title: You can only die thrice: death and dying of a human body in psychoanalytical perspective.
abstract: This paper compares the (cultural) necessity of death/dying, perceived as a sequence of Imaginary--Real--Symbolic, to Van Gennep's three-staged rite of passage. If this logic is disrupted, the subject responsible necessitates attribution of special social status and can come to embody the imagery of a life worth living. This philosophical framework, which includes epistemologies borrowed from medical anthropology, demonstrates there is more for humans to lose than biological (Real) life; a far greater loss is to exist without (Symbolic) reason to live. A critique of prevalent quantitative methodology in assessing links between spirituality and the human body is added.
authors.affiliation: Fakulteta za družbene vede, Univerza v Ljubljani, Kardeljeva ploščad 5, 1000, Ljubljana, Slovenia. karmen.sterk@fdv.uni-lj.si
authors.forename: Karmen
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Sterk
mesh_terms: D000884:Anthropology, Cultural / Q000266:history*; D001293:Attitude to Death; D049673:History, 20th Century; D018594:Human Body; D006801:Humans; D028723:Personhood; D012069:Religion and Psychology; D017524:Slovenia; D029181:Spirituality