<Invited Articles>Death in Middle Adulthood: A Case Study of a Japanese Woman with Terminal Cancer

Abstract

What is the focus of Death-and-Life Studies? (In Japan, we use the English term “Death-and-Life Studies” rather than “Thanatology, ” for the field covers not only “death, ” but concerns both “life” and “death”). This broad scientific study still holds many possibilities concerning study and research from “birth to life” and “death.” People can speak of their births through acquired memory. People can experience death as their own but cannot speak of it in the first person; we have not yet resolved a method for people to speak of their own experience of death, nor hear of it. That is, we gaze at life and death standing in between these two momentary but momentous experiences. Cancer patients face some issues embedded uniquely in their disease, however, they also face issues inseparable from their previous life experiences (including physical, social, psychological, and spiritual pain). This research focuses further on the question of “self-existence” which has much to do with “life” and “death.” In this research, I interviewed a terminal cancer patient using a phenomenological method. The interview consisted of watching the patient as she went through the process of living her life with her family, and focusing on the things she underwent as she experienced and departed from life. Through interviews with a middle aged female patient, this research attempts to shed some light on “death” and “life” not merely as personal issues, but as coming from relationships centering around family members. 人のその一生の流れを包含する生涯発達心理学では、死はどのような意味を持つものとして語られてきたのだろうか。例えば、人の生きる過程を年齢段階という軸に沿って捉える視点からは、死は「老いることの意味」として中年期以降に着目され、人は自分の死を自覚することによって喪失感や焦りを感じ、その一方で死を自覚するからこそ、残された生への思いが強くなるという生への渇望として死の意味が説かれる（やまだ2002）。このような死を生の終わりとしてどう理解し受容するのかという視点からは、自分が死ぬ存在であることをその内に抱えながら生きることや、死を見送る者の生と逝く者の生が重なりながら並走し、互いの生の中に死という出来事があるという死生の意味の動的な部分をみつめる視点を欠いている、年齢に沿った発達という人前の死生の普遍性だけではなく、個々人が持つ死生の意味をも包含する変様性にも着目する必要があるといえる。そこで本稿では、自らの死を考えながら生きることを余議なくされている末期癌患者との対話を取り上げ、死から照らし出された生の意味、死に逝く当事者にとっての死生の意味 について、死生の固有性を含めた新たな生涯発達論について論じた。