Denial . . . Anger . . . Lawsuit

The January/February2005 edition of Psychology Today magazine features an article on ten false ideas still prevalent in the mental health professions—recovered memory, catharsis, codependency, and so on—including Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s five stages of dying. Kübler-Ross, who herself died last year, theorized that terminally ill patients go through five distinct stages of dealing with their impending doom: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Her theory was widely accepted, to the extent that terminally ill patients who did not follow this course were treated as abnormal.

Dissent in the face of this theory has been around for a while, but, according to the article, more recent research indicates that, in fact, many of the patients interviewed by Kübler-Ross before she originated her theory did not even know that they were dying. Moreover, these very sick people had been lied to by the hospital and by Kübler-Ross about their ailments. So when first told they were dying they denied it, and then when they discovered they’d been lied to, they got angry. Go figure!

The same issue, incidentally, features an article on how to identify a sociopath, discussed on C&S previously, and an interview with Gordon Rugg of Keele University on his scientific method known as Verifier, also discussed here.