I definitely draw on existential thinking and ideas in my work in this setting. I find Yalom's books extrememly helpful, especially 'Staring at the sun'. I also do a lot of research around the existential experience of cancer patients but tend to focus this more on cancer survivorship.

Thank you for this gem that I'll read with keen interest!.

The new book of Eric Cassel, The Nature of Healing, can also give good thoughts on this

Thank you to all of you. Your book references are in line with my own reading . Additionally, Laura Barnett's "When Death Enters the Therapeutic Space" and Paul Wong's "Existential and Spiritual Issues in Death Attitudes" are worthwhile to mention. I'm studying in the Professional Doctorate in Existential Psychotherapy Program at the New School of Psychotherapy and Counseling (NSPC) in London, UK. For my thesis I'm interested to look at the meanings and attitudes health care professionals in end-of-life care have towards the encounter of death. If you have any relevant literature to share, please do let me know.

Dear Christian

I am new to your thread. I am completing a 3 year PhD study and I have used Heidegger's existential and hermeneutic (interpretive) dimensions of phenomenon to help me to further understand what it means to be a person living through the illness trajectory of motor neurone disease (MND). Cohn (1997) is a really useful text to understand the issues that all humans confront to do with life and death.

Thank you everyone for your comments so far! I am thrilled to have found a number of colleagues who share my interest in combining the important encounter with dying patients with existential thinking and psychotherapy. I am currently working on a research on existential-phenomenological inquiry of what death means to palliative care professionals. I find the work by L. Okon "Nobody Understands" a fundamental elaboration and analysis of this topic. Has any of you ever come across his paper? Here is the link: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16464768

As a methodology I'm using heuristic inquiry by Moustakas. Please let me know what you think and whether you have any thoughts on the research question! Let's keep communicating: I strongly believe that philosophy of existence has a lot to offer to palliative and hospice care! Best wishes from Cambridge and Boston, Christian

I have completed analysing the participant stories drawing on the ontic and ontological aspects of human existence when being diagnosed with a life threatening condition. The ontic aspects of being: involves the specific ways in which a person is in the world; and the ontological aspects of being: involves the intrinsic aspects of being which are 'given' and escapable (Cohn, 1997). I have gained some important findings through using Heidegger's conceptual lens to understand life being lived. Thank you for the link above, and I agree keeping the thread alive is important for the field of palliative and hospice care. Denise

Denise, thanks for that! Can I read your work somewhere? It sounds very fascinating to me! Christian

Hi Christian

This is still a work in progress, yet to be submitted, as soon as I get a paper together I will let you have a copy.

Denise