Sorrow and the Sage: Grief in the Zhuangzi

The Zhuangzi offers two apparently incompatible models of bereavement. Zhuangzi sometimes suggests that the sage will greet loss with unfractured equanimity and even aplomb. However, upon the death of his own wife, Zhuangzi evinces a sorrow that, albeit brief, fits ill with this suggestion. In this essay, I contend that the grief that Zhuangzi displays at his wife’s death better honors wider values averred elsewhere in the text and, more generally, that a sage who retains a capacity for sorrow will be better positioned for the robust joy so often identified as central to the Zhuangzi’s vision of flourishing. The sagely figures who entirely forego sorrow, I argue, achieve equanimity only through a sacrifice of the emotional range and responsiveness necessary not only for grief but also for the delight Zhuangzi recommends.     

Chronic Sorrow in Caregiving Spouses of Patients with Alzheimer's Disease

The article focuses on the concept of chronic sorrow in a sample of individuals with Alzheimer's disease (AD) and their caregiving spouses. A study was designed to determine the long-term grief or chronic sorrow that develops in caregiving spouses and to increase knowledge of the nature of chronic sorrow. Utilizing the Burke Nursing Consortium for Research on Chronic Sorrow questionnaire and Lindgren's (1996) study as a prototype, the author discovered that repetitive feelings of sorrow and distress appear in caregivers when major disruptive changes occur in their lives due to the persistent demands caused by the illness. Continual coping skills are needed to keep caregivers from being mentally, emotionally, and physically depleted. The findings of this study are consistent with Lindgren's 1996 study of chronic sorrow in persons with Parkinson's disease.     

The Comic in the Midst of Tragedy's Grief with Tig Notaro,Hannah Gadsby,and Others

The function of the comic in the midst of tragedy is not clear. After all, is it simply comic relief that wounded nations, communities, or individuals seek? Tragedy has long been cast as memory and mourning while comedy offers for the masses a Nietzschean moment of joyful forgetting and for the Stoic mind a measure of transcendence from our grief. The latter view came into prominence for modern American culture with the nineteenth-century satirist Mark Twain, who wrote that “the secret source of humor itself is not joy but sorrow,” which has been interpreted through the often-quoted formula: comedy is tragedy plus time. The assumption is that we need some distance emotionally in order to mock or transcend the tragic. While we grant the humor of transcendence can produce some momentary relief through emotional distance, we wonder if there might be another way that humor can deal with suffering? Popular psychology often speaks of five stages of grief, and while that progression seems too linear and simplistic, we find that the now much more inclusive comic stage has something to offer their audiences struggling to make sense of a volatile world.     

Psychotic questing for heroism commentary on paper by Paul Williams

In this discussion of Peskin’s paper on who has the right to mourn (this issue), I explore what it means to “have a right.” When others reject our offerings, we may lose a sense of right to express ourselves and to be loved. Hierarchical rankings of grief, based on the image of limited good, help guarantee the restoration of this forfeited right to express our sorrows and be received by a caring witness. The vignette from Alice Kaplan’s memoir depicts not only how a young girl was prevented from mourning her father’s death by her mother, but also how a mother’s envy of her daughter may become its own source of loss and grief. The rivalry of Alice’s mother with her daughter for a “tragic childhood,” paralleling the rivalry underlying the rankings of grief, reflect a more widespread desperation for the precious right to openly express sorrow and receive the consoling reassurances of loving solace.     

Sorrow: A Therapist's Reflection on the Inevitable and the Unknowable

People who live with a painful gap between who they have been and who they are now, of who they dreamt themselves to be and who they still long to be, are living with chronic sorrow. Chronic sorrow is a normal, nonpathological state of pervasive, continuing, periodic, and resurgent sadness related to the ongoing losses associated with illness and disability, in this case not loss of an other, but loss of self (Roos, 2002). Focusing on the lives of four women, one of whom committed suicide, I explore the macroprocesses that invade the experience of even so personal an experience as self‐loss. The role of the therapist is made transparent through anecdotes and by discussing implications for clinical practice.     

Grief,Death, and Longing in Stoic and Christian Ethics

The Stoic rejection of the passion of grief strikes many ethicists writing on dying as inhuman, selfish, or lacking appreciation for the world. This essay argues that Stoics rejected grief and the fear of death because these passions alienated one from the present through sorrow or anxiety for the future, disrupting one's ability to fulfill obligations of care for others and to feel gratitude for the gift of loved ones. Early Christian writers on death, such as Ambrose, maintained much of the substance of Stoic doctrine but transformed it through their belief in the resurrection and their corresponding revaluation of the future. While these writers rejected grief as an affective response to death, they affirmed longing for lost loved ones. These authors provide an example of how contemporary religious ethicists can use Stoic insights for recovering the tradition of the art of dying.     

Bereavement and Religion Online: Stillbirth,Neonatal Loss,and Parental Religiosity

Stillbirth and neonatal death often trigger immense and long‐lasting grief in parents. These life‐altering losses both call upon and call into question parents’ religious beliefs and practices. This qualitative research examines the impact of stillbirth and neonatal death on parental religiosity, broadly conceived to include personal spirituality and any religious affiliation, including atheism. It examines religion online, a nontraditional but important social context for grief, especially regarding statistically rare tragedies such as stillbirth and neonatal death. Content analysis of postings on a hub website for “babyloss” parents yields four major themes: religious disorientation, religious reorientation, changed relationships with others, and a quest for meaning.     

THE ENCHANTED BEDSIDE

This paper is based on the authors' work offering psychological therapies to patients and their families in a specialist palliative care unit, pre‐ and post‐death. In addressing issues of family interaction around the bedside of the dying patient, the authors have noted a pattern of events that arise from strongly ambivalent relationships.

In particular, family adjustment to the declining health of the patient is acted out in a physical and emotional move around the bedside, with a ‘hierarchy of bereavement’ indicating the status of the relationship to the patient. Previously conflicted feelings towards the dying patient are replaced by an impermeable idealization, lasting throughout bereavement.

In trying to understand this process of idealization the authors have used an analytical frame, referring to Freud and Klein and their work on mourning. This leads on to an exploration of the implications for clinical practice within palliative care. An unshifting idealization can be problematic for many reasons. The reader is left with a discussion about how to work best with families whose initial protective defence can easily crystallize into a long‐term grief reaction.     

Good Enough for an Affair. Self‐Enhancement of Attractiveness,Interest in Potential Mates and Popularity as a Mate

Using data from the Berlin Speed Dating Study, we tested rival hypotheses concerning the effects of self‐enhancement of attractiveness on dating outcomes. Three hundred eighty‐two participants took part in one of the 17 speed‐dating sessions. After each speed‐dating interaction, participants indicated how interesting they found the respective person as a long‐term and short‐term partner. Using social relations analyses, we computed perceiver effects (being more or less choosy) and target effects (being rated as more or less interesting) of long‐term and short‐term partner ratings. Self‐enhancement was operationalized as the discrepancy between self‐rated attractiveness and four components of actual attractiveness (observer‐rated facial and vocal attractiveness, height and body mass index). Results indicated that self‐enhancers were less choosy with respect to their interest for short‐term partners, which was especially true for men, but more choosy with respect to long‐term partners. With regard to popularity as a mate, potential partners indicated that they found self‐enhancers more interesting as short‐term partners but not as long‐term partners. As self‐enhancement is a key component of narcissism, these results are consistent with findings that narcissists perceive many sexual affairs as an achievement, while preferring selected ‘trophy’ long‐term partners, and narcissists have a charming appeal for short‐term, but not lasting, social relationships. Copyright © 2015 European Association of Personality Psychology     

Psychopathology Symptoms,Rumination and Autobiographical Memory Specificity: Do Associations Hold After Bereavement?

Symptoms of psychopathology are associated with overgeneral memory retrieval. Overgeneral memory is hypothesized to be the result of an emotion regulatory process, dampening emotional reactions associated with retrieval of distressing specific memories. However, higher post‐loss symptom severity has been related to higher specificity of loss‐related memories recalled on the Autobiographical Memory Test. This may imply that such memories are ‘immune’ to the reduced specificity effect. We aimed to test this idea by investigating, for the first time, associations of depressive and complicated grief symptoms and depressive and grief rumination with autobiographical memory specificity on a sentence‐completion task (SCEPT) in a bereaved sample. One hundred ninety‐one adult mourners (89% women) filled out questionnaires and the SCEPT. A main finding was that higher depressive and complicated grief symptom and grief rumination levels were associated with reduced specificity of non‐loss‐related memories but not with specificity of loss‐related memories. Implications of these results are discussed. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Does Religious Belief Matter for Grief and Death Anxiety? Experimental Philosophy Meets Psychology of Religion

It is commonly reasoned that religious belief moderates death anxiety and aids in coping with loss. However, a philosophical perspective known as meta‐atheism includes the claim that avowed religious believers grieve deaths and experience death anxiety as intensely as avowed atheists. Thus, we report a study comparing religious believers and nonbelievers on measures of death anxiety and grief. We further investigated the relationships between certain religious beliefs (views of God, afterlife belief, religious orientation) and death anxiety, as well as both painful grief reactions and grief‐related growth. We surveyed 101 participants across the United States, ranging in age (19 to 57), education, and ethnicity. Participants avowing some form of religious belief, in comparison to those not, did not demonstrate lower levels of death anxiety. They did, however, display higher levels of a certain type of death acceptance. Additionally, those professing belief reported less grief and greater growth in response to loss. Greater afterlife belief was not associated with less grief; however, it was associated with both greater grief‐related growth and lower death anxiety.     

The MMPI‐2 in chronic psychiatric illness

While previous studies on the MMPI‐2 in patients with schizophrenia and depression have used mixed samples of both early stage and chronic psychiatric patients. Here, it is investigated whether chronicity itself might have a differential effect on the MMPI‐2 profiles of these patients and whether demoralization ‘associated with long‐term illness’ affects the scales of the MMPI‐2. Thirty long‐term patients with schizophrenia, 30 long‐term patients with depression, and 30 healthy participants completed the MMPI‐2. Groups were compared on Clinical Scales and on the Restructured Clinical (RC) Scales. Patients with schizophrenia differed from patients with depression on 14 MMPI‐2 scales and from healthy controls on 10 scales, generally showing mean UT‐scores < 65, indicating a subjective experience of (near) normal functioning. Patients with depression differed from healthy controls on 17 scales mostly with UT‐scores > 65, indicating impaired functioning. Demoralization was higher in patients with depression than in patients with schizophrenia and both psychiatric groups differed from the healthy control group. It is concluded that long‐term patients with depression show impaired functioning and high demoralization, while long‐term patients with schizophrenia surprisingly show near normal functioning and less demoralization.     

The Challenge of Maintaining Spiritual Connectedness for Persons Institutionalized with Dementia

ABSTRACT

Persons with dementia who reside in long term care facilities continue to have spiritual needs, but providing for these needs presents many challenges. Encouraging, fostering and maintaining spiritual connectedness is crucial to providing for a high quality of life. Memory, grief and mourning, care planning, communication, and education of caregivers are discussed within the context of a working application of spiritual well-being. Practical ways to deal with some of the dilemmas for the individual person with dementia, his or her family, support network, and the religious community are addressed.     

My funny valentine: How humor styles affect romantic interest

Humor tends to predict romantic attraction, but does the style in which it is communicated matter? This study uses experimental methods to test the effects of positive and negative humor styles on short‐term and long‐term romantic interest. The authors randomly assigned 251 participants to read 1 of 4 relationship initiation vignettes depicting either an affiliative or aggressive humor style. Participants reported their short‐term and long‐term interest and made judgments of the relationship initiator's competence and warmth. Results support a fitness indicator model of humor style's role in relationship initiation; positive styles were preferred for long‐term relationships while competence and warmth inferences predicted long‐term attraction. The findings are discussed within the broader context of mate selection goals and challenges.     

On the difficulty interpreting He Yan’s ‘emotionless sage’

This paper examines the debate surrounding He Shao’s account that ‘He Yan thinks the sage is without pleasure, anger, sorrow and grief.’ The point of controversy surrounds squaring a perspective on the sage as emotionless with a thinker who otherwise largely expounds values and political views found in the Lunyu and the Laozi. Since proper management of emotions is important in both texts, it is difficult to imagine how He Yan could hold such a radical view. Dealing with this difficulty scholars have either simply found He Yan ‘unreasonable’ and ‘contradictory’ or otherwise sought to explain away his emotionless sage through complex ontological or political arguments. When He Yan’s work is contextualized in terms of philosophical religious views at the time, we find additional problems with how He Yan’s work has been interpreted. This paper considers a new way to view He Yan, one that respects his multifarious views.     

A good story: Men's storytelling ability affects their attractiveness and perceived status

Three studies examined gender differences in the effect of storytelling ability on perceptions of a person's attractiveness as a short‐term and long‐term romantic partner. In Study 1, information about a potential partner's storytelling ability was provided. Study 2 participants read a good or poor story supposedly written by a potential partner. Results suggested that only women's attractiveness assessments of men as a long‐term date increased for good storytellers. Storytelling ability did not affect men's ratings of women nor did it affect ratings of short‐term partners. Study 3 suggested that the effect of storytelling ability on long‐term attractiveness for male targets may be mediated by perceived status. Storytelling ability appears to increase perceived status and thus helps men attract long‐term partners.     

Grief's Rationality,Backward and Forward

Grief is our emotional response to the deaths of intimates, and so like many other emotional conditions, it can be appraised in terms of its rationality. A philosophical account of grief's rationality should satisfy a contingency constraint, wherein grief is neither intrinsically rational nor intrinsically irrational. Here I provide an account of grief and its rationality that satisfies this constraint, while also being faithful to the phenomenology of grief experience. I begin by arguing against the best known account of grief's rationality, Gustafson's strategic or forward‐looking account, according to which the practical rationality of grief depends on the internal coherence of the component attitudes that explain the behaviors caused by grief, and more exactly, on how these attitudes enable the individual to realize states of affairs that she desires. While I do not deny that episodes of grief can be appraised in terms of their strategic rationality, I deny that strategic rationality is the essential or fundamental basis on which grief's rationality should be appraised. In contrast, the heart of grief's rationality is backward‐looking. That is, what primarily makes an episode of grief rational qua grief is the fittingness of the attitudes individuals take toward the experience of a lost relationship, attitudes which in turn generate the desires and behaviors that constitute bereavement. Grief thus derives its essential rationality from the objects it responds to, not from the attitudes causally downstream from that response, and is necessarily irrational when the behaviors that constitute an individual's grieving are inappropriate to the object of that grief. So while the strategic rationality of an episode of grief contributes to whether it is on the whole rational, no episode of grief can be rational unless the actions that constitute grieving accurately gauge the change in a person's normative situation wrought by the loss of her relationship with the deceased.     

Predicting Grief Symptomatology among the Suddenly Bereaved

Social scientists have long been interested in the study of grief and bereavement, but only recently has research focused on the aftereffects of sudden loss. Theory and research alike suggest that grief is multidimensional and that specific grief reactions have a unique set of predictors. The purpose of this study is to examine the relative contribution of risk factors in explaining variations in specific grief reactions following a sudden death. Data for this study come from medical examiners' reports and mail-back surveys of survivors of sudden loss from suicide or accident. The results indicate that several characteristics of the survivor, mode of death, and social support are important determinants of grief symptomatology. This research concludes by directing future theoretical and empirical endeavors to examine more fully the role of relational factors in influencing grief experiences following bereavement.     

Associations Between Infant Brain Activity and Recall Memory

Long‐term explicit memory is thought to involve a complex neural circuit including the medial temporal lobe, the medial diencephalon, the prefrontal cortex, and association cortices. When this memory system and associated neural circuitry develops is of great interest to developmental psychologists and developmental cognitive neuroscience researchers. In the present report, we provide evidence of a relation between behavioral and neurophysiological measures of long‐term explicit memory in 9‐month‐old infants. These measures provide converging evidence of the development of long‐term explicit memory at least by the end of the first year of life.