Investigated attitudes of bereaved individuals toward selected funeral practices. Correlated sex, closeness to deceased, and religious preference to timing of the death, viewing at funeral home and location of funeral service. Found closeness of relationship to deceased emerged as a significant variable in assessing attitudes toward certain…

An actualized group of helping professionals and a nonactualized group of mental patients visualized their own aging process. The actualized group had more successful completion, indicating a fantasy of dying a natural death in old age. Ability to face death appears to be a concomitant of actualized authentic existence. (JAC)

Reviews approaches to individual counseling with adult dying clients. Briefly describes approaches and their potential strengths and weaknesses. Different counseling treatments are integrated within the framework of matching treatments with clients. Suggests categorizing clients in terms of four ways of responding to death: overcoming,…

Studied whether memories of deceased play active roles in ongoing lives of survivors. Seventy-one people described a significant death. Four roles were reliably identified and labeled role model, situation specific guidance, values clarification, and remembrance formation. Role adoption was predicted by closeness of relationship and suddenness of…