DESCRIPTION: Józef Makselon (born 1950) is a full professor and former head of the Department of Psychology of Religion at the Faculty of Philosophy of the Pontifical University of John Paul II in Krakow. His areas of interest include psychological issues related to human suffering and death, i.e. thanatopsychology, as well as the psychology of religion. He was the editor-in-chief of the scientific journal Analecta Cracoviensia. He has been awarded the Gold Cross of Merit, among other distinctions. The article in question can be classified as belonging to the field of the philosophy of psychology. It belongs to a group of articles on psychology published in SPCh in the 1970s and 1980s, when the journal provided space for texts on issues at the intersection of philosophy and psychology. The author of the article notes that a peculiar paradox of contemporary Polish psychology is that it omits the issues of death and dying, whereas they should be an integral part of research, at least in the field of developmental psychology. This paradox is related, on the one hand, to the not very strongly established thinking in terms of humanistic psychology and, on the other hand, to the existential profile of the issue of transience, which often causes embarrassment and awkwardness in conducting research on this topic. This article is an attempt to provide a comprehensive overview of the basic dimensions of attitudes towards death. It may also serve as a theoretical basis for constructing methods for use in thanatopsychological research and interpreting their results. "Among psychological studies of the phenomenon of death, there are very few reports on rationalisation. It has been established, among other things, that intellectualisation (as an aspect of rationalisation) is more frequent and more pronounced in neurotics than in healthy people or those suffering from cancer or heart disease, and that those who are more aware of their finitude justify death and even consider it a useful event (...). In summary of what has been said about defence mechanisms, it should be emphasised that they play an important role in attitudes towards death. Much of the controversy surrounding the operation of these mechanisms stems from insufficiently precise research, which, incidentally, is very difficult from a methodological point of view. For some authors, the fact that death and dying are not often discussed, which they call the tabooing of the issue of human mortality, indicates the operation of mechanisms of repression or denial. Using the principles of the group phenomenon of ‘taboo’, which consists in excluding certain issues from interpersonal communication, attempts are made to prove the existence of these mechanisms. However, this seems debatable, as the existence of a group taboo does not contradict the fact that individuals think about the prohibited subject (e.g. sexual taboos) (p. 133).
TABLE OF CONTENTS: Introduction. 1. Thinking about death. 1.1. The concept of death. 1.2. The intensity of thinking about death. 2. Fear of death 3. Defence mechanisms in attitudes towards death. 3.1. Repression of the subject of death. 3.2. Denial of death. 3.3. Rationalisation of attitudes towards death. Conclusion.
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Język Polski