Reiner Sorries, Vom Guten Tod


Determining the time and nature of one’s own death and maintaining control of one’s own life and dying to the last – that is what many, especially the seriously ill, wish for. The book summarizes the answers of palliative medicine, psychiatry, medical ethics, and philosophy in dealing with death wishes and explains why there can be no socially accepted and propagated form of suicide assistance. It shows perspectives on what a good handling of death wishes can look like.


“How strange that this sole thing that is certain and common to all, exercises almost no influence on man and that they are the furthest from regarding themselves as the brotherhood of death.” -Nietzsche, The Gay Science


In 1967, Thanatopsycology was part of an interdisciplinary field of research called thanatology. It was initially used to train doctors and nurses with the aim of improving communication with dying people. Gradually, however, attempts have been made to convey the scientific findings in schools and adult education in general terms. For this, the term “death education” arose. While in the USA in a third phase after 1967 Death education began to become popular under the influence of Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, the beginnings of similar efforts in this country can be recorded much later. Both terms – Death Awareness and Death Education – were difficult to translate into Grman when similar ideas began to be implemented in Germany as well.

At least since Immanuel Kant, autonomy has been regarded as the decisive criterion of human dignity.

Even if the forces then dwindle and the physical decay may make death welcome, Jorgmeier does not allow the talk of death to be regarded as redemption and exposes it as a “molecular sleight of hand tha destroys the extinction of existences as natural part of life”. One can only leave death for what it is: death is death. Life is life. And in between there would be no bridge, no sentences, no “meaningful ideologies that overcome death and suffering.

But we die alone, we do not die at the same moment. And therefore we must endure what is never tolerable: the death of others, the death of strangers and known, the hated and loved, the farthest and the next human beings. A face solidifies, and we stand helplessly beside it. Two eyes go blind, and we see the rupture. A man is falling apart, and we continue to know how he was called.

Death is a scandal, a vicious piggy bank! Say this every day before breakfast, scream in your ears, the legislator, yourself. They will refute you, they will tame you, because you all have to die. (Bazon Brock, 1965)

“The lifeless was there earlier than the living. (Sigmund Freud)

“Then he throws the shackles off himself, and he does not just do so in extreme need: but as soon as fate begins to become suspicious of him, he carefully consults with himself whether he should immediately put end to it.” (Seneca)