Before and After Loss by Lisa M. Shulman

Author:Lisa M. Shulman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
Published: 2018-12-21T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 7

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The Science of the Wounded Mind

. . . although mourning involves grave departures from the normal attitude toward life, it never occurs to us to regard it as a pathological condition and to refer it to a medical treatment. We rely on its being overcome after a certain lapse of time, and we look upon any interference with it as useless or even harmful.

—SIGMUND FREUD, Mourning and Melancholia

GRIEF IS JARRING. Beset by unfamiliar emotions, we may question if we’re losing our mind. As time goes by after loss, we’re discouraged by emotional setbacks, and it may seem like a sign of weakness when we’re distressed or tearful years later. But think about the gradual healing process of a broken bone or a wound following surgery. After physical injury, it doesn’t seem surprising that people heal at different rates or that unfortunate circumstances may delay healing. Yet when we reflect on healing after loss, it can be hard to imagine that we’ll ever feel whole again, no less be all the wiser after difficult times.

A century ago, Sigmund Freud described grief as a serious but normal emotional process following the death of a loved one. Freud was mainly concerned with the distinction between grief and severe depression, which he called melancholia. And although Freud also studied the psychiatric effects of traumatic events, he viewed the experiences of grief and trauma as wholly different problems.

Many studies of emotional trauma grew out of combat experiences during the First and Second World Wars and the Vietnam War, resulting in a continued separation of views on grief and trauma during most of the twentieth century. The last two decades have seen a large shift of opinion, with growing consensus about the presence of more prolonged forms of grief and mounting controversy related to the similarities and differences between grief and trauma.

Two psychologists with extensive expertise in bereavement, Lauren Breen and Mary-Frances O’Connor, describe a basic paradox in the grief literature. On the one hand, they point out, every grief experience is unique, based on many personal and situational factors. On the other hand, there’s increasing consensus in differentiating common grief from complicated grief based on certain symptoms and time frames. The paradox lies in the simultaneous recognition of vast individual differences between people dealing with loss, yet the common impulse to find a clear distinction between normal vs. abnormal adjustment. How can we make sense of the experience of loss in a person in particularly adverse personal circumstances? Is their prolonged grief an expected outcome of especially difficult circumstances, or is their delayed recovery a sign of poor adjustment?

There are many pervasive assumptions about grief embedded in our culture and in scholarly literature. Conventional wisdom holds that grief follows a distinct pattern, proceeds in stages, and is short-term and finite. It’s commonly believed that successful grief work results in resolution and that prolonged grief is deviant. If we are slow to heal, we’re likely to judge ourselves harshly. We may question whether our behavior is extreme or whether our progress is inadequate.

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