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In 1982 M.T. Palmieri and F. Campione edited a collection of Dialoghi sulla morte (Dialogues on Death). Since then, Campione, a doctor and psychologist from Bologna has published numerous articles dealing with his own experiences and reflections on working with dying patients. “Psicologia e psicoterapia del lutto” (The Psychology and Psychotherapy of Mourning) is the subtitle of this, his latest book. It is not easy to write about such subjects: since death is inevitable and marks the end of our physical existence, Rhetoric, as Blumenberg says, is always ready to rear its head in order to make up with words for our biological weakness. And there is plenty of rhetoric in this book, although it also has some indisputable merits. Modern medicine increasingly tends to try and consider death not only as an objective biological event, but also, and above all, as a subjective fact of human life, which has long been neglected by traditional medicine and even by psychoanalysis. This book attempts to form part of this new trend. The author sees a specific role for the psychologist — to provide help to each person involved in the drama of death: the dying person himself, his relatives, his doctor and often his priest. I am immediately prompted to ask a question: who will provide help for the psychologist?
When each of us, in his own particular way, experiences the tragedy of death, how can we fill the desert, how can we come to terms with the profound sense of desolation that comes over us, Campione asks? What sort of hope is there for each of us? Campione gets the problem of the dying person out of the way somewhat hastily. According to Campione, the dying person might come to terms with his desert and his solitude by trying to ascribe a meaning to his own death in relation to the loved ones who will survive him (perhaps a psychologist could help in this attempt to die for others). However, most of the book deals with the psychology of mourning, with the question of whether it