Thanatos Revised: What Psychology May Look Like with Positive, Enduring Attitudes Towards Death and Dying
Rosa Traversa
Human Arenas December 1, 2022 DOI: 10.1007/s42087-020-00182-y (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Case report Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Keywords | Death Religion Spirituality Ontology Epistemology |
| Citations | 1 |
| Key points | Argues that psychology must move beyond the mind-body split and adopt thanatological perspectives like Eternalism to counter neuroscientific reductionism, illustrated through the case of Santa Scorese. |
Abstract
Death seems still to be a taboo in contemporary society, and in Psychology as well. Crucial debates around the end of life are emerging in a variety of clinical, cultural, and philosophical realms in relation to the meaning of consciousness and near-death experiences. After the advent of quantum physics, the very notion of ‘evidence-based science’ has profoundly changed and new markers on the entanglements of matter and meaning are now available. The present contribution aims at questioning Psychology in its core empirical split between body and mind and at getting familiar with different thanatological perspectives, such as Eternalism. More specifically, it tries to address the epistemological and ontological entanglements in Psychology in order to propose an enlarged notion of mental life able to counter any neuroscientific reductionism. My arguments will be interrelated through the discussion of a case study about Santa Scorese, a young Catholic woman assassinated in Italy in 1991 by a stalker and in the process of beatification since 1998. Santa Scorese has been described as a unique example of martyr for women’s dignity of the present era and I am going to argue how she was passionately in love with God and with beauty while repressing her own body at the same time. The foci of analysis will be her original post-mortem published diary, her killer’s letters, and an interview I recorded with her sister (currently highly committed in the complex Catholic process of beatification).