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WHAT IS THANATOLOGY ?

The concept of Thanatology comes from greek's thanatos (θάνατος - death). In greek mythology, thanatos along with his brother Hypnos are the porters of the dead, fulfilling the function of sweeten the trip, along with Hermes and Charon) and logy (λογια - speaking). Science about the study of death. Term coined by the russian Elie Metchnikoff (1901). Thanatology, just the way we understand it, is a very broad discipline and quite difficult to approach by the multiple sides and diverse fields of analysis that interrelates (multidiscipliner).

The biological aspect practically invariant, the diverse cultural and personal models of dying, the beliefs and rituals and in addition the social aspects that form in our civilization a culture of avoidance of the death, reaffirmed in the debates on the right to a death with dignity, looking for no one thing that to rethink and to resimbolized (in other words, to recreate new models of rituals, or what it has been come to named the 'dominated death').

Nevertheless the main aim of Thanatology is to demystify the death and dying learning to coexist with it. In this sense we participate in the opinion to educate children, adolescents and adults for the life and the death so that starting from the personal, cultural, social knowledgement and to the light of science we could not only to live but also to die with dignity.

WHAT IS THE SPANISH & INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY OF THANATOLOGY (S.E.I.T.)?

We conceive Thanatology from the S.E.I.T., as a discipline of professional aid, where the person is seen from a holistic approach, with capacity to live with plenitude. Providing proffesional help to patients in terminal situation, to their relatives and friends and to people who had suffered significant losses in their lives.

The aim of the S.E.I.T. is summed up in three clear points:

1. Life has a sense that we identified as process and movement,

2. The sense is given by the death,

3. Death has a meaning and give sense to personal life, trascendental and untransferable par excellence.

The "SPANISH & INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY OF THANATOLOGY" (S.E.I.T.) is constituted as a non profit association by the rule of 1964, with spanish and worldwide activities (ARGENTINA, SPAIN, MEXICO y PUERTO RICO).

 Alfonso M. García Hernández 
President