Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
(July 8, 1926 – August 24, 2004)
was a Swiss-American psychiatrist, a pioneer in near-death studies, and author of the internationally best-selling book, On Death and Dying (1969), where she first discussed her theory of the five stages of grief, also known as the "Kübler-Ross model".
In 1970, Kübler-Ross delivered the Ingersoll Lecture at Harvard University, focusing on her book, On Death and Dying. By July 1982, Kübler-Ross had taught 125,000 students in death and dying courses in colleges, seminaries, medical schools, hospitals, and social-work institutions. In 1999, the New York Public Library named "On Death and Dying" one of its "Books of the Century," and Time magazine recognized her as one of the "100 Most Important Thinkers" of the 20th century. Throughout her career, Kübler-Ross received over 100 awards, including twenty honorary degrees, and was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame in 2007. In 2024, Simon & Schuster released a list of their 100 most notable books, including Kübler-Ross's "On Death & Dying." Stanford University's Green Library currently houses her remaining archives which are available for study.
Kübler-Ross changed the way that the world looks at the terminally ill, she pioneered hospice care, palliative care, bioethics, and near-death research, and was the first to bring terminally ill individuals' lives to the public eye. Kübler-Ross was the driving force behind the movement for doctors and nurses alike to "treat the dying with dignity". Balfour Mount, the first palliative care physician in Canada and the person who coined the term palliative care, credits Kübler-Ross with sparking his interest in end-of-life care. Kübler-Ross wrote over 20 books on death and dying, which have been translated into 44 languages.At the end of her life she was mentally active, co-authoring two books with David Kessler including On Grief and Grieving (2005). In 2018 Stanford University acquired the Kübler-Ross archives from her family and has started building a digital library of her papers, interviews and other archival material.
Following extensive work with dying patients, Kübler-Ross published On Death and Dying in 1969, in which she proposed the now famous "five stages" model as a pattern of adjustment: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. This model has since become widely accepted in academia and by the general public. In the graphic that was included in "On Death & Dying", Kübler-Ross mentions other emotions as being a part of this journey including: shock, partial denial, preparatory grief (anticipatory grief), hope, and decathexis.
The five-stage model has received some criticism by academics who argue against approaches that universally apply it to all bereaved groups or claim that grief should be expressed in a set number of rigidly linear stages. Kübler-Ross, with colleague David Kessler in On Grief and Grieving, cautioned that the stages "are not stops on some linear timeline in grief. Not everyone goes through all of them or in a prescribed order." Dr. Allan Kellehear responded to the critics in the 40th anniversary edition's introduction to "On Death & Dying" the following, "the so-called “stage theory” that you will read in this book is openly described and discussed as a heuristic device. In other words, these stages are merely a set of categories artificially isolated and separately described so that the author can discuss each of these experiences more clearly and simply. The careful reader will note Kübler-Ross’s own repeated warnings that many of these “stages” overlap, occur together, or even that some reactions are missed altogether. To emphasize this conditional way of taking about stages, the word “stages” was even put in inverted commas to emphasize their tentative nature in the only diagrammatic representation of these ideas in the book."
In the 1980's, an increasing number of companies began using the five stages model to explain reactions to change and loss. This is now known as the "Kübler-Ross Change Curve" and is used by a variety of Fortune 500 companies in the US and internationally.
The first hospice in the Netherlands is named after Kübler-Ross. The Elisabeth Kübler-Ross Foundation continues her work through a series of international chapters around the world. She received many awards and honors during her career, including honorary degrees from various universities, and is featured in a photograph exhibit at the Virginia headquarters of the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization. The American Journal of Bioethics devoted its entire December 2019 issue to the 50th anniversary of On Death and Dying. For instance, in his article "Everything I Really Needed to Know to Be a Clinical Ethicist, I Learned From Elisabeth Kübler-Ross," American bioethicist Mark G. Kuczewski outlined how Kübler-Ross laid the foundation for clinical bioethics and emphasized the need to listen to patients for understanding their needs and improving their quality of life.