死別体験および死のイメージに関する心理学研究の動向と展望

The problem of youth suicide has stirred a great deal of controversy, but issues relating to death and dying are still generally far from people's minds. The purpose of this study is to explore how people apprehend death and to review recent research trends addressing this issue. Attitudinal studies about death reveal a significant shift away from the one-dimensional anxiety of the past toward a multi-dimensional perception of death. Although morbid attitudes tend to be oppressive, the association between conscious and unconscious dimensions of death-related attitudes has not been fully explored. More recently, a number of studies have focused on the positive aspects of bereavement. It is believed that this is linked to the emerging multi-dimensional understanding of death, but again the association between a person's attitude toward death and whether that person experiences bereavement has not been thoroughly examined. Note that this goes beyond the mental state of a widowed person after experiencing bereavement, for it encompasses how the survivor perceives death, bereavement, and life itself. Future work will consider the bereavement experience (1) by examining how mental attitudes toward death are shaped closer to the subconscious level, and (2) by considering the broader perceptions of survivors toward death, bereavement, and life. Obviously, these themes have an enormous impact on one's perceived image of death.