Restless Feelings

Desiring Direct Contact After Postmortem Organ Donation

Bibliographic Data

ID13630596
AuthorsSophie H Bolt (0000-0002-4807-1778, Department of Cultural Anthropology and Development Studies, Radboud University, Nijmegen, the Netherlands, corresponding author), Marloes Witjes (0000-0002-8868-5141, Department of Intensive Care, Radboud University Medical Center, Nijmegen, the Netherlands), Barbara van den Ende (Dadtco Philafrica, Dordrecht, the Netherlands)
Year2018
Volume82
Issue1
Pages42-62
Publication date2018-09-14
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueOMEGA - Journal of Death and Dying (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0030-2228 • E-ISSN: 1541-3764
PublisherSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/0030222818800207
PMID30217124
OpenAlexW2889872140
LanguageEN
References cited39

This article investigates the emergence of a growing demand in the Netherlands: the wish of organ donor families and organ recipients to establish contact. Such direct contact transgresses both the anonymity and privacy long considered by many to be fundamental to organ donation. Legislation prescribes that privacy should be safeguarded, but the parties involved increasingly manage to find each other. Research is needed to provide insight into the ramifications of direct contact, which may inform mourning counseling and psychosocial support. Drawing on qualitative interviews with donor's relatives, we analyze the reasons for the desire to have direct contact. We seek to understand how meanings are constructed and contested through organs at the margins of life and death in the individualized and secularized society of the Netherlands. We find that relatives struggle with persistent restless feelings after postmortem organ donation and may develop a level of personal attachment and assign inalienability to human body parts

Anonymity · Criminology · Donation · Feeling · Internet privacy · Legislation · Organ donation · Political science · Psychiatry · Psychosocial · Qualitative research · Sociology · Grief, Bereavement, and Mental Health · Law · Medicine · Organ Donation and Transplantation · Palliative Care and End-of-Life Issues · Psychology · Social Psychology · Surgery · Transplantation

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