On Death and Dying: What the Dying Have to Teach Doctors, Nurses, Clergy, and Their Own Families

How do you look someone in the eye and tell them they are dying? Sure, every single one of us is dying by increments every single day. Some of us will die tomorrow, without warning. No fanfare. But, how do you tell someone they will die in a month? In a week? Days? On Death and Dying is exactly that, a chance to talk to terminally ill patients; to have a candid talk about what it means to moving towards death sooner rather than later. Kubler-Ross and her students interviewed over 200 patients towards this end. I think it is safe to safe we know what emerged from this seminal work:
Stage One: Denial and Isolation
Stage Two: Anger - the "Why Me?" stage.
Stage Three: Bargaining - not a lot to say about this stage except to say it is very show more childlike in believing you can strike a deal with a higher power to avoid death.
Stage Four: Depression (the stage I think I would live within the longest).
Stage Five: Acceptance. This is the most difficult of all the stages to reach. Even after achieving acceptance, it is easy for the patient to revert back to an earlier stage such as anger or denial. Stage five is also difficult for the patient's loved ones. How many families see a patient's acceptance as resignation or a loss of will to live? One must remember there are defense mechanisms as well as coping mechanisms at play.
My biggest takeaway from reading On Death and Dying is how the more training and experience a physician had, the less ready he or she was to become involved in Kubler-Ross's interviews. It is as if they lost the ability to see the patient as a human with a right to know their terminal future. We need to bring compassion back at every level of care. show less

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s On Death and Dying is one of the most influential works ever written about grief, mortality, and the human experience of facing the end of life. First published in 1969, this groundbreaking book brought the topic of death out of the shadows and into open, compassionate discussion. Drawing on her work with terminally ill patients, Kübler-Ross introduced the now-famous five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. But what makes this book so powerful is not just the framework itself, but the deep empathy and honesty that run through every page.

Kübler-Ross listens without judgment. She records the fears, hopes, and regrets of her patients with a sensitivity that was rare in show more medicine at the time. She does not try to romanticize dying, nor does she reduce it to medical procedures. Instead, she explores it as a deeply human process that can reveal meaning and connection even in the midst of loss. Her interviews and reflections help readers understand that grief is not something to be fixed but something to be lived through.

The language of the book is simple yet profound. It encourages readers to confront death rather than avoid it, and to approach the dying with openness and presence rather than fear or pity. For anyone who has lost a loved one or works in a caring profession, On Death and Dying remains an essential text. It reminds us that facing mortality honestly can deepen our understanding of life itself.

More than half a century later, Kübler-Ross’s insights continue to guide caregivers, families, and individuals. Her message is timeless: when we speak about death with compassion and courage, we also learn how to live more fully. show less

I was recently at a talk given by Claire Tomalin, the biographer, who told us that the best advice her mother-in-Law had ever given her was to remember that our unconscious can’t accept that we are mortal. This is at the heart of this book and how our conscious mind has to be allowed to navigate the way when we we are dying.

This book was one of those recommended texts when I was a medical student and I’m very familiar with her “stages of grief” but I had never actually read this book before. It is dated in many ways and I struggled a bit with the gendered writing, but it still has a lot to say to us. This is especially true currently when we seem unable to say that someone has died but refer to their passing or some other way of show more avoiding the terms death and dying, which is hardly going to help. show less

It was hard for me to read the book— which I haven’t only now just finished: it’s just that I deleted the review that I wrote upon that occasion, as it was very critical— without being critical of how our society treats death. It obviously treats death as something to deny, to close your eyes to, as the ultimate misfortune and a cosmic mistake, the part of the life cycle that should be abolished somehow. It’s hard not to get a little annoyed at unthinking and ignorant critiques of God and Nature, at these attitudes which are mostly the same now as they were then, the book and its labors notwithstanding.

But as I’ll probably read it again eventually, I’ll try to be more patient with them then.

Rated: B
Classic work becoming a little dated with the passage of time and shifts in social norms. Her research and writings were in the 60's. Today, the awareness or disinterest in dying and death make it less taboo; however, we all will face it in our own way someday. Experiencing the death of my daugher and parents as well as various friends over the years allowed me to relate to many situations she revealed. While I was familiar with the five stages, what I didn't know was her observation that Hope transcends all stages.

"The one thing that usually persists through all these stages is hope. Just as children in Barracks L 318 and L 417 in the concentaration camp of Terezin maintained their hope years ago, although out of a total of show more about 15,000 children under fifteen years of age only around 100 came out of it alive.

The sun has made a veil of gold
So lovely that my body aches
Above, the heavens shriek with blue
Convinced I've smiled by some mistake.
The world's abloom and seems to smile.
I want to fly but where, how high?
If in barbed wire, things can bloom
Why couldn't I I will not die!
1944, Anonymous
"On a Sunny Evening" show less

When I took a death and dying class in college, my professor often quoted from this book. It is interesting to finally read it now during this pandemic. The bulk of this book consists of interviews with patients who know they will die soon and their families. These conversations are insightful and heartwarming. Expanding our views on death will help us cope when we and/or our loved ones are facing the end, and Kubler-Ross's work has certainly done that for me.

One of the most important psychological studies of the late twentieth century, On Death and Dying grew out of Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross's famous interdisciplinary seminar on death, life, and transition. In this remarkable book, Dr. Kübler-Ross first explored the now-famous five stages of death: denial and isolation, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Through sample interviews and conversations, she gives the reader a better understanding of how imminent death affects the patient, the professionals who serve that patient, and the patient's family, bringing hope to all who are involved.