3. Grief in the 21st Century Flashcards
Thanatology is a relatively young discipline, encompassing the scientific study of
death, dying, grief, and loss
Even though thanatology is focused on death and dying, it should not be confused with
palliative care
palliative care focuses on the medical care of
patients and families with life-threatening illness, such as symptom management and pain
Broadly speaking, the term ‘grief’ refers to
an individual’s subjective response to loss
The complexity of individual grief responses is reflected in the wide-ranging effects of bereavement on
affective, cognitive, physical, behavioural, social, and spiritual functioning
thanatologists distinguish between several types of grief:
Disenfranchised grief
Anticipatory grief
Complicated grief
Developmental, or maturational, grief
Disenfranchised grief:
Kenneth Doka (1989) coined the term ‘disenfranchised grief’ to describe grief that few people recognise and openly discuss. Disenfranchised grief is said to occur in response to losses that cannot be openly acknowledged, publicly mourned, or socially supported; for example, death from HIV/AIDs, death of pet, death of a partner in an extramarital affair, or non-death losses, such as losing a person’s personality through Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI).
Anticipatory grief
refers to grief experienced in anticipation of eventual loss, for example, grieving whilst loved ones are progressively declining in health, or grieving in anticipation of an upcoming redundancy or divorce
Complicated grief
Whilst it is acknowledged that grief is a natural response to loss, for some individuals the experience of grief is prolonged, debilitating, and results in impairment in daily functioning
Developmental, or maturational, grief
refers to grief over life transitions
Early psychoanalytic approaches to understanding grief conceptualised mourning as a process of detaching from
the lost person or object, which would then free the ego for new and healthy attachments
(Neimeyer, Klass, & Dennis, 2014) many practitioners label the failure to break bonds and relinquish attachments as
pathological grief
In the 1950’s and 1960’s, publications focused on grief started to appear in
scientific journals
Publications in the 50s and 60s coincided with
the publication in 1969 of Elisabeth Kubler-Ross’s infamous book “On death and dying: What the dying have to teach doctors, nurses, clergy, and their own families
Kubler-Ross’s intention was to
give the dying a voice by recounting interviews she conducted with patients who were dying, the responses she depicted (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance) came to be described as a theory of the grieving process.
