Dennis Klass

Continuing Conversation about Continuing Bonds

The article is a response to the contributions the special issue of Death Studies on continuing bonds. The contributions indicate that the conversation among scholars has clarified our thinking on how bonds function in individual grief. The author discussed two issues to help keep the conversation moving: (a) the relationship of continuing bonds to the complex we call adjustment to or resolution of grief, and (b) the social and communal nature of continuing bonds. In the first, the author concluded that the hypothesis that continuing bonds either help or hinder grief adjustment too simple to account for the evidence. In the second, he argued that cultural/political narratives are woven into individual grief narratives and if we do not include community, cultural, and political narratives in our understanding of continuing bonds we are in danger building bereavement theory that applies to only a small portion of one population in one historical time.

THE DECEASED CHILD IN THE PSYCHIC AND SOCIAL WORLDS OF BEREAVED PARENTS DURING THE RESOLUTION OF GRIEF

A core dynamic by which grief is resolved by parents in Bereaved Parents, a self-help group, is a series of transformations of the inner representation of the dead child in the parents inner world and in the parents social world. As the reality of the childs death as well as the reality of the parents continuing bond with the child are made part of the socially shared reality, the inner representation of the child can be transformed in the parents psychic life. The end of grief is not severing the bond with the dead child, but integrating the child into the parents life in a different way than when the child was alive. This article traces the course of the inner representation of the child in the parents inner life and social world as the parent progresses through Bereaved Parents. It concludes with some comments on the differences that should be maintained between scholarly and popular understandings of phenomena in the continuing bonds survivors maintain with the dead.

A Social Constructionist Account of Grief: Loss and the Narration of Meaning

In contrast to dominant Western conceptions of bereavement in largely intrapsychic terms, the authors argue that grief or mourning is not primarily an interior process, but rather one that is intricately social, as the bereaved commonly seek meaning in this unsought transition in not only personal and familial, but also broader community and even cultural spheres. The authors therefore advocate a social constructionist model of grieving in which the narrative processes by which meanings are found, appropriated, or assembled occur at least as fully between people as within them. In this view, mourning is a situated interpretive and communicative activity charged with establishing the meaning of the deceaseds life and death, as well as the postdeath status of the bereaved within the broader community concerned with the loss. They describe this multilevel phenomenon drawing first on psychological research on individual self-narratives that organize life experience into plot structures that display some level of consistency over time, whose viability is then negotiated in the intimate interpersonal domain of family and close associates. Second, they explore public communication, including eulogies, grief accounts in popular literature, and elegies. All of these discourses construct the identity of the deceased as he or she was, and as she or he is now in the individual and communal continuing bonds with the deceased. Finally, they consider different cultural contexts to see how expressions of grief are policed to ensure their coherence with the prevailing social and political order. That is, the meanings people find through the situated interpretive and communicative activity that is grieving must either be congruent with the meanings that undergird the larger context or represent an active form of resistance against them.

SPIRITUAL BONDS TO THE DEAD IN CROSS-CULTURAL AND HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE: COMPARATIVE RELIGION AND MODERN GRIEF

Contemporary spirituality within continuing bonds with the dead is placed into the comparative context of Western Christianity and Japanese Buddhism. Throughout history, humans have maintained interaction with two kinds of dead: ancestors and sacred dead, the first characterized by symmetrical relationships and the second by asymmetrical. Continuing bonds are deeply connected with, and are often in conflict with, bonds to the nation and (in the West) to God. In this framework, the authors find that continuing bonds in the present function within the private sphere and have very limited functions within the larger society, resemble traditional bonds with the sacred dead, and, at this time, offer a mild critique of the values and lifestyles on which consumer capitalism is based.

Continuing Bonds in the Resolution of Grief in Japan and North America

The article is a cross-cultural study of continuing bonds to the dead as an aspect of bereavement in Japan and North America. Japanese ancestor rituals, rooted in Buddhism, are well-developed cultural forms for managing continuing bonds. North American material is from a study of continuing bonds among bereaved parents in a self-help group. Cultural differences create very different ways of experiencing and managing the thoughts and emotions modern psychology calls grief. In both Japan and North America, the transformation of the relationship from living to a continuing bond is accomplished by embedding the attachment to the deceased in a network of social bonds. In both, bonds to the dead connect survivors to larger attachments, to religion, and to nation. The level of abstraction ranges from how relating to the dead functions in individual lives to how grief and continuing bonds are shaped by the cultures economic and political power arrangements.

Toward A Model of Parental Grief

Literature relating to naturalistic and laboratory studies of primates, human bonding, family systems theory, psychoanalytic notions of multiple inner representations, and pathological parenting in child abuse and neglect is reviewed in an attempt to understand the uniqueness of parent/child attachments and the unique grief experienced at the death of a child. A model accounting for phenomenon within parental grief is proposed.

Marriage and Divorce among Bereaved Parents in a Self-Help Group:

The death of a child is one of the most difficult griefs in contemporary society. This study using the participant observation method examines the relationship between the bereaved father and mother in The Compassionate Friends (TCF), a self-help group of bereaved parents. The study examines the dynamics of couples already divorced, of parents who divorce within a few years after the death of the child, and of parents who remain married. Findings from this study suggest that marital relationships are not separate from the whole set of dynamics which come with the death of a child. Among these parents, two themes seem central. First, there is the paradox of a new tie established between those who have lost a child even as there is a great deal of estrangement in the separate griefs. Second, there is a strong sense of reordered priorities and a sense of the self as a center of strength within the decision to face directly the issues given in the new world of parental bereavement.

Special issues in the grief of parents of murdered children

Abstract This paper is a report of one years participant observation in a heal chapter of Parents of Murdered Children, a self-help group. The already difficult grief after the death of a child is complicated after murder by four special issues, (a.) Anger is focused on the person who willfully caused the death and there is a drive for revenge. (b) The grief cannot be resolved until the legal processes have been completed and within the court system the parent are caught up in a procedural labyrinth in which they have no legal standing, (c) Parents are fearful about the safety of themselves and other members of their family, (d) Parent of a murdered child is a taboo social role. The self-help process of Parents of Murdered Children as it differs from other self-help for for bereaved parents is discussed.

Ancestor Worship in Japan: Dependence and the Resolution of Grief

Ancestor worship in Japan is ritual, supported by a sophisticated theory, by which the living manage their bonds with the dead. Differing cultural values on autonomy/dependence create differences in interpersonal bonds, thus different dynamics in breaking and continuing bonds after death. This article defines ancestor worship and places in its historical/political context, discusses autonomy and dependence as cultural values in terms of expressions and resolutions of grief, and describes ancestor worship as processes similar to the resolution of grief in the modern West.

John Bowlby'S Model of Grief and the Problem of Identification

John Bowlbys model of grief is found inadequate to account for phenomena which are associated with most grief. Bowlbys ethological model deals only with grief as a disequilibrium in the social environment of the bereaved, but does not account for a disequilibrium in the relationship between the bereaved and the lost object. The basis of the inadequacy is found in Bowlbys rejection of Freuds concept of identification when Bowlby resumed the trauma theory which Freud had abandoned. The work of Freud and the Freudians, especially Volkan, is examined to understand what Bowlby was rejecting. Problems in accounting for phenomena associated with identification are traced in scholars using Bowlbys model. In addition to Bowlbys own work, the work of Parkes, Raphael, and Worden is examined. Possible modifications in the Bowlby model are suggested by reviewing the work of Attig, Lopata, and Marris.