Grief. Svend Brinkmann

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Preface

This is a book about grief. It is not a treatment manual, personal account or self-help reference work for moving on. There are enough of those out there already, reflecting the widespread public interest in the phenomenon and the advent of ‘complicated grief’ as a clinical diagnosis. Any number of people will willingly offer their help to those who have suffered the loss of a loved one. Once deemed personal and private, the preserve of bereaved individuals and groups, grief has become a matter for professionals, something to be treated with medicine and addressed by institutions. Since almost everybody encounters the phenomenon at some point or other, the potential market for diagnosis and treatment is huge. Nonetheless, the focus of this book is not on intervention, therapy or other forms of treatment. Instead, it explores the very essence of grief – its phenomenology. It seeks to analyse the fundamental nature of grief as a universal human condition, while recognising that it varies enormously depending on factors such as time and culture. The aim is to temper the debate about the medicalisation and pathologisation of grief, which is addressed in the final chapter.

      The book has emerged from an ongoing research project, ‘The Culture of Grief’, which has been generously funded by the Obel Family Foundation. The project looks at how individuals experience grief, but also at collective mourning and how it relates to contemporary culture. Its many sub-projects – and indeed, this book – focus solely on the grief caused by bereavement. Although it is valid to discuss grief more broadly, as a response to divorce, illness, redundancy or other traumatic experiences, it would be beyond the scope of this book – partly because the new psychiatric diagnoses refer specifically to grief in response to death, but also because it is important not to blur the focus. The book does not look at specific types of grief, but approaches it as a generic phenomenon, something about which universal points can be made. It seeks to analyse the general features of the phenomenon and its impact on both individuals and society. The premise – that it is possible to approach grief as a generic phenomenon – is, of course, open to challenge. Some might deny any similarity between, for example, a parent losing a child and the death of a grandparent. By adopting a phenomenological approach – examining the phenomenon in terms of how it is experienced by humans – the book attempts to uncover the common features in grief’s many manifestations. The ultimate success of that endeavour will depend not just on the analyses included here, but also on other scholars adopting a similar approach.

I would like to thank my friends at Klim for embracing the original idea of publishing a book about grief – especially Michael Nonboe and Camilla Rohde Søndergaard, who have been a huge help with my scientific work for many years. I would also like to thank Louise Knight in particular for publishing the English version, and Tam McTurk for yet another masterful translation. I also owe a huge debt of gratitude to my colleagues from ‘The Culture of Grief’ project for discussing the themes covered in the book: Ester Holte Kofod, Ditte Winther-Lindqvist, Allan Køster, Brady Wagoner, Ignacio Brescó, Luca Tateo, Anne Suhr, Mikkel Krause Frantzen, Peter Clement Lund, Alfred Bordado Sköld and Anders Petersen – Ester, Allan and Anders in particular for their help in reviewing the manuscript. I am grateful to the whole team at Polity for all their help with the English version of the book. Finally, I would like to thank the Obel Family Foundation for so generously funding the five-year ‘Culture of Grief’ project, especially Britta Graae, with whom I enjoy an excellent working relationship in my capacity as head of research.

      The theoretical ideas in this book were first explored in articles in the journals Mortality (‘The body in grief’), Culture & Psychology (‘Grief as an extended emotion’, co-authored by Ester Holte Kofod), Theory & Psychology (‘The grieving animal: Grief as a foundational emotion’), Nordic Psychology (‘Could grief be a mental disorder?’), Qualitative Inquiry (‘The presence of grief’, co-authored by nine other scientists from ‘The Culture of Grief’) and Integrative Psychological and Behavioral Science (‘General psychological implications of the human capacity for grief’). I would like to take this opportunity to thank the journal editors and peer reviewers for all of their work.

It is impossible to relate to grief purely analytically – as a phenomenon to consider objectively, from a safe distance – because as adult human beings we have all, in one way or another, had personal experience of loss and grief. In February 2017, not long into ‘The Culture of Grief’ project, I lost my father. Ever since, I have had a peculiarly dualistic view of my own grief – both from the inside, by dint of the relationship between father and son, and from the outside, by virtue of my gradual accumulation of scientific, theoretical and empirical knowledge about the phenomenon. I have attempted to relate critically to the scientific theories through the lens of my personal experience, but I also believe that the research has helped me process my own loss. I would like to dedicate this book to the memory of my father, T.A. Christensen.

1 Introduction: The Century of Grief

      Grief has taken centre stage in how we reflect on life – not just in private, enclosed spaces, but also in public debate. The evidence is unavoidable. In the cultural sphere, interest in the phenomenon is reflected by the preponderance of grief-based memoirs and television documentaries. Musicians including Nick Cave, Arcade Fire, Mount Eerie, Leonard Cohen and David Bowie have all released albums and songs on the subject – the latter two almost literally sang their way to their graves. Bereavement discussion groups, cafés, operas and plays have emerged, and social media has created new spaces for sharing experiences of loss, grief and absence.

Michael Hviid Jacobsen, a sociologist specialising in death, has said that we live in ‘the century of grief’, which in his view began with the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001.¹ Once a taboo subject, grief has entered the public sphere and collective consciousness, a trend that has coincided with a process of medicalisation that has situated grief in a healthcare context, culminating in the psychiatric diagnosis ‘complicated grief’. The diagnosis seems set to reinforce the tendency to view grief as a medical and psychological matter, rather than an existential or religious one. At the same time, a range of organisations have also come to the fore that offer treatment to people whose parents, siblings or children are seriously ill or have died.

The century of grief is a ‘post-secular’ era, in which it is no longer widely believed that religion will peter out (McLennan 2010). We are witnessing a general revival of interest in religious, spiritual and existential questions – and grief , as a phenomenon, lies at the heart of these issues. The premise of this book is that grief is a basic existential phenomenon that occurs when love and death intersect. In order to experience the deep grief covered by this book, it is necessary to understand that a deceased loved one is irrevocably lost. Without love on the one hand, and an awareness of death’s inevitability on the other, there is no genuine human grief. This brings us to the central thesis of this book: that humankind can be categorised as a grieving animal, because it appears to be a defining characteristic of our species that we are capable of relating profoundly and intimately to both love and death, which is a prerequisite for the ability to feel genuine grief. Other animals clearly feel separation anxiety and stress, and they too can have persistent, affective relationships with other beings that appear reminiscent of human love (think of the faithful dog). However, the book contends that it is only on the surface that other species appear to feel grief. Genuine grief is reserved for humankind, for better or worse. Worse, because grief hurts; better, because it is a meaningful pain, one that informs the entire network of emotional relationships that constitute the basic psychological substance of our lives. It is through grief that we maintain our bonds with the dead. Grief is – as is quite often and probably rightly said – the price we pay for love.

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