Fembio Special: Women from Zurich
Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
born on July 8, 1926 in Zurich, Switzerland
died on August 24, 2004 in Scottsdale, Arizona, USA
Swiss-American psychiatrist; death and dying researcher
20th anniversary of her death on August 24, 2024
Biography
Anyone with 23 honorary doctorates to her name must have achieved something groundbreaking. She herself gave a more dispassionate summary of her work: she had “brought dying out of the closet.”
She had to finance her medical training on her own as her father had refused to support her; he had wanted her under his control and working as a secretary in his company. Her work as a doctor began at the age of 30 in the United States. At that time the dying were still shunted out of sight into bathrooms where they were left to their own devices; death was taboo. Hospitals were concerned about their reputation - “you didn't die” there. Despite the massive resistance she faced from colleagues, Kübler-Ross tended to the dying, earning the gratitude of her patients. She documented their experiences and near-death encounters in On Death & Dying (1969) – a book which made her famous throughout the world.
She regarded the ensuing international lectures that she gave as a necessary - albeit extremely strenuous - commitment. But she had incredible mental and physical strength, which she had already discovered in herself at a young age when working in France, Belgium, Sweden and Poland for the International Voluntary Service for Peace. She had passed on her strength to others during the relief work. Her profound compassion enabled her to establish a rapport with even those who were severely depressed or psychotic. However, at the time love as a means of healing was not accepted by the medical community.
In 1977, she founded the “Shanti Nilaya” meeting center, offering workshops that helped many people overcome their fears of life and death. This center and her home were destroyed by storms and fire. She then became involved with AIDS patients in prisons and set up a farm in Virginia to care for 20 babies infected with AIDS. This plan failed due to the fears of the local population. Kübler-Ross lost everything she owned - the records of her work – when the farm burnt down in a fire presumably set by an arsonist.
She had always worked hard, but she was forced to retire after experiencing two strokes. Confined to her bed by further strokes, she spent the last years of her life in Scottsdale, Arizona. She was taught the patience she had never had in life during what was an agonizingly slow process of dying. In the end she was certain that by “shedding the physical body like the butterfly shedding its cocoon,” she would “transition to a higher state of consciousness.”
(Text from 2005; translated with DeepL.com; edited by Ramona Fararo, 2024)
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