Robert Kastenbaum is an "old-hand" when it comes to thanatology, yet this book fails to reflect the depth and insight of his other works.
This volume is geared for researchers more than practitioners as the author reviews, in a clinical way, research on death related to developmental aspects, gender, research methods and so forth. The authors attempt at psychodynamics of death in his chapter on the death instinct was so convoluted as to be incoherent. Furthermore, the author seemed to fail to have read Freuds' book: Beyond the Pleasure Principle and Civilization and Its Discontents-not to mention Eigens': Psychic Deadness. The author should have stuck to his Kaplan and Saddock style book on the psychology of death and avoided depth psychology altogether. Missing also, of course is a Jungian perspective,ego psychology, object relations, Marcias' idea of identity style, Kruglanski's the need for closure, the constructive approach, terror management theory, the ideas of Ernest Becker or narrative approach and so on.
The authors other books reflect keen insight and much broader understanding then this book does. For those researchers with a new interest in death or for a young student considering research on death this may serve as a narrow introduction to the psychology of death