Elisabeth’s wheelchair photographed shortly after she passed; photo by her son, Ken Ross.
Biography:
Dr. Kübler-Ross was born as one of triplet sisters in Zurich, Switzerland, on July 8, 1926. Always spirited, she decided upon a medical career early in her childhood against the wishes of her father. The focus of her work in death and dying crystallized in 1945. She was a member of the International Voluntary Service for Peace who helped in ravaged communities after World War II. In the concentration camp, Maidanek, carved into the walls where prisoners spent their final hours, she discovered the symbolic butterflies which would become her symbol of the beautiful transformation that she believed occurred at the time of death.
After graduating from medical school at the University of Zurich, where she met future husband and fellow medical student Emanuel “Manny” Robert Ross, she came to the United States in 1958. She worked in major hospitals in New York, Colorado, and Chicago, and she was appalled by the standard treatment of dying patients.” They were shunned and abused; nobody was honest with them,” she said. Unlike her colleagues, she made it a point to sit with terminal patients, listening as they poured out their hearts to her. While simultaneously raising two small children, she began giving lectures featuring dying patients who talked about their most intimate dying experiences. “My goal was to break through the layer of professional denial that prohibited patients from airing their inner-most concerns,” she wrote.
Her bestselling first book, On Death and Dying, 1969, made her an internationally-renowned author. Even today, her trail-blazing book is required reading in most major medical, nursing, and psychology programs. A 1969 Life Magazine article outlining her work gave further mainstream credibility and awareness to this new way of dealing with dying patients, although her conclusions were quite revolutionary at the time. “People today find it hard to believe that her now commonly-accepted conclusions were quite revolutionary at the time,” said her sister, Eva Bacher. “She was always very proud that her work helped to bring the hospice movement into the mainstream in the United States.” Throughout the 1970’s, Dr. Kübler-Ross led hundreds of workshops and spoke to standing-room-only crowds throughout the world. The “five psychological stages of dying” (denial, anger, bargaining, depression and finally acceptance) outlined in her book became accepted as common knowledge throughout the world. She continued to both learn and teach in many important medical facilities and hospitals as her influence grew.
She assumed the Presidency of the Elisabeth Kübler-Ross Center and the Shanti Nilaya Growth and Healing Center in the late 1970’s, a base from which she gave “Life, Death and Transition” workshops worldwide. She also continued her personal interest in mysticism, the afterlife, and other less commonly accepted forms of therapy. In the 1980’s, she purchased a 300-acre farm in Head Waters, Virginia, to serve as a healing and workshop center, and called it Healing Waters. “Always controversial, she turned her focus at the time into helping babies born with AIDS when nobody else wanted anything to do with them,” said Frances Leuthy, who was her assistant and ran the Virginia center. She officially retired to Arizona in 1995, after a series of serious strokes debilitated her body, and a fire, which destroyed her house and all of her belongings. She left her farm behind for a fresh start near to son, Kenneth.
Even in retirement, she continued to receive hundreds of visitors from around the world, including celebrities such as Mohammed Ali, Oprah, Susan Sarandon, and Shirley MacLaine. The March 29, 1999 issue of Time Magazine named her one of “The Century’s Greatest Minds” in a summary of the 100 greatest scientists and thinkers of the century. Throughout her life, she remained a source of inspiration for students with similar interests, and she frequently contributed forewords, chapters, and sections to various books on death, dying, and grief. She earned 20 honorary degrees from colleges and universities nationwide, and played an active role in numerous advisory boards, committees, and societies. Notably, she was a founding member of the American Holistic Medical Association and a co-founder of the International Work Group on Death, Dying and Bereavement (IWG).
Always outspoken, her work in challenging the medical profession to change its view of dying patients brought about great change and advanced many important concepts such as living wills, home health care, and helping patients to die with dignity and respect. “She always was, and will continue to be, a strong voice for the rights of terminally ill patients,” noted Dr. Gregg Furth, New York Jungian psychologist, a close family friend and supporter.
In her final years, she anticipated her own transition with a sense of both frustration and acceptance and grappled with the challenge of guiding others in facing their mortality while struggling to control her own. Unafraid of death, she held to her belief that “Life doesn’t end when you die; it starts.” She is survived by her son Kenneth Lawrence, a photographer in Scottsdale, Arizona; her daughter Barbara Lee Rothweiler, a clinical psychologist in Wausau, Wisconsin (with her husband Jeffrey); and her granddaughters Sylvia and Emma. She was preceded in death by her former husband Manny, her brother Ernst, and her sister Erika. Her sister Eva passed away in December 2019 at the age of 93.
Once saying of her impending death, “I am like a plane that has left the gate and not taken off. I would rather go back to the gate or fly away.”