Personal Care in an Impersonal World: A Multidimensional Look at Bereavement

The purpose of this volume is to ask and propose a positive answer to the question: "Can we attend to the personhood of individuals within systems and cultures which are mass oriented?" One of the most interesting changes in contemporary thinking has been the emphasis on the unique person. While the distinction between a person (a unique rational being) and individual (one of several similar things) has long existed, it is in the twentieth century that we seem to have become fully conscious of this distinction. There is good reason for such as emphasis today. Repeatedly in this century the case of the person was deemed less important than some policy. Innocent persons slaughtered in the name of some "ism," political bombings and kidnappings, and mass unemployment to name but a few. The cause of our dehumanization seems to be the reduction of the individual person to a part of the political, economic or religious system.