Mourning and Meaning

Viewed in an expanded frame, the phenomena of grief and bereavement call for analysis in sociological, psychological, and psychiatric terms. In this article, the authors argue that a common theme in these accounts is that of the meaning of loss as expressed in both individual and collective attempts at adaptation. At a societal level, communal rituals, discursive practices, and local cultures provide resources for integrating the significance of loss for survivors and regulating the emotional chaos of bereavement. At an individual and interpersonal level, survivors struggle to assimilate the loss into their existing self-narratives, which are sometimes profoundly challenged by traumatic bereavement. Complicated grief can therefore be viewed as the inability to reconstruct a meaningful personal reality, an outcome to which individuals with insecure working models of self and relationships are especially vulnerable. Nonetheless, evidence suggests that grief can prompt personal growth as well as despair, augmenting rather than only reducing the survivor's sense of meaning.