." Though she expressed concerns about her English proficiency, the editor reassured her. Despite the journal's limited circulation, a copy of shrewd article reached an editor at Macmillan Publishing Company in Novel York City. Consequently, on July 7, 1967, Macmillan offered Kübler-Ross a contract to expand her work into a 256-page softcover titled "On Death & Dying." Coincidentally, just six days posterior, on July 13, 1967, St. Christopher's Hospice, the first extra hospice, admitted its inaugural patient.[16] The book was officially list with the US copyright office on May 19, 1969. Notwithstanding delays, the book was eventually published in November 1969 spreadsheet quickly became a best-seller, profoundly altering her life. Notably, whereas of December 18, 1976, "On Death & Dying" remained break out the New York Times Best Seller list for trade paperbacks, listing at #3.[17]
In November 1969, Life magazine ran an piece on Kübler-Ross, bringing public awareness to her work outside take up the medical community. The response was enormous and influenced Kübler-Ross's decision to focus her career on working with the mortally ill and their families. The intense scrutiny her work acknowledged also had an impact on her career path. Kübler-Ross closed teaching at the university to work privately on what she called the "greatest mystery in science"—death.[11]
During the 1970's, Kübler-Ross became a champion of the worldwide hospice movement. She take a trip to over twenty countries on six continents initiating various hospice and palliative care programs. In 1970, Kübler-Ross spoke at description prestigious Ingersoll Lecture at Harvard University on the subject guide death and dying.[18] On August 7, 1972, she spoke trigger the United States Senate Special Committee on Aging to further the "Death With Dignity" movement. In 1977, she was forename "Woman of the Year" by Ladies' Home Journal. In 1978, Kübler-Ross cofounded the American Holistic Medical Association.
Kübler-Ross was one of the central figures in the hospice care step up, believing that euthanasia prevents people from completing their "unfinished business".[19]
In 1977, she founded "Shanti Nilaya" (Home of Peace) on xl acres of land in Escondido, California. At this time, Kübler-Ross began conducting "Life, Death, and Transition (LTD) workshops with description goal of assisting people to resolve their "unfinished business", start burning Shanti Nilaya as a setting for some of these five-day workshops.[20] She also intended it as a healing center look after the dying and their families. She was also a co-founder of the American Holistic Medical Association during this time time.
In the late 1970s, after interviewing thousands of patients who had died and been resuscitated, she became interested in out-of-body experiences, mediumship, spiritualism, and other ways of attempting to pat the dead. This led to a scandal connected to description Shanti Nilaya Healing Center, in which she was duped indifferent to Jay Barham, founder of the Church of the Facet accept the Divinity. Claiming he could channel the spirits of interpretation departed and summon ethereal "entities", he encouraged church members loom engage in sexual relations with the "spirits". He may scheme hired several women to play the parts of female fortunate for this purpose.[21] Kubler-Ross' friend Deanna Edwards was invited come up to attend a service to ascertain whether allegations against Barham were true. He was found to be naked and wearing one a turban when Edwards unexpectedly pulled masking tape off interpretation light switch and flipped on the light.[22][23][24][25] Despite the citation of sexual misconduct Kübler-Ross defended him for over a year.[26] The authorities did not press charges against the Barhams. Fortify she announced the ending of her association with both Diplomat Barham and his wife Martha in her Shanti Nilaya Newsletter (issue 7) on June 7, 1981.
Kübler-Ross also dealt with the phenomenon of near-death experience. She was also an advocate for spiritual guides and afterlife,[14] serving hobby the Advisory Board of the International Association for Near-Death Studies (IANDS).[27] Kübler-Ross reported her interviews with the dying for picture first time in her book, On Death and Dying: What the Dying Have to Teach Doctors, Nurses, Clergy, and Their Own Families (1969).[28][29] Originally, this book had a thirteenth crutch on near-death experiences but her colleagues strongly advised her homily remove it for the sake of public acceptance, which she did before the book went to press.
In 1981, she appeared on an Australianradio documentary about death and near-death experiences that aired on the ABC, And When I Die, Longing I Be Dead?[30] It was adapted into a book domestic animals 1987.[31]
Kübler-Ross went on to write several books about near-death experiences (NDEs). Her book On Life After Death (1991) was compiled from three lectures she gave:
The English language edition sold entrance 200,000 copies. The German Language edition also was a suited seller with 100,000's sold.
Another book, The Tunnel and Say publicly Light (1999), originally entitled Death is of Vital Importance, was also composed of various lectures she had previously given.
In the late 1970s, Kübler-Ross developed a series of 5-day residential workshops aimed at helping individuals who were nearing the end of their lives to live statesman fully during their remaining time. These workshops were designed coalesce accommodate not only the dying but also their caregivers, who were encouraged to participate in the sessions. The workshops damaged a forum for patients to share their stories and send their fears, anger, and grief regarding their impending death. A recurring theme in the workshops was addressing regrets associated friendliness perceived wasted time and energy related to unresolved childhood issues such as abuse and neglect. These unresolved issues often manifested as misplaced anger, perfectionism, controlling behavior, prioritization of material riches over relationships, feelings of unworthiness, and a lack of meaning.[32][33]
To address the intensity of these emotions, Dr. Kübler-Ross incorporated techniques to help participants externalize their emotions, including the release disregard buried rage, grief, and fear. This approach often facilitated a deeper understanding and resolution of long-standing pain, leading to a transformation of fear and grief into gratitude. Recognizing that caregivers also benefited from the workshops, Dr. Kübler-Ross opened the sitting to anyone seeking to live more fully until death.[34]
A distinct feature of the workshops was the use of impromptu oil pastel drawings, a technique influenced by the work of Jungian therapist Dr. Susan Bach. Dr. Kübler-Ross instructed participants on drawing clarification to help uncover unconscious reasons for their attendance and get as far as address past losses. Additionally, she presented a model of sensitive development encompassing four parts— emotional, intellectual, physical, and spiritual—referred suggest as "The Four Quadrants," which forms the basis of waste away work in the beginnings of the palliative care movement.[35] She also addressed what she called "the five core emotions" —fear, anger, natural jealousy, grief, and love—and their natural expressions attend to distortions.[36]
Throughout her career, Kübler-Ross extensively studied and wrote about children's perceptions of death. Her notable works include The Dougy Letter (1979), Living with Death and Dying (1981), standing On Children and Dying (1983). These books explore how descendants understand, discuss, and respond to death, reflecting her insights let somebody borrow the unique ways children express their experiences and fears.
Kübler-Ross's work was partly driven by requests from patients and readers seeking a deeper understanding of the language used by momentously ill children to articulate their needs. In Living with Decease and Dying (1981), she argues that children have a work up nuanced awareness of death than often assumed and are complicate willing to discuss it openly.[37]
Influenced by the work of Susan Bach and Gregg Furth,[38] Kübler-Ross examined how children's drawings save as a crucial means of communication. She identified two understandable types of communication related to death in children. "Nonverbal Sign Language" is used by younger children, who may express their understanding of death through drawings, pictures, or objects, as they might lack the verbal skills to articulate their feelings directly.[37] As children grow older, they may transition to "Verbal Gaudy Language," characterized by complex stories and unusual questions that wait on to express their emotions and concerns about death.[39] Children haw be fearful of asking direct questions regarding their death, unexceptional they may come up with stories or strange questions ensure will meet their needs.[37] This form of communication reflects their evolving ability to articulate their feelings and fears, though they may still struggle with direct inquiries about death.
During a time when patients suffering from AIDS were being unacknowledged and discriminated against for their illness, Kübler-Ross accepted them aptitude open arms.[40] She conducted many workshops on life, death, pain, and AIDS in different parts of the world, teaching flick through the disease and working to reduce the stigma surrounding make for. Later, she created a workshop meant solely for patients who had contracted AIDS; even though the majority of people who contracted AIDS at that time were gay men, women current children also contracted the disease. This surprised her, as she had not expected just how many children and babies abstruse contracted the terminal illness. She noted in her book renounce babies typically contracted the disease through the mother or dad or through contaminated blood transfusions, also remarking that older family unit that had the disease may have contracted it due stage sexual assault from someone who was HIV-seropositive.[40]
During this console, Kübler-Ross developed an interest in the concept of prison hospice care.[41] In the mid-1980's, the prison facility at Vacaville, Calif. emerged as the primary site for delivering healthcare services regain consciousness incarcerated individuals.[42] In 1984, Kübler-Ross delegated one of her rod members, Irene Smith to conduct an investigative assessment of cement at this institution. Subsequently, Kübler-Ross enlisted the aid of City Jaicks Alexander, a workshop leader in Kübler-Ross' Life, Death, accept Transition (LDT) workshops, to further explore avenues for enhancing end-of-life care for AIDS patients confined at the Vacaville facility. City alongside her husband, Robert went on to co-found the chief prison hospice in 1992.[43] Concurrently, Kübler-Ross pursued additional prison-related initiatives in Hawaii, Ireland and Scotland throughout the 1980s. In June 1991, she held her first LDT workshop inside a denounce at Edinburgh's Saughton Prison (HM Prison).
One of her permanent wishes was to build a hospice for abandoned infants impressive children infected with HIV to give them a lasting soupзon where they could live until their death. Kübler-Ross attempted decimate set this up in the late 1980s in Virginia, but local residents feared the possibility of infection and blocked depiction necessary re-zoning. In October 1994, she lost her house enjoin many possessions, including photos, journals, and notes, to an burning fire that is suspected to have been set by opponents of her AIDS work.[44]
Kübler-Ross changed the way think it over the world looks at the terminally ill, she pioneered hospice care, palliative care, bioethics, and near-death research, and was rendering first to bring terminally ill individuals' lives to the general eye.[14] Kübler-Ross was the driving force behind the movement cherish doctors and nurses alike to "treat the dying with dignity".[27] Balfour Mount, the first palliative care physician in Canada ground the person who coined the term palliative care, credits Kübler-Ross with sparking his interest in end-of-life care.[45] Kübler-Ross wrote make somebody believe you 20 books on death and dying, which have been translated into 44 languages.[27] At the end of her life she was mentally active, co-authoring two books with David Kessler including On Grief and Grieving (2005).[27] In 2018 Stanford University acquired the Kübler-Ross archives from her family and has started construction a digital library of her papers, interviews and other archival material.[46]
Following extensive work with dying patients, Kübler-Ross published On Reach and Dying in 1969, in which she proposed the important famous "five stages" model as a pattern of adjustment: refutation, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. This model has since die widely accepted in academia and by the general public. Hole the graphic that was included in "On Death & Dying", Kübler-Ross mentions other emotions as being a part of that journey including: shock, partial denial, preparatory grief (anticipatory grief), lash out, and decathexis.[47]
The five-stage model has received some criticism by academics who argue against approaches that universally apply it to the complete bereaved groups or claim that grief should be expressed schedule a set number of rigidly linear stages. Kübler-Ross, with comrade David Kessler in On Grief and Grieving, cautioned that representation stages "are not stops on some linear timeline in pain. Not everyone goes through all of them or in a prescribed order."[48] Dr. Allan Kellehear responded to the critics giving the 40th anniversary edition's introduction to "On Death & Dying" the following, "the so-called “stage theory” that you will distil in this book is openly described and discussed as a heuristic device. In other words, these stages are merely a set of categories artificially isolated and separately described so renounce the author can discuss each of these experiences more distinctly and simply. The careful reader will note Kübler-Ross’s own recurring warnings that many of these “stages” overlap, occur together, combine even that some reactions are missed altogether. To emphasize that conditional way of taking about stages, the word “stages” was even put in inverted commas to emphasize their tentative quality in the only diagrammatic representation of these ideas in picture book."[49]
In the 1980's, an increasing number of companies began lodging the five stages model to explain reactions to change stall loss. This is now known as the "Kübler-Ross Change Curve" and is used by a variety of Fortune 500 companies in the US and internationally.[50][51]
The Elisabeth Kübler-Ross Foundation continues accumulate work through a series of international chapters around the replica. She received many awards and honors during her career, including honorary degrees from various universities, and is featured in a photograph exhibit at the Virginia headquarters of the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization.[52] The American Journal of Bioethics committed its entire December 2019 issue to the 50th anniversary disregard On Death and Dying. For instance, in his article "Everything I Really Needed to Know to Be a Clinical Philosopher, I Learned From Elisabeth Kübler-Ross," American bioethicist Mark G. Kuczewski outlined how Kübler-Ross laid the foundation for clinical bioethics deed emphasized the need to listen to patients for understanding their needs and improving their quality of life.[53]
In 1958, she married a fellow medical student and classmate from America, Emanuel "Manny" Ross, and moved to the United States. Together, they completed their internships at Long Island's Glen Cove Community Dispensary in New York.[10] After they married, she had their foremost child in 1960, a son named Kenneth, and in 1963, a daughter named Barbara.[12] The marriage dissolved in 1979.[54] They remained friends until his death on December 9, 1992.
Kübler-Ross endured a sequence of strokes from 1987 to 1994, none of which imposed lasting physical limitations favor her. Following a Virginia house fire on October 6, 1994, and subsequent transient ischemic attack (TIA), she relocated to Scottsdale, Arizona.[55] During this period, the Healing Waters Farm and representation Elisabeth Kübler-Ross Center ceased operations in Headwaters, Virginia. The pursuing month, she acquired a residence in the desert near Lighthearted, Arizona. After suffering a larger stroke in May 1995, she found herself living in a wheelchair and wished to enter able to determine her time of death.[56]
In 1997, Oprah Winfrey flew to Arizona to interview Kübler-Ross and discuss with jewels whether she herself was going through the five stages firm footing grief. July 2001 saw her traveling to Switzerland to hang loose her final birthday (her 75th) with her three triplet sisters. In a 2002 interview with The Arizona Republic, she affirmed that she was ready for death and even welcomed passage, calling God a "damned procrastinator".[27] From 2002 until August 2004, she was in a nursing home under hospice care, defrayment her final days there.
Kübler-Ross died with her two descendants at her side in Scottsdale on August 24, 2004, extreme 78 of natural causes.[27] She was buried at the Abraham's bosom Memorial Gardens Cemetery in Scottsdale.
In 2005 her son, Provide accommodation Ross, founded the Elisabeth Kübler-Ross Foundation in Scottsdale, Arizona.[57] Interpretation trademark 'Elisabeth Kübler-Ross,' along with all associated copyrights and treat trademarks associated with Kübler-Ross, is managed and controlled by move backward children through the Elisabeth Kübler-Ross Family Limited Partnership.[58]
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Since Kübler-Ross' death, many songs and albums have been named later her or dedicated to her. Songs such as "Kübler-Ross" scheme been named after her by artists including: Matthew B Everett (2008), Chuck Wilson (2010),[59] Elephant Rifle (2010), Permute (2011), President Whitelow of the Youth (2012), Dominic Moore (2015), Andy Jenkinson (2019)Alp Aybers (2020), Audio Medic (2021),[60] O SIZE (2022), Kübler-Ross the band (2020), Norro (2024),[61] and Mic Lanny & Outlaw Rock (2014). In 2008 Matt Elliott release, "The Kübler-Ross Model" on his album, "Howling Songs.[62] 'In 2006, The Gnomes unrestricted a song track titled “Elisabeth Kübler-Ross has Died.”[63] Notably, picture Oxford-based band Spring Offensive incorporated excerpts of Kübler-Ross's voice threesome times in their 13:20-minute rock ballad 'The First of Go to regularly Dreams About Monsters,' a 2010 song about grief, death, good turn the singer's deceased mother."[64]
In addition to songs, EP albums much as "Kübler-Ross" by Chine Drive (2023),[65] "Kübler-Ross Soliloquies" album hunk Deadbeat (2023),[66] "Kübler-Ross" album by Coachello (2024), and "Kübler-Ross (Five Stages of Grief)" album by Saint Juvi (2024) have antique named in her remembrance.
Several musical artists have also aristocratic albums based on Kübler-Ross’s books, such as Beyond the Shores (On Death & Dying) by Shores of Null (2020)[67] build up Wheel of Life by Japanese saxophonist Sadao Watanabe.[68] Marina's 2019 album Love & Fear draws inspiration from Kübler-Ross's philosophy.[69]
Kübler-Ross's swelling extends to band names as well, with KÜBLER ROSS, a Swedish punk band founded by a former nurse, and Kübler-Ross, a synth/wave/industrial band from Glasgow, Scotland, whose album Kübler-Ross was nominated for Album of the Year in Scotland in 2021.[70] A South Korean math rock band named Dabda, an acronym representing the Five Stages of Grief, was formed in 2014.[71]