The near-death experience as status passage

Allan Kellehear

Social Science & Medicine, 1990, vol. 31, issue 8, 933-939

Abstract: Near-death experiences are identity transitions with many of the major social features of status passage as these were originally formulated by Glaser and Strauss (Status Passage, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London 1971). These features are described and then compared with the similar experience of being a castaway after shipwreck. In this way, the clinical near-death experience can be analysed as one of a number of social near-death experiences. Viewed as status passage many of the psychological reactions can be usefully seen as context dependent processes rather than simply defence mechanisms or products of neurophysiology.

Keywords: castaways; death; and; dying; sociology; near-death; experiences; status; passage; theory (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1990
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0277-9536(90)90033-O
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:socmed:v:31:y:1990:i:8:p:933-939

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/supportfaq.cws_home/regional
http://www.elsevier. ... _01_ooc_1&version=01

Access Statistics for this article

Social Science & Medicine is currently edited by Ichiro (I.) Kawachi and S.V. (S.V.) Subramanian

More articles in Social Science & Medicine from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().