Grief

An article about Anders Nilsen's work, Don't Go Where I Can't Follow, in the context of grief theory and the literature of grief. The article can be found in the edited collection, Pathographics: Narrative, Aesthetics, Contention, Community (The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2020), and it was edited by Susan Merrill Squier and Irmela Marei Krüger-Fürhoff.

Przysługujący widmom wywrotowy, niemalże rewolucyjny potencjał został odsunięty oraz zagubiony poprzez pozbycie się tej kontrowersyjnej kategorii z terytorium metafizyki i zbyt pośpieszne odesłanie jej do przestrzeni badań nad literaturą, sprowadzając ją jedynie do roli użytecznego, bezpiecznego narzędzia interpretacji.

Książka Andrzeja Marca odzyskuje niepokojący charakter widmontologii i ponownie wprowadza widma do myśli metafizycznej. Czym nawiedzona i przeniknięta jest tradycyjna metafizyka, co właściwie ją dręczy, nie daje spokoju oraz nieustannie podmywa jej stabilność?

Kategoria widma Derridy posłużyła Marcowi przede wszystkim do rozważań nad charakterem współczesności i przeobrażeń, jakie dokonały się w obrębie myśli ponowoczesnej. Współczesna kultura, zdaniem Marca, stała się miejscem powstawania widm, nieustannie powracających z przeszłości. Uznając, że nie jesteśmy już w stanie tworzyć utopijnych wizji przyszłości, autor stara się zdać sprawę z widmowego charakteru współczesnej kultury, analizując m. in. strategie vintage, retro, nurt no future w kulturze lat 70. czy nurt fantastyki naukowej w literaturze.

Here are the preliminary materials and first two chapters from my most recent book: Grief Worlds: A Study of Emotional Experience.

All chapters of the final published manuscript are freely available via MIT Press Direct:

https://direct.mit.edu/books/oa-monograph/5524/Grief-WorldsA-Study-of-Emotional-Experience

As you will see from other entries in this section, Oxford University Press and Palgrave/Springer now charge extortionate prices for books that I have published with them. (In all instances, I am happy to send you a PDF if you want to read them.)

In contrast, MIT Press made *Grief Worlds* freely available to all as a single PDF, without charging an open access fee. Hence, I am delighted to have published this book with them and would encourage others to consider doing the same.

Therapeutic leave-taking rituals are a short-term strategic form of mourning therapy. These rituals consist of three phases: a) preparatory-in which the therapist explains how performing a ritual might help in taking leave of the deceased; b) reorganization-in which the client carries out certain tasks, such as writing daily entries in a 'continuous letter' to the deceased; and c) finalization-which is

The scope of this qualitative study was to understand the experience of the couple who lost a child stricken by cancer,focusing on the impact of death on the marital relationship. The methodological strategy used in this paper was the case study, seeking to describe the process of elaboration of mourning and the impact of the son's death on the parents' marital relationship. The couple who participated in the study had been together for 39 years and had lost their youngest son three years earlier. The spouses were interviewed individually and then together. Semi-structured interview scripts were used for this purpose. It was established that the religious community to which the couple belongs has been the main source of support in dealing with the mourning process, although its precepts may prevent the free expression of their suffering, particularly in the wife's case. Although the couple has remained together, the marital relationship was shaken after their son's d...

Certain symptoms of grief have been shown (a) to be distinct from bereavement-related depression and anxiety, and (b) to predict long-term functional impairments. We termed these symptoms of "complicated grief" and developed the Inventory of Complicated Grief (ICG) to assess them. Data were derived from 97 conjugally bereaved elders who completed the ICG, along with other self-report scales measuring grief, depression, and background characteristics. Exploratory factor analyses indicated that the ICG measured a single underlying construct of complicated grief. High internal consistency and test-retest reliabilities were evidence of the ICG's reliability. The ICG total score's association with severity of depressive symptoms and a general measure of grief suggested a valid, yet distinct, assessment of emotional distress. Respondents with ICG scores > 25 were significantly more impaired in social, general, mental, and physical health functioning and in bodily pain...

The study presents the Italian validation of the questionnaire Continuing Bonds Scale (CBS) by Field and Filanosky (2010). The questionnaire consists of two scales: Externalized (6 items) and Internalized (10 items) and was completed by 414 people who have suffered the loss of a loved one. Exploratory Factor Analysis revealed a two-factor model, 16 items solution (KMO = .928, χ 2 = 2694.84, df = 120, p < .001). Confirmatory Factor Analyses indicated that the two-factor solution provided a better fit to the data (CFI = .935; TLI = .925; RMSEA = .063). The factors demonstrated good internal reliability. The study shows that CBS has good psychometric properties for clinical use.

To understand some of the cross-cultural issues in providing palliative care to aboriginal patients. MEDLINE (1966 to 2005), CINAHL, PsycINFO, Google Scholar, and the Aboriginal Health Collection at the University of Manitoba were searched. Studies were selected based on their focus on both general cross-cultural caregiving and, in particular, end-of-life decision making and treatment. Only 39 relevant articles were found, half of which were opinion pieces by experienced nonaboriginal professionals; 14 were qualitative research projects from nursing and anthropologic perspectives. All patients are unique. Some cultural differences might arise when providing palliative care to aboriginal patients, who value individual respect along with family and community. Involvement of family and community members in decision making around end-of-life issues is common. Aboriginal cultures often have different approaches to telling bad news and maintaining hope for patients. Use of interpreters an...

To date, the US military has made major strides in acknowledging and therapeutically addressing trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in service members and their families. However, given the nature of warfare and high rates of losses sustained by both military members (e.g., deaths of fellow unit members) and military families (e.g., loss of a young parent who served in the military), as well as the ongoing threat of loss that military families face during deployment, we propose that a similar focus on grief is also needed to properly understand and address many of the challenges encountered by bereaved service members, spouses, and children. In this article, we describe a newly developed theory of grief (multidimensional grief theory) and apply it to the task of exploring major features of military-related experiences during the phases of deployment, reintegration, and the aftermath of combat death—especially as they impact children. We also describe implications for designing preventive interventions during each phase and conclude with recommended avenues for future research. Primary aims are to illustrate: (1) the indispensable role of theory in guiding efforts to describe, explain, predict, prevent, and treat maladaptive grief in military service members, children, and families; (2) the relevance of multidimensional grief theory for addressing both losses due to physical death as well as losses brought about by extended physical separations to which military children and families are exposed during and after deployment; and (3) a focus on military-related grief as a much-needed complement to an already-established focus on military-related PTSD.

Keywords: Grief - Theory - Military - Family - Bereavement - Child - Adolescent - Parent - Combat

Robert Kastenbaum was a man who helped reintroduce issues related to death, dying, and bereavement to academic, clinical, and general discourse. This article, devoted to an encounter with the observance of mourning custom and ritual in the Jewish tradition, continues the dialogue in this journal that Bob founded. The article utilizes the Two-Track Model of Bereavement to address the Jewish tradition's structuring of the loss experience. After a brief introduction, I present a schematic presentation of some of the issues operant in grief and mourning for the believer. This is followed by two responses to loss that portray the pain of loss in the tradition. The article goes on to consider the Jewish time cycle of response to loss-from preburial Aninut, to Shiva, the first week, to Shloshim, the first month, to Shanah, the first year, to the expectations for encounters across the life cycle. The Yizkor and Kaddish are also considered. In the Jewish tradition, alongside attention to...

The aim of this paper was to explore the patients' experiences of hope during the first months following acute spinal cord injury. This qualitative study has a descriptive and explorative design. Data were collected by personal interviews (N = 10) at a rehabilitation centre in Norway. A phenomenological-hermeneutic approach inspired by Ricoeur was used to extract the meaning content of the patients' experiences. The findings revealed one main interpretation; the awakening of hope, expressed by two themes: hope and despair, and uncertainty. Awakening hopes, even sometimes silent hopes, constituted a contextual background in the immediate aftermath of spinal cord injury.

A Bill before the New South Wales Parliament attempted to re-frame harm to late-term fetuses as grievous bodily harm to the fetus itself rather than (under the existing law) grievous bodily harm to the mother. To achieve this, the Bill extended legal personhood to the fetus for a limited number of offences. The Bill was brought on behalf of Brodie Donegan, who lost her daughter Zoe at 32 weeks' gestation when Donegan was hit by a drug-affected driver. This article asks what the perspective of a grieving mother can bring to the debate, in terms of helping the criminal law accurately come to grips with the complexity of pregnancy and the specific harm of fetal loss. It assesses the likely impacts of a change to fetal personhood and suggests an alternative legislative approach which is less likely to result in an erosion of bodily autonomy for pregnant women.

We're all going to die, and you'd have thought that we'd have got used to the idea by now.  So, why is managing loss so difficult, and how do our after-death beliefs frame the way in which we re-integrate into normal life? This three part paper addresses the profound emotions experienced during bereavement, investigates the eschatology of differing religions, and finally attempts to produce a practical overview for those who work closely with people who may soon face life's greatest adventure.

This study takes the body (of mother and child), the technoscientific hospital landscape and professional ritual as the locus of an endeavour to understand the embodied experience of perinatal death, in order to better comprehend how alternate understandings and ontologies of motherhood, personhood and bereavement emerge during care enactments. Grounded in a descriptive and ethnographic approach the research analyses data from the entries of 22 members of a pregnancy loss support forum and 10 narrative style interviews. The research traces embodied experience from pregnancy, through diagnosis to the

This paper describes the development of a knowledge measure for the evaluation of a proactive training program for suicide postvention and analyses of its psychometric properties. The 25-item true-false knowledge test was administered before and after each of 12 training sessions; a total of 205 school personnel participated in the training and evaluation. Participants showed significant improvement in overall test scores and on several individual items following the training. Analyses suggested that the measure has construct validity, and that it taps a single underlying dimension. Strengths and weaknesses of the measure, and measurement issues in program evaluation are discussed.

This paper describes the development of a knowledge measure for the evaluation of a proactive training program for suicide postvention and analyses of its psychometric properties. The 25-item true-false knowledge test was administered before and after each of 12 training sessions; a total of 205 school personnel participated in the training and evaluation. Participants showed significant improvement in overall test scores and on several individual items following the training. Analyses suggested that the measure has construct validity, and that it taps a single underlying dimension. Strengths and weaknesses of the measure, and measurement issues in program evaluation are discussed.

This article discusses the forthcoming diagnostic classification of Prolonged Grief Disorder in light of sociological perspectives. By placing death and grief at the center of human life and culture, the beginning pathologization of grief may be discussed in regards to contemporary societal transformations. First, it will be discussed how grief can be viewed as an emotion that in many ways is essential for our self-understanding, self-relation and relation to others. Then, through the perspective of Zygmunt Bauman, it is discussed how death, and thereby grief, can be seen as constitutive for society and culture and how medicalization has played an important role in transforming our relationship to death and grief by a process of deconstruction. This perspective is then supplemented with Hartmut Rosa's discussion of accelerating society to illuminate why grief is now a disorder that requires psychiatric treatment. The article ends with a discussion of why these tendencies are problematic in regards to our conceptualization and understanding of grief. "Your absence has gone through me Like thread through a needle. Everything I do is stitched with its color"

Based on the research on continuing bonds (CB) with a deceased person to date, the reports of clinicians, and the contemporary theory of attachment, two dimensions of CB were distinguished: (i) a concrete CB, essentially characteristic of unresolved and prolonged grief, and (ii) a symbolic CB, specific to grief resolution. The psychometric properties of the Continuing Bonds Scale (CBS) were examined in a sample of persons from Poland (N = 244) bereaved after the death of a family member from 0.5 to 18 years before the survey (M = 3.45, SD = 2.25). In the first sub-sample (n = 141), the exploratory factor analysis revealed a two-factor structure of the CBS: the concrete and the symbolic dimension of the CB with the deceased. In the second sub-sample (n = 103), a good fit of this two-factor model of the CBS was determined by confirmatory factor analysis. At the bivariate analysis level, the concrete CB with the deceased positively correlated with attachment anxiety, and negatively with grief resolution and time since loss; the symbolic CB negatively correlated with attachment avoidance. When predicting grief resolution for two dimensions of CB (controlling for adult attachment, and sociodemographic and loss-related variables), concrete CB was a negative predictor, and symbolic CB was a positive predictor of the outcome variable. The reliability of the CBS subscales was acceptable. The CBS is a valid and reliable measure of two different CB dimensions. The model of concrete and symbolic CB with the deceased was discussed in the light of the current results and contemporary attachment theory.