Elisabeth Kübler-Ross: biography of this Swiss psychiatrist, grief expert

The 20th century was a time of immense advances in psychology, thanks to a whole generation of important authors. One of them was Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, whose life we ​​will learn below.

In this biography of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross We will review both the most relevant events in her life and her most valuable contributions to the field of knowledge to which she dedicated practically her entire professional career.

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Short biography of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

Elisabeth Kübler-Ross was born in the city of Zurich, Switzerland, in 1926. Her birth was traumatic, since it belonged to a multiple birth in which there were, in addition to her, two identical twins, who made up a group of triplets. Despite her complications, her mother was able to support all of them.

It was not the only hospital experience that she would go through at her young age, since at just five years old she became seriously ill with pneumonia. It was during this stage that she witnessed one of the scenes that would mark her future career. While she was in the hospital, one of her roommates passed away. She then she was aware of what death meant, as an inexorable part of life.

During his adolescence, World War II broke out. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, at this time, collaborated in a refugee camp in her city. At the end of the war, she continued with this type of aid work in different European countries. Among all of them, there was one that was another milestone for her; It is about the Majdanek death camp, located in Poland.

In that gloomy place, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross learned a lot about death, but also compassion and resilience, through the experiences that its survivors related to her. This was probably one of the events that determined the direction that her professional life would take in the future, and it would be none other than to seek a way to help others in the most difficult.

She combined different jobs, always in hospital contexts and even as a volunteer, while studying medicine at the University of Zurich. She completed this training in 1957. Just a year later she married Emanuel Ross, whom she had known during her career and who came from the United States, so they decided to move to that country after getting married.

Career development

Once in the US, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross was able to complete a medical residency, specializing in psychiatry, at a New York hospital, the Manhattan Psychiatric Center. In this place he began to develop methodologies that would represent an alternative to the usual treatments received by patients diagnosed with schizophrenia or other serious conditions.

One of the maxims of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross was to carry out work on a psychological level that would increase the self-esteem and well-being of the inmates, as opposed to the use of medication that used to be used routinely to stabilize the mood. Likewise, he tried to facilitate the contact of the sick with the outside world and give them a close treatment.

Ultimately, what she was trying to do was humanize the way doctors related to patients, and that at times it was too cold and even cruel. To achieve her goal, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross developed an individualized care program. The success was undeniable. Almost all of the patients who participated in this program (specifically 94%), experienced some degree of improvement.

From New York he moved to Colorado, this time to teach at the university. It was the year 1962. The central message that he tried to convey to his students during this stage was to behave with patients not only as scientists, but also and above all as human beings, and thus understand how they were feeling in really difficult moments.

Palliative care program development

In 1965, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross moved again, this time to Chicago. She supplemented her psychiatric training with an extensive psychoanalysis program. She began working at the Pritzker School of Medicine, belonging to the University of Chicago; it was in this place that she began a revolutionary program with terminal patients.

What Elisabeth did was set up interviews where these people could talk to medical students. As a result of this fact, her popularity both hers in the medical field and outside of it became enormous. So much so that she made the determination to abandon teaching and focus on studies on the psychological processes associated with death, which was the area in which she wanted to help her.

In the 1970s, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross traveled the world, establishing palliative care programs in hospitals in more than twenty countries. She became the eminence worldwide in this matter, so she was able to give lectures and interviews in the most prestigious places, exposing her ideas on the matter.

Her ultimate goal was to ensure that all people could die with dignity, being respected and understood as the human beings that they were.

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Shanti Nilaya Foundation

But Elisabeth Kübler-Ross wanted to go one step further. So She decided to acquire a piece of land located in the city of Escondido, in California, to found a sanctuary called Shanti Nilaya, Hogar de Paz.. The purpose of this place was to serve as a location for very sick people, where they could be cured or have a peaceful transition from life to death.

Her contact with so many people on the verge of death, aroused another interest in Elisabeth, and it was precisely the experiences close to this of hers. Her greatest concern revolved around the testimonies of people who had been resuscitated through medical maneuvers. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross wanted to know her experiences and experiences during that trance between life and death.

However, Shanti Nilaya's center suffered a severe setback as a result of a scandal caused by a hoax concocted by one of her collaborators, Jay Barham. This man, who had founded the Church of the Facet of Divinity, managed to convince the faithful of the same that one could contact the spirits of the dead through relationships sexual. This scandal saw Elisabeth break up with Barham and others.

Equally, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross's approach to concepts such as spiritism or out-of-body experiences, was a setback for her reputation. During this time, she published a book called On Death and the Dying, in which she recounted interviews with terminally ill patients. She would later publish other more controversial ones, such as On life after death, or The tunnel and the light, in line with her esoteric beliefs.

The stages of grief

Probably the greatest contribution of Elisabeth Kübler-Ross was the creation of the model of the five stages of mourning., also called the Kübler-Ross model, included precisely in her work, On Death and the Dying. It is a theory that quickly gained enormous popularity, although it lacks a substantiated empirical basis.

What Elisabeth Kübler-Ross raised with this model is that terminal patients, and anyone who is certain that they will die soon, goes through a process divided into five phases or stages. The first one is denial, and therefore he will refuse to believe that she is really going to die, thinking that it is a mistake or that something will heal her in some way.

The second is that of anger, anger at knowing that death is really inevitable and therefore there is no remedy for her situation. The third is negotiation, trying to find a pact by which he would be able to live longer. Fourth, depression would come, the sadness in which they would sink when they understood the inevitability of their situation.

Finally, the fifth stage would take place, which is none other than acceptance. The final acceptance that they are going to die, nothing can be done to prevent it, but despite it, they are fine.

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Illness and later years

After starting another series of projects, such as the attempt to create a shelter for children with HIV, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross she suffered several strokes that led to the paralysis of half of her body. For this reason, she was bedridden in a wheelchair., knowing that death, that phenomenon that she had studied all her life, was approaching, this time for her. It was 1995, but she still had almost a decade ahead of her.

Finally, in 2004, and after living the last stage of her life in a residence in Scottsdale, Arizona, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross passed away at the age of 78. In that same place, her son, Ken Ross, created a foundation in her name.

Bibliographic references:

• Klass, D. (2005). Elisabeth Kübler-Ross: Facing Death. The Gerontologist.
• Kübler-Ross, E. (2017). On Death and the Dying: Relief from Psychological Suffering. Penguin Random House.
• Kuczewski, M.G. (2019). Everything I really needed to know to be a clinical ethicist, I learned from Elisabeth Kübler-Ross. The American Journal of Bioethics. Taylor & Francis.