A transformative, fascinating theory—based on robust and groundbreaking experimental research—reveals how our unconscious fear of death powers almost everything we do, shining a light on the hidden motives that drive human behaviorMore than one hundred years ago, the American philosopher William James dubbed the knowledge that we must die “the worm at the core” of the human condition. In 1974, cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker won the Pulitzer Prize for his boo...

Exploring a new approach to interfaith/interreligious communication, the contributors to this collection seek to interact from the perspective of their own tradition or academic discipline with Ernest Becker's theory on the relationship between religion, culture, and the human awareness of death and mortality. While much interfaith/interreligious dialogue focuses on beliefs and practices, thus delineating areas of disagreement as a starting point, these chapters foster interactive communic...

In Facing Cancer and the Fear of Death: A Psychoanalytic Perspective on Treatment, Dr. Norman Straker proposes that “death anxiety” is responsible for the American society’s failure to address costly futile care at the end of life; more specifically, doctors default on the appropriate prescription of palliative care because of this anxiety. This leads to unnecessary suffering for terminally-ill patients and their families and significant distress for physicians. To address these challenges...

Concerns with how students are taught, and whether and how they learn, has become particularly salient in higher education. This is evident in growing awareness of increases in time-to-degree and declines in attainment rates for many students, including those who are underrepresented, in our nation’s community and public and private colleges and universities. It is also demonstrated vis-à-vis recent findings that more than a third of college students evinced no noticeable improvement in cr...

Proof of a ground-breaking psychological theory: that the fear of death is the hidden motive behind almost everything we do.'A joy ... The Worm at the Core asks how humans can learn to live happily while being intelligently aware of our impending doom, how knowledge of death affects the decisions we make every day, and how we can stop fear and anxiety overwhelming us' Charlotte Runcie, Daily Telegraph'Provocative, lucid and fascinating' Financial Times...

**#1 New York Times BestsellerIn Being Mortal, bestselling author Atul Gawande tackles the hardest challenge of his profession: how medicine can not only improve life but also the process of its ending**Medicine has triumphed in modern times, transforming birth, injury, and infectious disease from harrowing to manageable. But in the inevitable condition of aging and death, the goals of medicine seem too frequently to run counter to the interest of the huma...

Why do some parents refuse to vaccinate their children? Why do some people keep guns at home, despite scientific evidence of risk to their family members? And why do people use antibiotics for illnesses they cannot possibly alleviate? When it comes to health, many people insist that science is wrong, that the evidence is incomplete, and that unidentified hazards lurk everywhere. In Denying to the Grave, Gorman and Gorman, a father-daughter team, explore the psychology of health sc...

The author of The Road Less Traveled, the bestselling and most influential book of psychiatric and spiritual instruction in modern times, now offers a deeply moving meditation on what euthanasia reveals about the status of the soul in our age. Its trenchant and sensitive treatment of the subject will define our humanity for generations to come.

Practical supportive advice for bereaved parents and the professionals who work with them, based on the experiences of psychiatric and religious counselors.FROM THE INTRODUCTION:“Certainly, in the early days after our son died, no one could have patted us on the our heads and convinced us everything would be all right. Nor will this book do that for you. It will, with the help of parents who have successfully coped and professional people who work with bereavement, offer gui...

There is nothing more life-affirming than understanding death in all its forms.Natural selection depends on death; little would evolve without it. Every animal on Earth is shaped by its presence and fashioned by its spectre. We are all survivors of starvation, drought, volcanic eruptions, meteorites, plagues, parasites, predators, freak weather events, tussles and scraps, and our bodies are shaped by these ancient events.Some animals live for just a few hou...

Sean Davison made headlines when he was arrested in New Zealand for matricide. The story that emerged - how he helped his ailing mother to die - is the subject of his affecting book, Before We Say Goodbye. This second book, After We Said Goodbye, takes up the story from there: his arrest, trial and sentencing and the dramatic events that followed after this softspoken, unassuming man took the most fateful decision of his life; one that tore open family rifts and posed fun...

The Dignitas clinic in Switzerland may be a long way away. But the issues around euthanasia can suddenly become very close to home. To many, it seems remarkable that in a society where freedom of choice is eulogised, thousands of people find that there is one last choice that they are not free to make. But as this book will show, euthanasia is an issue at the intersection of new technology, old laws, and timeless ethical quandaries, so that even apparently clear-cut cases have many contrad...