Psychobiographical Reflections on Marilyn Yalom’s Experience of Death and Dying

Abstract

The universal awareness of death is central to the framework of existential psychology. However, its subjective confrontation remains deeply personal. Marilyn Yalom (1938–2019), distinguished feminist scholar and cultural historian, documented her intimate reflections on dying in a book co-authored with her husband, Irvin Yalom, renowned existential psychotherapist and author. This single-case psychobiography sought to examine her experience, focusing on her diarised reflections on living with and dying from a terminal illness in this book as the primary data source. Data analysis examined Marilyn’s reflections through the lens of Irving Yalom’s existential psychotherapy propositions to construct a theoretically informed overview of her experiences. Given her observation of feeling prepared to face death as a concept, as opposed to dying as a process, thematic analysis uncovered additional insights regarding this transition. Traditionally, psychobiographies explore the lives of significant figures in their entirety, and few have focused specifically on an individual’s confrontation with death. The findings are presented within the framework of the four existential concerns, and additional experiential themes are conceptualised as end-of-life variations of lifelong existential concerns. These illuminated underexplored concerns, such as the process of detaching from loved ones, physician-assisted suicide as an expression of autonomy, and the potential for pain and impairment to re-awaken the crises of isolation and meaninglessness. Practice recommendations are made from the findings, in line with Marilyn and Irving Yalom’s goal of contributing to a broader discourse on end-of-life concerns, as Marilyn endeavoured to fight against despair and live meaningfully until the very end.