Am J Psychiatry 1976; 133:674-678
Copyright © 1976 by American Psychiatric Association
The fatal myth of death in the family
EM Pattison
The author hypothesizes that the observed pathogenic effects on a child of
the death of a parent are the result of the family's culture-bound
inability to integrate death as a natural part of the process of living.
The family tries to deal with death by the avoidance mechanisms of myth and
family mystification; it is this process which is pathogenic rather than
the experience with death itself. To illustrate his thesis he presents the
case history of a man who was fatally affected by the family myth and
mystification process.
