For the majority of people, death is a threat and the very idea of being dead a vexation. Dying is usually associated with pain which never goes away, pain which is the source of one’s anxiety. Bringing a child into this world can also be a painful process, and sometimes requires surgical procedures, but after a time the pain goes away and one can resume one’s normal life. The pain that leads to death, however, is a definitive pain, a final (...) experience which can no longer bear fruit. Death is haunted by the ghost of annihilation, of no longer existing, of an enduring frustration that human history will continue, perhaps even quite satisfactorily, without us.The mysterious and unknown dimension which surrounds the event of death, and what follows in its wake, is a threat to most human beings and a source of anxiety. No one likes the idea of ‘not knowing’ what will happen next, that curiosity is left unfulfilled.When the ‘expiry date’ is more or less established and approaching fast, something of a psychological crisis situation is induced in many people’s lives, one which in most circumstances has been latent all the while. Such a crisis can sometimes express itself in moments of troubled questioning. The three classical questions — in ‘philosophical crescendo’ — are: Can one expect anything after death, and if so, what? After death, will one have to give an account for the way one has lived this life? Is it really normal that one must die? (shrink)