This blogpost comes with a “trigger warning.” For most, the last 60 days have been witness to the complete disruption of daily life. Many people have died — nearly 250,000 worldwide, 70,000 in the United States — from a virus that the majority of us had never heard of just three, short months ago. Looking forward, humanity seems to be left with only stark and frightening choices between degrees of death and economic devastation. Given these realities, it is perfectly understandable if you would rather ignore this post announcing my interview of Stephen Jenkinson.
If you don’t know him, Stephen is teacher, storyteller, palliative care worker, and author of the award-winning book, Die Wise. I happened to read it back in 2016, right after it was released. Of his work, Stephen observes, “It’s not really a crowd pleaser.” Neither does his subject matter “submit to being clever, coy, or especially ironic — all the high water marks of casual conversation in urban centers.” As the title of his book indicates, he talks about death.
Jenkinson’s thesis? We are death phobic in the extreme, a culture that not only doesn’t believe in, but is actually hostile toward endings. We hide away our elderly, spend our final days separated from family, isolated in hospitals, talk euphemistically about transitions rather than the realities of no longer existing. This fact and this fact alone, he argues, has tremendous consequences for how we live and go about our daily lives.
I reached out a little over a week ago, asking if he would agree to an interview about how our culture’s attitude toward death might be shaping the North American response to the COVID-19 outbreak. From the concentration of deaths in “nursing homes,” breathless reports of “promising treatments” and a vaccine, the championing of healthcare professionals (while many are losing their jobs), and the media’s relentless (and scientifically uninformative) reporting of “hot spots” and “death counts,” it seemed to me we were dancing around the subject.
I’ve done a lot of interviews over the years, but none like this one. Several times, I had goosebumps. I was also concerned. Was Stephen’s direct and unflinching discussion too much? I actually asked several colleagues to watch and offer feedback before agreeing to post:
- U.S. based Psychologist Randy Moss said, “Jenkinson’s calm, yet passionate exegesis about the pandemic exposes our collective ignorance about death while inviting us to think deeply about how to go forward.”
- Long-time friend and therapist, Michele Weiner-Davis called the interview, “fascinating, poetic, and provocative.”
- Swedish colleague Patrik Ulander remarked, “it was a handful, kept me awake at 4:30 this morning. His take is so fundamental and not even really about the corona virus, but instead about us denying the only thing we’re really sure about: we’re all going to die.”
So, over to you. If you do decide to watch, PLEASE leave a comment (here and on youtube).
Until next time,
Scott
Scott D. Miller, Ph.D.
Director, International Center for Clinical Excellence
P.S.: In case you didn’t see it, here’s an interview I did two weeks ago with a CCU physician on the frontlines of the COVID-19 outbreak. As you will see, it affirms and extends much of what Stephen Jenkinson advises, while simultaneously putting a face to the challenges we face as a culture in the near future.
Doble-edged sword. On the other hand we want to live like never dying. On the other side we want an easy and quick death. After working years in hospital I have learned that those who stuck into life while in their final days are inclined to suffer more. And those who let it go it seems to be än easy and calm way.
During covid-19 time it is hard because people have to be separated from the loved ones while in hospital ,maybe dying alone.
It is useful to take up this issue it is always important as long as we humans exist. Jenkinson speaks as things are.
This was my introduction to Steven J. What a gift to hear someone challenge our routine way of looking at the virus as an interruption of our travel down the well-worn path of life. Thanks, Scott. This was an unexpected pleasure. Also thanks for FIT.
This was my introduction to Stephen J. What a gift to hear someone challenge our routine way of looking at the virus as an interruption of our travel down the well-worn path of life. Thanks, Scott. This was an unexpected pleasure. Also thanks for FIT.
Wow – be prepared to stop and also be prepared to be stopped. BRILLIANT!!
WOW! Scott, thanks so much for sharing Stephen with us. What a gift!
WOW! Scott, thanks so much for the gift of sharing Stephen with us!
Wooow! This is overwhelmingly filled me with enlightenment. Thank you so much Dr. Miller for being a reason to deliver one the most obvious yet the most subtle messages in my life.
thank you, scott. a lot to chew on. and thank you for your ongoing communications – they mean a lot to me.
sam
thanks, scott, for this and all you send. you are a channeler and source of wisdom.
there’s a lot to chew on here.
sam hogg
Truly profound. Prior to viewing this I was optimistic that the “normal” could not return, anticipating that we would be forever changed. But, maybe it’s just a select few. Thank you for choosing to share this interview, existential and “timely”.
Freedom from momentum is an interesting concept. Life is momentum, despite death being a lifelong companion. This is especially visible while living on a farm, as Stephen Jenkins does. If you’re a thinking person, you know and accept that we’re dying from the moment we’re born. Yet the human psyche is so scared of that reality, that we use whatever means we can to deny it. As Scott suggested in the interview, we should be “acting different” now that the reality of death is so present in the media. One way to do this which this interview explores would be a daily practice of being “hope free” as Stephen said. There is no hope of escape from death and never has been. Irwin Yalom’s classic artwork “Staring at the Sun” has the sole aim of showing how humans deny the unavoidable event of death. Stephen urges us to stop and acknowledge that fact: individually, socially and culturally. Yet realistically this has never happened in the entire history of humanity. I sense that humanity’s attempts to practice “nominal victory” over death, other cultures and nature will persist, despite lone voices who argue that this is futile, like Stephen Jenkins, Irwin Yalom, Buddha, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and Epicurus, as well as many Chinese and Japanese teachers on the topic of impermanence.
Great interview. I am confused about the concern about a “trigger warning.” Is this lableing just “click bait?”
What Jenkinson is talking about is control issues. Is it our will or God’s will?
We humans think we’re in charge. It is very hard to recognize, acknowledge, and admit we are not.
We create our own hell by engaging in the idols in the world of the ego. The Coronavirus “thing” is a two by four along the side of the head that we humans are not in charge, Mother Nature is.
Well, we don’t like it, and we continue to think we can dominate Her to our will. She will have the last laugh.
As psychotherapists we have built our careers on training people how to adjust to the demands and expectations and requirements of society at the dyadic level, the familial level, the community level, the societal level and the global level. What Jenkinson seems to be getting at is that adjustment is illusory and prolongs the agony. What we should be seeking is transformation from the world of the ego to the world of the Spirit which exists not in temporal time but in eternity.
As the Beatles and Jesus said, “Love is all there is.”
Rich, real, and righteous reframing! Thanks for the thoughtful and thought- provoking conversation.
A deep exploration of some very simple ideas that we seem to like to contemplate. Death is part of life, stopping for a moment in our day or for a lengthy time like now is essential. We can take up the challenge of critical thinking about what life we move onto – rather than impatiently waiting to return to how things were. Things that clearly weren”t working – for us individually, our communities and our planet. We all have a choice – do we take the road less travelled – especially now we may have had a small taste of what it looks and feels like.
Thanks so much for this – was a really wonderful change of pace and focus that I will look to share.and more importantly – live.
I rather thought we are being asked to consider that – in Yalom’s words, we simply return from whence we came. Isn’t Stephen talking about the Acceptance of our inevitable death, rather than a constant need to redefine it?
Can you provide the transcript for the ICU physician interview? I tried using CC but it didn’t pick up everything correctly and I can’t catch all of his important words.
This is probably the most compelling interview I have had the privilege of watching. Thank you Scott.
My attitude towards death and dying changed immeasurably some years ago, having sat at the feet – metaphorically speaking, of Yalom. This has enabled me to better accept my own inevitable demise and to help many people, of all ages, towards accepting their own mortality. I remain grateful for that learning.
Listening to your interview and Stephen Jenkinson’s wise words, feels like I’m moving further towards the final piece in the jigsaw. Although I too have a caveat….a light bulb moment if you will. I have always talked about my ability to ’embrace’ change – and move on in my life. I talk about being motivated towards a goal rather than away from a situation in life that became untenable. I now recognise that I have been running away and I have to re-examine my motives, reconsider my purpose and true objectives and BE PREPARED TO STOP.
This is an exciting moment in my personal and professional development.
There are good people in this world of ours – highly enlightened and, as with present company, enlightening. There are countless people I would include in this list of ‘the enlightened’. Naturally, I see myself only as a work in progress. My saving grace is a desire to learn and that is something I am happy to continue to embrace.
On a sobering note, I have very little faith or expectation in the ability of a majority of the c8bn Homo Sapiens to adapt and change for the better.
Wise man – I don’t think so Carl Linnaeus.
Time will tell. And now appears to be that time.
OK… I felt a bit thick through much of the interview. Sorry Scott. I think I appreciated much of his commentary… but honestly there were holes in my ability to follow along. I guess I am a more linear thinker. Is there a Cole’s Notes?
Wait… I think that means I’m a big part of the problem…
Thank you, Scott, for this amazing video featuring Stephen Jenkinson. Wow!! I had never heard of him until this interview. He put into words and context the malady of the human species. Our arrogance needs to be brought to its knees and it is being done so by a small, microscopic teacher. We are living out our addiction. I had embarked on a project of painting a 100 elephants to agitate against the poaching of elephants, discovering in the process that we need to respect the wild and let the wild be wild instead of our constant incursion into their territory. Jenkinson’s words ring true for me. Could we please have universal healthcare, eradicate poverty, demolish all the -isms, and live with respect towards and harmony with nature? This virus is a clarion call. May we please heed it. Thanks, again, Scott!
I couldn’t get beyond 4:41 alas. There is a queue for death from Covid-19. At the front of the line are the most disadvantaged of our societies: the dispossessed, the indigenous, those with disabilities or in poor health. Any insight about Covid-19 and mortality must start by acknowledging this basic injustice.
I made a comment that I thought was a type of feedback, but maybe I was too late to get it posted or it wasn’t wanted. That’s too bad, as I’d like to go further with the learnings. But as I said, there’s a significant dimension of justice that is stopping me. I’ve had a copy of Yalom’s book on my shelf for a couple of years, I guess it’s past time I read it. Best wishes to you all.
Our pathological fear of death and dying is leading us right into the path of TechnoFascism aided and abetted by Shock Doctrine methods utilizing fear-mongering about the virus.
It’s past time for this part of the conversation to get into the national and global discussion and policy-making and citizen awareness.
Let’s not let the virus kill our democracy through cell phone contact tracing, etc.
Hi Scott,
I appreciated the interview, and I am rather surprised at your concern over posting it. It also seems like I had a different reaction to it, compared to many of the other responses. I did not find the content profound or shocking, nor even particularly surprising.
It took a moment for a meditative listening to settle over me with Jenkins’ talk. I was hoping that when he said there were some spaces that could be free of everyday momentum, that he would mention “psychotherapy,” but he didn’t (he did mention “coaching,” which surprised me, as I see that as very much caught in the entrepreneurial enterprise).
I kept thinking of the frequency with which I talk about death to clients, and times I contrasted to them our orientation with that of Tibetan Buddhist culture, where death and its place in life is fundamental to their thinking from childhood on. (I recognize and am open with clients that I am not presenting them rigorous anthropological facts about Tibet, but rather illustrating a cultural possibility contrasted with our own.) I certainly do not agree that the human psyche automatically rejects death or finds it impossible to deeply integrate its existence; nor do I agree that “realistically this [deep acceptance of death as a part of life] has never happened in the entire history of humanity.” In fact, I believe that death-phobia and denial is relatively recent, historically, perhaps 500 or so years old, a development of Cartesian attitudes towards nature, the body, technology, psychology, “progress,” and so on. It seems to me that most pre-modern cultures and societies had, for many reasons, completely different, much more aware, accepting, and respectful places for death. Fear, yes; rejection,… Mostly nobody wants or likes the idea or the realities of dying, but this does not mean wholesale denial of its place in human life and society, the “manic defences” (ala the Kleiniens) that Jenkins mentions.
Even more so, it has always seemed to me that therapy is always addressing weakness, failure, helplessness, inadequacy, defeat, neediness, loss, powerlessness, vulnerabilty, – the list goes on – the limitations that are fundamentally inherent in individual human life, of which death is the most obvious and final. Martha Nusbaum points out that in the middle ages these existential aspects of human limitation were related to the flaws of “original sin,” and collectively called “human shame,” – shame being another topic finally finding its clinical due. In therapy, we don’t encourage people to “get rid of” these, do we ? to ignore or “move on past” and forget them ? These are basic facts of human existence to which we submit every day. Life, – and therapy, – has to make a place for these experiences. (Was it RJ Lifton that called them “death analogues” ?) So we therapists do stop before the many faces of death and limitation, and we see where they lead us and our patients. We don’t control, or fix, or solve these; if honored, they carry us somewhere new.
Today, of course, with the corona virus and covid-19, we are confronted with our limitations and inadequacies on a mass, rather than merely personal scale. Furthermore, unlike crises of the last 90 years (since the Great Depression, I think), the inadequacies, limitations, and failures of our institutions – economic, social, political, medical, scientific, communication, government – are being continuously thrust upon us in our daily lives….. Perhaps we’ll look back one day and see that a new New Deal arose – but who knows ? Is it any surprise that Jenkins’ offering “isn’t really a crowd pleaser” that one can use in “being clever, coy, or especially ironic” ?
I found Jenkins to be congenial in the presentation of dark matters that he has clearly worked his way through over a long time. He meandered a bit as the subject took him and was thankfully without any totalizing or pedantic bent, even though as he admits, the emotions provoked by the subject call out for a salve or even some kind of messianic solution.
I also have to compliment you, Scott, the interviewer, for your light touch. It encouraged your interviewee to maintain an authenticity and balance that reached for poetry at times, and the self-expression was obviously a pleasure for him. And that made it a pleasure for me, listening.
Thanks for your reply Larry and kind words about the interview. I can tell you, it was a pleasure to speak with him. I think you make an important point about psychotherapy.
And while I can’t speak for Stephen, I suspect he might suggest that our field is (or has become) part of the problem. As a field, we’ve decided to locate many, if not most, of the problems people present with, as being “inside their heads” rather than the world that surrounds them. We teach coping and adjustment rather than meaning, resistance, and revolution. We facilitate “flight,” as he might term it, rather than helping people “be prepared to stop.”
Wow.
My first reaction to your comment was to cry out “that’s not true ! I’m a *family* therapst from way back ! People’s problems are the products of long-standing interactional patterns in their relationships and their embeddedness in social practices and narratives ! Intervening through promoting changes in *others’* behaviors and in the wider settings of problem areas are as just as (often more) useful in the therapeutic unwinding of people’s difficulties in living ! The longer I have been practicing, the more permeable or merely mythical that dividing line between “inner” and “outer” has become, and the more obvious has become the the presence in their difficulties of (and need for change in) cultural, political, economic (etc) realities !…… Therapy is a micro-environment that runs on (somewhat) different rules and encourages and supports the development creative alternatives to the obvious pathologies of everyday life for both therapists and clients ! …. ”
After re-reading your comments, however, I have to agree ! My first reaction can likely be traced to my beginning to learn therapy 50 years ago, when the the environment was bursting with new approaches and the field was a fountain for the radical in every way. I feel the promises of that period have petered out for the most (* not all ! * ) part in the profesional area we know as psychotherapy.
That is indeed part of the loss and sadness, for me, in what Stephen Jenkins speaks to.
Wow – one could have evening dialogue (or porch discussions) on at least ten concepts referenced.
Hello Scott,
I too, have been thinking a great deal about this interview. I have been interested for quite some time in how existential issues impact the problems that clients bring into my office in addition to my own challenges facing my mortality.
I consider homo sapiens ability to conceptualize the future and our own demise as one of the primary distinctions between us and other species. Although this future vision allows us to set and work towards outcomes beyond simple survival, it also leaves us with a significant emotional challenge. We need to address the apparently terrifying prospect of our own deaths.
Most of my work is with patient’s suffering from chronic pain. Many of these patients come to me struggling with the idea that their bodies are not working the way they “should” and the doctors have been unable to fix them. It is indeed a challenge to live with chronic pain, but the almost sole focus on medical intervention as a way to address it, I think also reflects our difficulty with the transient nature of our life reflected in the fallibility of our bodies predicting its ultimate end.
Like so many things in psychology, how well we answer the challenges presented by our mortality varies due to many different factors. When you look at the public’s response to Covid we see what happens when people are more directly faced with the idea of death. Some wear masks and some show up at state capitals with signs and semiautomatic weapons. I am sure that these responses are working for both groups on some emotional level. As a psychologist, I am not sure how we judge the effectiveness of these approaches when they may have very different implications for the individual versus society.
Thanks for posting this thought provoking interview.
Respectfully submitted, Mike