INTERVIEW
WITH DAVID AS A THANATOLOGIST
Why did you
develop a death anxiety scale?
As
psychologists, we spend much of our time looking for predispositions and
long-term indications of why people become who they are and why they behave as
they do. We neglect the role of serendipity.
I went to
Cambridge University to read physics and switched to psychology because I was
depressed during a bout of influenza one Christmas. The Department of
Psychology at Cambridge University was heavily experimental. Their library,
however, had, perhaps by mistake, purchased Clues to Suicide by Shneidman and
Farberow (1957), which I discovered and read and which moved me greatly.
I ended
up at Brandeis University because I fell in love with and American college
student whom I met in France, and because Brandeis University sent a flyer to
Cambridge University advertising generous fellowships for foreign students.
(More serendipity.) As it turned out, my graduate work was paid for by Revlon
Cosmetics or, more precisely, the Revson Foundation. I had the opportunity to
work with Abraham Maslow who let us choose our own topics for dissertations,
and so permitted me to study death and suicide.
Finally,
I had to take a graduate course with a new assistant professor who had us read
Edwards’s (1957) book on scale construction and assigned us the task of
constructing a scale. I chose to measure the fear of death.
As I reviewed the
literature on the fear of death, I was struck by the absence of well-designed
scales for this trait (Lester, 1967). Although I am fascinated most by theory,
I have been struck by how research to a large extent neglects theory and is
stimulated by the availability of a good psychological test. For example,
Rotter’s (1966) notion of an internal versus an external locus of control can
be related back to psychological theory, but the tremendous research activity
on this topic was stimulated in part by the availability of his scale (and
later those of others) to measure the trait.
I did not publish the so-called Lester Attitude Toward
Death Scale until recently, although I used it in research and made it
available to anyone who wrote for a copy (Lester, 1991a). It was really a
graduate student exercise determined by the content of the course I was taking.
But this exercise got me interested in test construction and suggested the
possibility of measuring several components of a trait with one scale. My first
scale measured two traits: the general attitude toward death, and inconsistency
in death attitudes.
Serendipity again
intruded when I took up my first teaching position at Wellesley College. Lora
Jean Collett was working with Eugene McCarthy on his bid for the presidency.
Had McCarthy won, there might have been no Collett-Lester Fear of Death Scale
(Lester, 1990). But he lost, and Lora Jean asked how she was going to pass her
course with me. We decided on the fear of death scale project.
I had been
disturbed by the complexity of the content of the fear of death scales then
available. It seemed to me that they were mixing several dimensions, in
particular, death versus dying and whether consideration was being given to
oneself or to another person. Additionally, there were also items on funerals,
cemeteries and pessimism. These various aspects might be highly related but, if
so, this relatedness was something that needed to be explored empirically.
Furthermore, I had never liked item-analyses (and
factor-analyses in particular) to determine subscales. I have always preferred
to use the manifest content of the items to choose my subscales. (Of course, I
do carry out item-analyses and sometimes publish them, but I do not give them
greater weight than content). So we wrote four subscales: fear of death of
self, fear of death of other, fear of dying of self, and fear of dying of
others. (I left the funeral scale until later [Lester & Blustein, 1980]).
It perhaps noticeable to others that, although I teach
about the reliability and validity of psychological test, I was not overly
interested in exploring the reliability and validity of my own scales. Luckily,
by the time I formally published both scales, others had conducted a great deal
of research with them, so that I could present a fairly good manual for each
scale (Lester, 1990, 1991a).
Has being a research on
death affected your professional life?
I am
primarily known as a “suicide scholar,” though I also conduct research into the
fear of death and into murder. But I think that being a death scholar does have
professional implications. Death is not a respectable topic for psychologists.
A perusal of the textbooks for the core curriculum of psychology quickly
reveals that death and suicide are almost never mentioned (save that abnormal
psychology texts have a brief section on suicide in the chapter on affective
disorders.) Death is not a topic amenable to laboratory research, and
psychology has been addicted to laboratory research.
Of course,
psychologists do occasionally move out of the laboratory to conduct research.
But academic psychology focuses on experimental control and laboratory analogs
for human behavior. To me, that kind of research is no different from crossword
puzzles or chess problems. What has interested me is human behavior in its
natural setting. Hence I focus, for example, on murder, rather than some pale
laboratory analog of aggression such as shocking a stooge in a learning task
for making errors.
Psychiatrists can study death because fears of death,
suicide, and murder are in important problems for them. For sociologists,
suicide, received a certain measure of respectability by Durkheim’s (1897) work
on the topic. But no famous theoretical psychologist has ever focused on death
(except, of course, for the existentialists who remain on the fringe of the
field).
To remedy this situation, I recently wrote a book in
which I took the major theories of personality and saw to what extent they
might enlighten us about suicide (Lester, 1988). I have also explored the major
systems of psychotherapy for counseling the suicidal client (Lester, 1991b).
Through these books, I hope to influence textbook writers that it is
permissible and even useful to discuss suicide.
I
believe that those whose scholarly focus is death will be less likely to be
offered positions in the psychology departments at major universities.
What are the conclusive
and significant findings about death anxiety?
Are there any
conclusive findings which have great interest? Perhaps one such finding is
that, however measured, death anxiety is associated with psychopathology.
Perhaps another is that the concept of death (and, therefore, death anxiety)
develops with age. It seems to me that not all adults will share the same concept
of death, though, and their concepts of death might affect their death anxiety.
What are the most significant omissions in the death anxiety scale literature?
There is one major
problem in the death anxiety scale literature, and that is the reliance on the
self-report of conscious death anxiety. To be sure, it is sometimes foolish for
psychologists to go to great lengths to measure psychological traits in people
without their conscious awareness. Sometimes it is simply easier and just s
valid to ask people directly about the focus of concern.
However, I believe
that death anxiety is quite different at the conscious level (e.g., sitting at
a desk and answering a questionnaire) from what it might be in other
situations. In the 1960s and 1970s there were a few studies of
subliminally-measured death anxiety, but general interest in this approach was
never truly aroused.
Secondly,
death anxiety under particular stressors may differ considerably from that
experienced when taking a self-report test. For example, I always obtain
minimal scores on death anxiety scales when I complete them myself. However, I
have had occasional anxiety attacks about death and dying (especially at night
and when traveling abroad). On occasions when the airplane in which I was flying
seemed likely to crash, my death anxiety became quite high!
We need to find out what factors lead to the
generation of our death anxiety. What childhood experiences, family patterns,
and parental behaviors lead to the development of high versus low death
anxiety? Donald Templer and I collaborated many years ago on a study of the
association between the death anxiety of students and their parents; this was a
first step, but much more needs to be done in exploring the genesis of death
anxiety (Lester & Templer, 1972).
Another problem with death anxiety research is its
lack of a theoretical basis. The only psychologists who place any importance on
death anxiety are the existentialists who see death anxiety as one of the four
major existential problems that we must deal with (along with isolation,
freedom, and will). I think research on death anxiety must draw from
theoretical positions so that the research will seem to have greater
implications for clinical psychology.
Have death anxiety scales lent themselves
to a self-insulating, glass wall type of research?
Psychological research is stimulated much more by the
development of particular scales than by theory. Of course, the scale itself
may have a theoretical basis or influence, but, once the scale appears, it
generates hundreds of studies if the concept measured appeals to people. This
later research is often atheoretical. It is easy to criticize research which is
scale-based rather than theory-based (or based on introspection of the
objective phenomenon). However, the research findings so generated do form a
body of knowledge which, appropriately reviewed, can lead to interesting
insights. And there are, of course some researchers who do think a little
beyond the constraints imposed by an existing scale.
What factors should a researcher
consider before deciding to use a death anxiety scale?
I have a bias
here, not surprisingly. I feel that a multi-component death anxiety scale is
crucial. It is unlikely that a particular life experience would affect all
aspects of death anxiety. It may affect attitudes toward death or toward the
process of dying, for example, or attitudes toward one’s own death or that of
others. If a personality trait or experience is strongly related to all types
of death anxiety, then it may well be related to all forms of anxiety, and have
no special relevance to death anxiety.
On the other hand,
to use a multi-component scale complicates one’s results. What if only one of
the component scales gives you the results you hypothesized? Does this make the
article weaker and less acceptable to a good scholarly journal? Might it be
better to use a one-measure scale and gamble on getting one strong association?
However,
it might be better if investigators did think through their hypotheses more
carefully and ask whether they expect a change in or association with all fears
of death or merely attitudes toward funerals, death, or dying.
I think also that investigators should strive for
greater creativity. For example, there are other components besides simple
death anxiety. In recent years, I have devised a simple measure of Laingian
ontological insecurity, including doubts that one really exists (Lester &
Thinschmidt, 1988). What about the existence of reunion fantasies and beliefs
in the existence of life after death? I was intrigued by the old research on
metaphors of death, but here has been very little follow-up on that (especially
in identifying the core metaphors) (McClelland, 1963).
What is your concept of death anxiety?
In my early work, my concept of death anxiety was
determined by the technique of measurement. Could I devise an equal-interval
scale to measure death attitudes? In thinking about the concept more, I decided
that the items in the scales were rather heterogeneous, and so scales measuring
different aspects of death and dying could be measured. However, in recent
years, I have come to feel that the death attitude scale could (and perhaps
should) be based more on theory. For example, Laing’s (1969) concept of
ontological insecurity includes the feeling that one does not really exist. To
develop a scale to measure death attitudes based on Laing’s ideas not only
might provide an interesting research instrument, but would also tie the
research directly to theory. In fact, I have published a brief scale to do
this, as noted above.
Because of the dependence of so much research,
including my own, on scale-generated studies, I have not thought much at all
about my own concept of death anxiety and which theories I might base it on.
Being forced now to reflect on this, I would opt for a multiplicity of
concepts. Teaching as I do a course on theories of personality, I would prefer
to develop concepts of death anxiety from each of the theories. For example,
from George Kelly’s theory of personal constructs, we could focus on the
difficulties in construing death. From Abraham Maslow, we could focus on both
safety and security needs as generating a lower level (deficiency-motivated)
death attitude. And from Freud we could search for infant fears (such as of
destruction and mutilation) which could provide the basis for later fears of
death.
As perhaps is evident from my research over the years,
although I have my preferred theories, I like to be eclectic and use different
theories to generate research hypotheses. And with regard to my own personal
concept of death anxiety, surely all of this research on death has served to
intellectualize my reactions to death and avoid reflection on my own personal
death?
References
Durkheim, E. (1897). Le suicide. Paris: Felix
Alcan
Edwards, A. L. (1957). Techniques of attitude scale
construction. New York: Appleton-Century.
Laing, R. D. (1969). The divided self. New
York: Pantheon.
Lester, D. (1967). Experimental and correlational
studies of the fear of death. Psychological Bulletin, 67, 27-36.
Lester, D. (1988). Suicide from a psychological
perspective. Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas.
Lester, D. (1990). The Collett-Lester Fear of Death
Scale. Death Studies, 14, 451-468.
Lester, D. (1991a). The Lester Attitude Toward Death
Scale. Omega, 23, 67-75.
Lester, D. (1991b). Psychotherapy for suicidal
clients. Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas.
Lester, D., & Blustein, J. (1980). Attitudes
toward funerals. Psychological Reports, 46, 1074.
Lester, D., & Templer, D. I. (1972). Resemblance
of parent-child death-anxiety asa a function of age and sex of the child. Psychological
Reports, 21, 750.
Lester, D., & Thinschmidt, J. (1988). The
relationship of Laing’s concept of ontological insecurity to extraversion and
neuroticism. Personality & Individual Differences, 9. 687-688.
McClelland, D. (1963). The Harlequin complex. In R. W.
White (Ed.) The study of lives, pp. 91-119. New York: Atherton.
Rotter, J. B. (1966). Generalized expectancies for
internal versus external control of reinforcement. Psychological Monographs,
80, Number 1.
Shneidman, E. S., & Farberow, N. L. (1957). Clues
to suicide. New York: McGraw-Hill.
From Lester, D.,
& Templer, D. I. (1992-1993). Death anxiety scales. Omega, 26,
239-253.
