The Three Faces

Since taking a course on The Philosophy of Religion with Dr. Wendy Farley, I have developed an interest in studying death and suffering. Naturally, I began to pay more attention to how death appeared in every day life and how we (as mortal beings) interact with the idea and consequences of death. The first topic related book I picked up thereafter was The Sacred Art of Dying: How World Religions Understand Death, and I would often read the book behind the coffee shop counter on a slow afternoon. Though it has been two years since I have read the book, I clearly remember author Kenneth Kramer, in his introduction, depicting death in three faces: physical death, psychological death, and spiritual death.

He describes physical death in a way that matches the medical and biological death we have studied in class. There is irreversible l­oss of brain waves, damage to the central nervous system, and cessation of cardiac and respiratory function (Kramer 1988 p.11). Psychological death is “the life of quasi-consciousness, living, as if having already died,” and spiritual death is “the transformation of old patterns, habits, roles, identities and the birth of a new person” (Kramer 1988 p.11). The latter two faces of death left me much to ponder. While I was comfortable and familiar with physical death, Kramer’s framing of psychological and spiritual death was jolting and new to me. The book focused on spiritual death and explained religious aspects of death such as attitudes and rituals. (Super recommend the book for anyone interested!)

Reading about spiritual death inspired me travel abroad to study suffering and Buddhism more closely—but that’s a story for another time. Presently, I contemplate the face of psychological death and its meaning. is I wonder if some cases of severe depression can qualify as psychological death. Kramer describes psychological death as a “reversible termination of one’s personal aliveness,” “a kind of emotional death” and “a lessening of aliveness” (Kramer 1988 p.18-19). Say we assume depression is indeed a form of psychological death. Narratives regarding depression and mental health often share stories of numbness, apathy, a lack of will, loss of interest and pleasure in activities, hopelessness and more. These symptoms and experiences of illness fit into the characteristics of psychological death Kramer describes. Suicide ideation could be seen as the desire to experience physical death if perhaps a person already felt psychologically dead. The notion that psychological death is reversible might also speak to the treatable aspect of depression through medications, counseling, psychoanalysis, meditation, and other forms of therapy. I do not know if psychological death is something widely accepted or discussed, but I do think it is an interesting way to frame mental illness.

Reference

Kramer, K. 1988, The Sacred Art of Dying: How World Religions Understand Death. New York: Paulist Press.