Biography
Swiss psychiatrist and author who is noted for her work with death and
the dying. Her first book, "On Death and Dying," 1969, introduced the five
stages of dying; denial, isolation, anger, bargaining and depression,
before acceptance; all efforts to maintain power over one's own death.
Throughout her life, she has assisted perhaps 20,000 people through their
transition into an afterlife. With total belief in the continuity of life
spirit through the experience of death, she hit upon a ground breaking
method of counseling, listening to the patient first and then continuing
with the medical techniques.
Kubler-Ross was the first born of triplet girls, a mere two pounds,
with survival uncertain. She was almost an alter ego to her identical
triplet Erika who was very sick as a teenager. At 18 she left home alone
to see what she could do for the war-ravaged people of France and then
Poland. Against the wishes of her father she struggled to become a
physician. Her dad was a tyrannical bureaucrat who refused to recognize
her desire to become a doctor, starting her lifetime of bucking authority.
When she finished school and would not go to work for her dad, he threw
her out of the house. She spent years working as a lab assistant while
going to medical school. As WW II ended, she did volunteer work through
ravaged Europe.
As a young doctor, she married Emanuel Ross, an American
neuropathologist. Following two miscarriages, they had a son, Ken in 1960,
two more miscarriages and a daughter, Barbara in 1964. At the hospital
where she worked, she was most affected by the dismissal and lack of
support for terminal patients. With her determination and dedication, she
brought many of them back to health. Eventually she was drawn to those
most truly abandoned by our society, namely the dying.
At the University of Colorado, Kubler-Ross began lecturing about the
process of dying. By the time the family moved to Chicago, her lectures
were attracting standing-room-only. She felt strongly that people often
clung to life because of unfinished business and once they brought their
affairs into order, making amends, saying goodbyes and concluding their
mundane arrangements, that they could have a peaceful, even happy death.
Her impact was revolutionary.
Though world-traveled for her lectures, her personal style offended
many. Certainly inspirational and indisputably charismatic, she was also
known as abrasive and critical of the medical profession. Her compassion
and love of humanity shone through, but her detractors found her downright
arrogant. When she went public with her belief in the spirit world and, in
the late '70s began speaking of her own "spooks," the medical
establishment labeled her a kook. Over the years, she reported several
out-of-body experiences, including two near-death events (due to a bowel
obstruction, and to cardiac fibrillation). She personally reported on the
light, the peace, the overwhelming love of the experiences. During one
endless night of agony, she felt that she was reliving the deaths of all
her patients, and after going through the pain and fear, emerged with
cosmic consciousness.
Kübler-Ross is an ardent hiker, mountain climber and skier. She admits
to a short fuse, great highs and lows and an overly idealistic nature. She
has an excellent memory, nearly total recall, and she is a workaholic. In
1979 she caused concern amongst her colleagues with her interests in the
occult. She began an association with medium Rev. Jay Barham and his wife,
Marti, whom she had first met in 1976, to combine their work in counseling
and therapy. Kubler persuaded her husband, Manny, to purchase a 42-acre
compound to use as a site for healing. The Barham method included
psychodrama, sex, trances and séances, vivid cult components. Through
public and professional disapproval, Kubler reevaluated her connection
with the Barhams, but not after her husband asked for a divorce from their
21-year-marriage.
After making a clean break with Barham, her San Diego house burned to
the ground. Investigators suspected arson but no charges were ever filed.
She then bought a 300-acre farm in the Shenandoah Valley, moving in 1984.
When she announced that she was adopting 20 AIDS babies, this house was
also torched, burning all her possessions, pictures, papers, memories. Her
pet llama had been shot. Again, no charges were filed. At this point, her
son whisked her off to Arizona, afraid for her safety.
As soon as she was settled, she had the first of a series of strokes
that left her incapacitated and massively frustrated. Confined to a
wheelchair in 1996, she smokes and fumes that the only thing that works is
her brain. In her 30 years of work she has gained international renown as
a pioneer in her field, transforming the medical profession's attitudes
toward a once taboo subject. Her books have sold millions, translated into
20 languages, and her most influential ideas have helped transform
medicine. She now lives in Arizona and has recently collaborated with
David Kessler on her latest book, “Life Lessons,” on life and living.
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Kubler-Ross Quotes:
- I have never met a person whose greatest need was anything other
than real, unconditional love. You can find it in a simple act of
kindness toward someone who needs help. There is no mistaking love. You
feel it in your heart. It is the common fiber of life, the flame that
heals our soul, energizes our spirit and supplies passion to our lives.
It is our connection to God and to each other.
- If we could raise one generation with unconditional love, there
would be no Hitlers. We need to teach the next generation of children
from Day One that they are responsible for their lives. Mankind's
greatest gift, also its greatest curse, is that we have free choice. We
can make our choices built from love or from fear.
- It is not the end of the physical body that should worry us. Rather,
our concern must be to live while we're alive – to release our inner
selves from the spiritual death that comes with living behind a façade
designed to conform to external definitions of who and what we are.
- Learn to get in touch with the silence within yourself, and know
that everything in life has purpose. There are no mistakes, no
coincidences, all events are blessings given to us to learn from.
- I've told my children that when I die, to release balloons in the
sky to celebrate that I graduated. For me, death is a graduation.
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What Do You Think?
Kubler-Ross attended over 20,000 deaths and talked with hundreds of
people who had died and come back to tell their tale. In public lectures
she would proudly state that she was not a tofu-eating, meditating,
California type. She ate meat, smoked, and was subject to extreme
emotions, but she consistently chose the path of unconditional love. As
a consequence, she was blessed with many mystical experiences of cosmic
oneness and communications with spirits that had passed to the other
side. Her memoir, The Wheel of Life, is the most inspiring book I have
read in years.
- Why is this woman destined to work with the dying? She has no planets
in the 8th house and only one in Scorpio.
- Kubler-Ross fought all her life to create a safe place for people to
talk about taboo topics. First it was about the dying process and then
about life after death. She attracted a great deal of animosity from
authority figures. These firestorms weren't just metaphorical – her
house was twice burned to the ground. Is this the chart of a fighter who
goes looking for battles or were the firestorms just a natural
consequence of trying to bring unconditional love into a culture that
found it threatening?
- In her personal life, Kubler-Ross paid dearly for her conviction to
tread the path of truth-telling and unconditional love. Her husband
divorced her and she had to leave her children with her husband so she
could lecture around the world. She knew she was loved by thousands and
was never truly alone, but that did not keep her from getting lonely.
She expresses it poignantly in her memoirs, "Millions of people in the
world had mates, lovers, partners and so on. But how many others had the
thrill and comfort of being carried in the palm of His hand? No, I would
no longer complain of feeling sorry for myself for not having a shoulder
to cry on. In my heart, I knew I was never alone. I had received what I
needed. Frequently, as I had on that night, I longed for a companion,
for someone to love, for a hug or a shoulder to lean on – something I
never found ... But I received other gifts, which few people ever
experienced, and if I could have traded them, I would have refused. That
I knew." (p. 213) Is the trade-off written in her chart or is this just
a natural consequence for those who choose God and unconditional love
above all?
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