Philippe Aries has chronicled western attitudes towards death in five basic patterns from 5th to 20th century. The first pattern describes death as a peaceful sleep until the return of Christ followed by a non-threatening afterlife. The second pattern describes death as a supernatural event that is followed by judgment and results which was characterized by anxiety provoking afterlife. In the third pattern, death as a supernatural concept was converted to a natural concept. Anxiety was there with no anxiety about afterlife. The fourth pattern described death as something related to others, which is death of others with the emphasis on separation from others.
Finally the fifth pattern had death denied for individuals. If we consider the description of Aries in reverse manner, it gets to some extent similar to the stages described by Kubler-Ross. The final perception about death in western society described by Aries was denial which is described as the most immature stage of adjustment by Kubler-Ross. The 4th stage described by Aries resembles the 2nd stage of Kubler-Ross - anger, which is more mature than denial. The 3rd stage of Aries resembles 'bargaining' described by Kubler-Ross. The 2nd stage of Aries resembles best with the 4th stage of Kubler-Ross, and the 1st stage described by Aries resembles most with the 5th stage described by Kubler-Ross. So it seems like the personal adjustment procedure of the terminally ill or dying also matches the social changes of concept or attitude towards death in case of mass population.
The purpose of the above discussion is to give more legitimacy for the use of Kubler-Ross model in case of those that are not dying or terminally ill. Now let us start discussing about the 5 stages of adjustment for average people.
The first stage denial represents the situation when death is on conscious mind. So we must note first that there are situations in our practical life when death is somewhat dissociated which is a more severe form of isolation of any context from our conscious mind. Then, when the thought comes to our conscious mind we deny it which is an immature form of defense against any unacceptable truth. When and if this defense breaks down due to any situation anger comes about the truth of death which is also a sign of unacceptability and also unhealthy for an individual. When the anger subsides and the truth that death is inevitable flourishes more, one tries to bargain and adjust him or herself with the situation. But the next stage - depression indicates realization of helplessness and surrender to the truth. The final stage mentioned as acceptance can be explained by two themes. One is accepting death with the thought in mind that it will absolutely end oneself, and another is taking death as something that will not end one absolutely. The first one should accompany depression, as I described existence as our basic criteria. Thus ultimately it mismatches the change of stage from depression to acceptance. So I will take the second theme as the way of establishing establishment of acceptance.
From the above discussion we can see that the condensed or intense situation related to death reveals the overall situation of death for average individuals which ultimately takes us to the adjustment with death, though the extent of adjustment is undetected till now in this hypothesis. But what is very important, I believe, is that as the Kubler-Ross model describes adjustment with death when it is very much conscious in one's mind. But in the current trend in civilization I see death more than denied, which may be addressed as dissociated. Because there are very few people who remember death in their daily life like the terminally ills do. In fact they totally forget death and arrange their life as if there is no such thing as death, especially when they are healthy and average adults.
Finally in this part of the hypothesis I want to add an additional stage of perceiving death for any individual before the stage of denial and that I want to term as dissociation. So the traditional stages of adjustment with death for average healthy adults becomes, for this hypothesis at least, something like - 1) Dissociation, 2) Denial, 3) Anger, 4) Bargaining, 5) Depression, and 6) Adjustment. I will not advocate for the accuracy or perfection of this process for healthy adaptation, but I will surely assume that this trend is running in our society in a major portion of people. Hopefully in the following parts I will be able to highlight on the judgment of this running process and related issues.
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