Death-Related Grief and Disenfranchised Identity: A Communication Approach
Keywords:
grief, bereavement, communication, death and dying, identity, narrativesAbstract
The death of close relationship partners forces individuals to engage in a number of challenging grief-related tasks, including reconstructing a narrative about the relationship, re-situating their relationship with the deceased individual, and developing a new sense of self post-loss. The dominant narrative of grief, as described by Neimeyer, Klass, and Dennis (2014), assumes that “normal” grief performances are linear and finite, failing to acknowledge the subjectivity inherent in bereavement experiences. In this review, we illuminate the discord between the dominant narrative of grief and the subjective experience of it. We draw upon Doka’s (2002) theory of disenfranchised grief to propose that grief is not just a possible temporary state of disenfranchisement, but rather a perpetual state of disenfranchisement. This disenfranchisement is mainly a function of the social and personal binds that individuals find themselves in while navigating the lines between the dominant narrative of grief and their personal experience and performance of bereavement. We propose a communicative approach to grief as a solution to the problem articulated in this review, and suggest several new avenues for research on grief.
References
Archer, J. (2008). Theories of grief: Past, present, and future perspectives. In M. S. Stroebe, R. O. Hansson, H. Schut, and W. Stroebe (Eds.), Handbook of Bereavement Research and Practice: Advances in Theory and Intervention (pp. 45-65). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. doi: 10.1037/14498-003
Baddeley, J., & Singer, J. A. (2010). A loss in the family: Silence, memory, and narrative identity after bereavement. Memory, 18(2), 198-207. doi: 10.1080/09658210903143858
Barney, K. A. (2019). Imagined interactions in continuing bonds: An investigation of letter writing. Unpublished manuscript, Department of Communication Studies, University of Montana, Missoula, MT.
Basinger, E. D., Wehrman, E. C., & McAninch, K. G. (2016). Grief communication and privacy rules: Examining the communication of individuals bereaved by the death of a family member. Journal of Family Communication, 16(4), 285-302. doi: 10.1080/15267431.2016.1182534
Bonanno, G. A. (2001). Grief and emotion: A social-functional perspective. In M. S. Stroebe, R. O. Hansson, W. Stroebe, and H. Schut (Eds.), Handbook of Bereavement Research: Consequences, Coping, and Care (pp. 493-515). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Bonnette, S. & Broom, A. (2011). On grief, father, and the male role in men’s accounts of stillbirth. Journal of Sociology, 48(3), 248-265. doi: 10.1177/1440783311413485
Bowlby, J. (1980). Attachment and Loss. Vol. 3: Loss, Sadness and Depression. New York, NY: Basic Books.
Buglass, E. (2010). Grief and bereavement theories. Nursing Standard, 24, 44-47. doi: 10.7748/ns2010.06.24.41.44.c7834
Burke, P. J. (1980). The Self: Measurement requirements from an interactionist perspective. Social Psychology Quarterly, 43(1), 18–29. doi:10.2307/3033745
Cohen, H. & Samp, J. A. (2018). Grief communication: Exploring disclosure and avoidance across the developmental spectrum. Western Journal of Communication, 82(2), 238-257. doi: 10.1080/10570314.2017.1326622
Corr, C. A. (1998). Enhancing the concept of disenfranchised grief. OMEGA - Journal of Death and Dying, 38(1), 1-20. doi: 10.2190/LD26-42A6-1EAV-3MDN
Creighton, G., Oliffe, J. L., Butterwick, S., & Saewyc, E. (2013). After the death of a friend: Young men’s grief and masculine identities. Social Science and Medicine, 84, 35-43. doi: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2013.02.022
Dennis, M. R., & Kunkel, A. (2012b). Relationship after loss: Communication in the new grief paradigm. In O. Gillath, G. Adams, & A. Kunkel (Eds.), Relationship science: Integrating evolutionary, neuroscience, and sociocultural approaches (pp. 199-218). Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association.
DeSpelder, L. A. & Strickland, A. L. (2005). The last dance: Encountering death and dying (6th ed). New York: McGraw Hill.
Dillard, J. P. (1990). A goal-driven model of interpersonal influence. In J. P. Dillard (Ed.), Seeking compliance: The production of interpersonal influence messages (pp. 41-56). Scottsdale, AZ: Gorsuch Scarisbrick.
Doka, K. J. (2002). Disenfranchised grief. In K. J. Doka (Ed.), Living with grief: loss in later life (pp. 159-168). Washington, D.C.: The Hospice Foundation of America.
Doka, K. J. (2009). Disenfranchised grief. Bereavement Care, 18(3), 37-39. doi: 10.1080/02682629908657467
Doka, K. J. & Martin, T. (1998). Masculine responses to loss: Clinical implications. Journal of Family Studies, 4(2), 142-158. doi: 10.5172/jfs.4.2.143
Feigelman, W., Jordan, J. R., & Gorman, B. S. (2011). Parental grief after a child’s drug death compared to other death causes: Investigating a greatly neglected bereavement population. Omega, 63(4), 291-316. doi: 10.2190/OM.63.4.a
Fischer, A. H., & Manstead, A. S. R. (2016). Social functions of emotion and emotion regulation. In M. Lewis, J. Haviland, & L. Feldman Barrett (Eds.), Handbook of Emotion (4th ed., pp. 456–469). New York, NY: Guilford.
Freud, S. (1957). Mourning and melancholia. In J. Strachey (Ed.), The standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud (Vol. 14, 152-170). London, U.K.: Hogarth Press. (Original work published 1917)
Funk, A. M., Jenkins, S., Astroth, K. S., Braswell, G., & Kerber, C. (2018). A narrative analysis of sibling grief. Journal of Loss and Trauma, 23(1), 1-14. doi: 10.1080/15325024.2017.1396281
Goodrum, S. (2008). When the management of grief becomes everyday life: The aftermath of murder. Symbolic Interaction, 31(4), 422-442. doi:10.1525/si.2008.31.4.422
Goldie, P. (2011). Grief: A narrative account. Ratio, 24(2), 119-137. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9329.2011.00488.x
Granek, L. (2010). Grief as pathology: The evolution of grief theory in psychology from Freud to the present. History of Psychology, 13(1), 46-73. doi: 10.1037/a0016991
Green, L. & Grant, V. (2008). ‘Gagged grief and beleaguered bereavements?’ An analysis of multidisciplinary theory and research relating to same sex partnership bereavement. Sexualities, 11(3), 275-300. doi: 10.1177/1363460708089421
Greenberg, D. L. & Rubin, D. C. (2003). The neuropsychology of autobiographical memory. Cortex, 39(4), 687-728. doi: 10.1016/S0010-9452(08)70860-8
Gündel, H., O’Connor, M., Littrell, L., Fort, C., & Lane, D. R. (2003). Functional neuroanatomy of grief: An fMRI study. American Journal of Psychiatry, 160(11), 1946-1953. doi: 10.1176/appi.ajp.160.11.1946
House, J. (1981). Work stress and social support (Addison-Wesley series on occupational stress). Reading: Addison-Wesley Pub.
Ironside, V. (1997). “You’ll get over it”: The rage of bereavement. London: Penguin UK.
Jakoby, N. R. (2014) Talking about grief: Conversational partners sought by bereaved people. Bereavement Care, 33(1), 13-18. doi: 10.1080/02682621.2014.902611
Johannsen, R. (1974). The functions of silence: A plea for communication research. Western Speech, 38, 25-35. doi: 10.1080/10570317409373806
Kauffman, J. (2002). The psychology of disenfranchised grief: Liberation, shame and self-disenfranchisement. In K. J. Doka (Ed.), Disenfranchised grief: New directions, challenges, and strategies. Champaign, IL: Research Press.
Klass, D., Silverman, P. R., and Nickman, S. L. (Eds.). (1996). Series in death education, aging, and health care. Continuing bonds: New understandings of grief. Philadelphia, PA, US: Taylor & Francis.
Koenig Kellas, J. (2018). Communicated narrative sense-making theory. In D. O. Braithwaite, E. A. Suter, & K. Floyd (Eds.), Engaging theories in family communication (2nd ed.), pp. 62-74.
Kofod, E. H. (2017). From morality to pathology: A brief historization of contemporary Western grief practices and understandings. Nordic Psychology, 69(1), 47-60. doi: 10.1080/19012276.2016.1267914
Ku?bler-Ross, E., & Kessler, D. (2005). On grief and grieving: Finding the meaning of grief through the five stages of loss. New York, NY: Scribner.
Kusmaul, N. & Anderson, K. (2018). Applying a trauma-informed perspective to loss and change in the lives of older adults. Social Work in Health Care, 57(5), 355-375. doi: 10.1080/00981389.2018.1447531
Lang, A., Fleiszer, A., Duhamel, F., Sword, W., Gilbert, K. R., Corsini-Munt, S. (2011). Perinatal loss and parental grief: The challenge of ambiguity and the disenfranchised grief. Omega, 63(2), 183-196. doi: 10.2190/OM.63.2.e
Lazarus, R. S. (1991). Emotion and Adaptation. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press
Lopes, P. N., Salovey, P., Côté, S., & Beers, M. (2005). Emotion regulation abilities and the quality of social interaction. Emotion, 5, 113-118. doi: 10.1037/1528-3542.5.1.113
McAdams, D. P. (2001). The psychology of life stories. Review of General Psychology, 5, 100-122. doi: 10.1037/1089-2680.5.2.100
McInerny, N. (Host). (2018, November 19). Terrible, thanks for asking
[Audio podcast]. Retrieved from https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/terrible-thanks-for-asking/id1126119288?mt=2
Moran, L. S. (2016). Men in mourning: Depiction of masculinity in young and older widowers in contemporary film. Men and Masculinities, 19(1), 85-104. doi: 10.1177/1097184X15588591
Neimeyer, R. A. (2014). The changing face of grief: Contemporary directions in theory, research, and practice. Progress in Palliative Care, 22(3), 125–130. doi: 10.1179/1743291X13Y.0000000075
Neimeyer, R. A., Klass, D., & Dennis, M. R., (2014). Toward a social constructionist account of grief: Loss and the narration of meaning. Death Studies, 38(8), 485-498. doi: 10.1080/07481187.2014.913454
Phipps, C. B. (2018). Metamorphosis: An autoethnographic journey through loss, grief, and perceived identity changes. Journal of Loss and Trauma. doi: 10.1080/15325024.2018.1475138
Pitman, A. L., Stevenson, F., Osborn. D. P. J., & King, M. B. (2018). The stigma associated with bereavement by suicide and other sudden deaths: A qualitative interview study. Social Science & Medicine, 198, 121-129. doi: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2017.12.035
Sharoff, K. (2004). Coping skills therapy for managing chronic and terminal illness. New York, NY: Springer Publishing Company.
Spaten, O. M., Brialsen, M. N., & Langdridge, D., (2011). Men’s grief, meaning and growth: A phenomenological investigation into the experience of loss. Indo-Pacific Journal of Phenomenology, 11(2), 1-15. doi:10.2989/IPJP.2011.11.2.4.1163
Stroebe, M. (2010). From mourning and melancholia to bereavement and biography: An assessment of Walter’s new model of grief. Mortality, 2(3), 255-262. doi:10.1080/714892787
Stroebe, M., & Schut, H. (1999). The dual process model of coping with bereavement: Rationale and description. Death Studies, Vol. 23, pp. 197–224. doi: 10.1080/074811899201046
Stryker, S. (1980). Symbolic interactionism: a social structural version. Caldwell, NJ: Blackburn Press.
Thompson, N., Allan, J., Carverhill, P. A., Cox, G. R., Davies, B., Doka, K., … Wittkowski, J. (2016). The case for a sociology of dying, death, and bereavement. Death Studies, 40(3), 172-181. doi: 10/1080/07481187.2015.1109377
Valentine, C., Bauld, L., & Walter, T. (2016). Bereavement following substance misuse: A disenfranchised grief. Journal of Death and Dying, 72(4), 283-301. doi: 10.1177/0030222815625174
van der Geest, S. (2004). Good and bad death: Introduction. Social Science & Medicine, 58, 883-885. doi: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2003.10.034
Walter, T. (1996). A new model of grief: Bereavement and biography. Mortality, 1(1), 7-25. doi:10.10980/713685822
Walter, T., Ford, A., Templeton, L. Valentine, C., & Velleman, R. (2017). Compassion or stigma? How adults bereaved by alcohol or drugs experience services. Health and Social Care in the Community, 25(6), 1714-1721. doi: 10.1111/hsc.12273
Willer, E. K., Droser, V. A., Hoyt, K. D., Hunniecutt, J., Krebs, E., Johnson, J. A., & Castaneda, N. (2018). A visual narrative analysis of children’s baby loss remembrance drawings. Journal of Family Communication, 18(2), 153-169. doi: 10.1080/15267431.2018.1428608
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
The philosophy of the journal is to be open and to make all articles accessible. It is our belief that open access is a must in the future of science.
Authors who publish with RCR accept a slightly modified Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.
You, as author, retain the copyrights for your paper, but the Review of Communication Research is granted exclusivity for publication of the article. The agreement allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and publication in this journal. We do not want third parties to make a commercial use of the article, unless we agree it with authors.
The journal will run an open review process as well as a traditional peer review process.
When the manuscript is accepted for publication, it will get a doi number and get available online to facilitate early citation.
The journal will post the published article to many public repositories for further diffusion and permanence.
You, as author, are permitted and encouraged to post your work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on your website), as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work.
If you have any doubts, please, contact the editor: editor@rcommunication.org
Many thanks for submitting your work to this journal.
