Description
In Denial of the Soul, M. Scott Peck helps us face the reality of doing the work of dying and coming to terms with our own and our loved ones' mortality.
Through a profound exploration of one of the most explosive issues of our age- euthanasia and the right to die-Dr Peck poses the questions we should all ask ourselves and helps us determine the spiritual lessons that dying is meant to teach us.
As a physician, psychiatrist, and theologian, M. Scott Peck is uniquely suited to address the complex issues and paradoxes that have resulted from medicine's ability to perpetuate the mechanisms of life often without preserving life's essence.
In Denial of the Soul, Dr Peck differentiates the many situations that euthanasia is commonly used to describe and offers new definitions that clarify its meaning. He rails against the inadequate treatment of physical pain and gives sensible medical and spiritual perspectives on chronic and terminal emotional and physical pain and illness.
Denial of the Soul grapples with the deeper meanings of life and death and asks whether we have the ethical right to kill ourselves even though we have the power.
Through compelling stories from Dr Peck's own experiences as a physician as well as from other medical cases in which some form of euthanasia was either practised or considered, he explores the core issues that should arise when people face this complex issue.
A deeply moving meditation on what euthanasia reveals about the status of the soul in our age, Denial of the Soul is a masterwork of grace and scholarship, of meaning and medicine, and of compassion and honesty.
Through his discussion of our society's 'denial' of the soul our reluctance to coexist with the mysteries of living, our avoidance of the lessons that dying has to teach us-Dr Peck guides readers through a disturbing emotional and philosophical terrain towards greater spiritual understanding.
His trenchant and sensitive treatment of euthanasia will define our humanity for generations to come.
