Journey from Birth to Death – A new paradigm for death sciences research by Dr. Ines Testoni

Birth and death are the two different natural processes, but both create an impact of psychological, philosophical and sociological problems in one’s life. Both these process were correlated with cultural system worldwide. Most of the people will correlate these processes with the religions in developing and even in developed countries. Death process is the one, which yields more complications socially, psychologically with others life when compared with birth process. Economists, politicians, theologists, social activist, and cultural factors have influenced the way in which we live and the way in which we die.

In case of research point of view, ideas on death and dying (knowledge about existence, believing in god, nature of well being and so on) are an important object of study. Thanatology is the area of studies on death sciences, where the various approaches are integrated in order to develop a competence towards the forms through which people cope with death and dying, life existence, loss, trauma, in order to help them with counselling and death education. With the psychological point of view, there exist many instruments, statistical tools to evaluate the death anxiety, meaning for well being life etc.  

Professor Ines Testoni is the one who wants to study the ontological representations of death and has produced a scale that integrates psychological and philosophical tools. Her studies used to correlate the various parameters or scale to evaluate fear of death depression, hopelessness and desperation on the basis of the nihilistic beliefs that death is annihilation. Through the Testoni Death Representations Scale (TDRS), she studies how people represent the death with psychological, social and cultural opinions. Results shows how in a secularized society, after the decline of the metaphysical explanation of the world, people mostly believe that after death there will be nothing at all. Afterlife is a concept that has been in used by much type of cultural systems. However, nowadays, people believes that humans are also one type of animal, immortality is a myth for them, they believe on the concept of death as a natural process. This perspective is widely assumed also by all sciences, and by epistemology of psychology as well. In her opinion, this representation causes a great existential anguish, and this is why, nowadays, death is widely censored in everyday life. Assuming the eternalist foundation of the philosopher Emanuele Severino, in her work Professor Ines Testoni discusses the impossibility of annihilation, and how this rational perspective may help people to reconsider the meaning of life on the basis of the afterlife. Starting from this perspective, it is possible to find a new paradigmwhich permits to explain many experiences that the normal science cannot understand, For example, the near death experiences (NDE’s). From a mere empirical point of view, NDEs are profound subjective experiences occurring in critical conditions that might be associated with loss of consciousness, such as in cardiac arrest, head injury, shock, and general anesthesia, specified anaesthesia, and the patients who recovered from coma. Through this new paradigm, Professor Ines Testoni is very keen in explaining how these phenomena are simply a form of testimony that death is a travel or journey in eternity, form one to another place.

Professor Ines Testoni is the only scientist who is keenly working/worked towards exhibiting the research on death sciences towards integrating death afterlife, existence, terror management theory, and producing various tools and scales for evaluating the death anxiety, fear, joy of living, new paradigms towards existence of life, near death experiences etc. Prfoessor Ines Testoni had studied vigorously and produced number of remarkable results in death education and also about society’s/cultural responses towards large scale death analysis. We are expecting for Professor Ines Testoni from which one can understand about the natural process, the journey between birth and death.

About Ines Testoni:

She is professor of Social Psychology, director of the Master in Death Studies & The End of Life (University of Padova) and fellow research at the Emili Sagol Creative Arts Therapies Research Center, University of Haifa, Israel. She is also psychotherapist, psychodramatist and philosopher, pupil of the most important Italian philosopher Emanuele Severino. Her principal themes of research and interest concern the relationship among death, psychological discomfort and existential suffering. Specifically, she studies the representations of the death, bereavement and anticipatory mourning, spirituality, end-of-life, mental and social representations of health and illness. She applies her competencies in philosophy, thanathology, psychodrama and art therapy in the field of death education, with children, adolescents, young adults and health professionals.

The theme of death is the pivot through she moves other aspects of her psychological research. In this field and in the interest in an epistemological re-foundation of the relationship between philosophy and psychology, specific themes are increased:  cultures of death and Terror Management Theory; Death Education; thanatology; social psychology and bioethics; mind/brain problem; representation of death and coping; suicide; suicide prevention; representations of the body; nihilism and suffering. An important attention has been also attributed to the problem of dependences, related with the self-injuring behaviour and the suicide ideation. She also studies the problem of gender-based violence linked to the anguish of death. She is the author of many national and international operas and is a member of national and international Scientific Associations. She has also led some national and European projects.

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