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AbstractDeath is commonly accepted as the irreversible ending of all biological functions that keep an organism alive. However, understanding death is more complicated than merely comprehending the biological elements of death. Beyond the biological elements of death, it is also critical to understand death’s social, cognitive, and environmental aspects as they influence death awareness, death anxiety, grief and bereavement, and death education. This paper explores the development of mature death concept in children, from early childhood to adolescence. Drawing on a range of developmental and death awareness theoretical frameworks, the authors create a comprehensive model describing the development of mature death concept. The goal of this paper is to propose one theoretical perspective that connects traditional cognitive, socioemotional, and ecological developmental theories with current death awareness theories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Featuring the experiences of 14 LGBQ+ college students at U.S. institutions across the country, this paper centers on photographs participants took and reflected on as they described expressions of grief relative to their sexual identity development (SID). Drawn from an interview-based narrative inquiry study focused on how LGBQ+ students detail ambiguous loss in SID by considering stories and photos, we employed narrative analysis to examine their photos and data gathered through two individual interviews with each participant. Guided by a conceptual framework integrating literature on SID and scholarship on the social constructionist model of grief, we identified four thematic expressions of grief: Navigating External and Internal Conflicts Shaped by Oppressive Structures, Articulating Varied Emotional Responses in SID, Processes Associated with Coming into Queerness, and Engaging with the Future as Unknown, Yet Filled with Hope. We provide implications for research, as well as for practice targeted at educational and counseling professionals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After experiencing my own miscarriage, I was told by a pro-life advocate that the miscarriage should be easy for me to "get over" because, as a pro-choice advocate, I didn't regard embryos or fetuses as persons. While such a comment can be attributed to ignorance, it is true that the pro-choice community in general has been reluctant to acknowledge grief after pregnancy loss, whether through miscarriage, stillbirth, or abortion. In this paper, I argue that it is imperative that abortion rights advocates acknowledge the ambivalence and grief that can follow abortions and that they help create feminist, women-centered ways of addressing and alleviating any negative post-abortion feelings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This section announces that paper proposals for concurrent sessions of the 2006 International Death, Grief, and Bereavement Conference on June 4-7, 2006 are being accepted until November 1, 2005. Guidelines for submission can be gleaned from the web site www.uxlax.edu.

This paper explores the ways in which pleasure-reading a Jackie Kai Ellis' memoir, The Measure of my Powers: A Memoir of Food, Misery, and Paris turned into an intense exercise of critical reflection on personal growth and grief in pursuing academia. This story resonated deeply with me, especially due to how Ellis' endeavouring to excel, find space, and secure a place in her work as an entrepeneur baker connects to the sometimes painful and often precarious path that so many scholars take to author themselves in the neoliberal university. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Among the theoretical contributions made by Hans Loewald, some of the most meaningful address the developmental process of differentiation from a primary or original unity into "id-ego and objects." This differentiation requires "separation, loss, and restitution," and results in a shift from oneness/unity to at-onement, a connection that bears within it the trace of the separation it emends. A parallel dynamic plays out in the shift from identification to internalization in Loewald's work. The author identifies this dynamic as cohering difference, a structural interaction in both intra- and inter-psychic processes graphically illustrated by the hyphen in Loewald's concept of "at-onement." The author examines these processes and the significance of cohering difference, illustrated by Loewald's idea of "linking," and presents a clinical example in which loss, grief, identification, and internalization play key roles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper hopes to enhance understanding about entrenched grievance in a couple of ways: (a) Initially, the paper reviews how entrenched grievance reflects melancholic states of mind in terms of its avoidance of the pain of loss and change. But the main contribution of the paper is likely to be found in (b), that is, via detailed clinical material, the paper illustrates how earnest efforts on the part of the analyst to bring understanding may lead to cognitive entrapments such as the convictions incumbent in the “knowing” analyst. Further, that this knowing analyst may need to become aggrieved, that is, narrow, impatient and concrete towards her patient’s entrenchment, and then to recogize this plight in herself before she can genuinely hear her patient’s grievance about her from a wider view, that is as a complaint from the “lively self”, deserving recognition. The clinical detail demonstrates that such recognition softened the patient’s grievance, allowing both members of the dyad to become more collaborative and open to the pains and growth available from mourning states of mind. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper tells the story of the work of a parent-infant psychoanalytic psychotherapist with an infant girl and her mother, from the age of four to 19 months old. It became clear, very quickly, that she was a replacement child. She was born four years after the death of her profoundly disabled brother and before her mother had begun the process of mourning her dead son. The mother was struggling to see the infant as a person in her own right and felt that she wanted her daughter to be a reincarnation of her dead brother. Although the infant was always dressed as a girl, there was also something boyish about her presentation. The work centred around us playing together and helping her mother to see her as a person in her own right, as well as observing and trying to make sense of the infant's play. The therapist used her metaphoric function to hypothesise what the infant might be trying to understand in her play, especially with two identical plastic oranges that were the same and yet different. What emerged was that the mother was herself an identical twin, who never felt fully separated from her twin sister, and always felt that she was two people. An interpretation to the infant that perhaps she also thought that she needed to be two people, herself but also her dead brother, was met with a confirmatory response from the infant; it felt pivotal in elucidating for both mother and infant their respective challenges in the wake of the death of their son/sibling. The paper illustrates the importance of early intervention, of both observing and playing with infants and young children; and the importance of the therapist's use of metaphor, which could be viewed as an inductive statement, summarising a guess about inner reality expressed in a skewed or displaced way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Derek Hook’s (this issue) excellent paper provides illustrations of complex Lacanian concepts through the relatively rare presentation of Lacanian case material. His paper lends itself to reading Freud with Lacan. This reply to his paper engages such a reading to show that the idea of the over present object emphasised by Lacan is prefigured in Freud in his 1917 paper on Mourning and Melancholia. My reply to Hook affirms the additional clinical themes he introduces and indicates that these themes would be anticipated if, as Lacan argues, melancholia is seen to be underpinned by a psychotic structure. Finally, the reply argues for a resurrection of the Lacanian notion of Das Ding, as it connotes differently to objet a despite overlaps in meaning and the fact that in later Lacan the term Das Ding was dropped. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, a verbal act of jokingly sharing grievances among Javanese youth labelled as sambat has become increasingly visible and audible both in social media and local radio. Sambat is a practice among Javanese youth where Javanese language is mixed with non-linguistic comedic touches to express a collective identity of being young, struggling with life's problems, and feeling broken-hearted. This paper seeks to understand the emergence of sambat practice among Javanese youth on the internet and its traditional continuity within Javanese society. It explores the relation between language, emotion, and cultural practice through the lens of linguistic anthropology. The central argument is that the popularity of sambat on the internet has shifted the value of Javanese language from its traditional association with hierarchy to a comedic language that symbolises sadness, pain, and the persona of heartbroken youth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to show how using blue spaces has enabled the author to rebuild parts of herself again following the death of her father. Few studies have provided personal narratives of the influence and transformative nature of blue spaces, especially in association with grief. Through the use of autoethnographic writing, the author expands knowledge on how the immersion in bodies of water can be a therapeutic accretive practice which leads to palliative healing. The paper also contributes to the growing blue space literature, and how everyday encounters and liquid connections with this water world provides individuals with connection, belonging, and healing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Therapeutic responses to substance use disorder (SUD) have been an individual and community health challenge for many years. Mutual support fellowships continue to make important contributions. The peer-based, 12 Step meeting model has existed for nearly a century, and these meetings in general, and Cocaine Anonymous (CA) meetings in particular, are therapeutic. How specific topics are engaged in meetings is not well understood, especially topics related to emotional regulation. Research suggests that addiction recovery is quite similar to, and strongly linked with, a prolonged or pathological grief. How grief and healing matter in these meetings is an important area for research. This paper explores these interlinked processes in CA meetings to understand how they contribute to resilience. Shares on grief-related topics from more than 100 CA meetings and over seven years of data collection are analyzed. Addressing grief in these meetings contributes to improved health outcomes. Grief-related topics emerged into five (5) themes. These grief discussions contributed to the presence of four (4) dimensions of a social ecology of resilience in recovery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Working children and adolescents face diverse problems, including long working hours, low pay, lack of quality education/training, unrealistic expectations, workplace hierarchies, and bullying, all of which cause them to be bereaved of leisure opportunities. However, there is a lack of study on this topic. The dominant perception of child labour being mainly an issue of the Global South, a geographically and socially under-represented context, is a significant reason behind the lack of thorough exploration of the leisure capabilities of working children and adolescents. Drawing on qualitative research conducted in Turkey, this paper explores the everyday realities of working children and adolescents in terms of their leisure preferences and capabilities. The study is based on in-depth interviews and focus groups with working children and adolescents aged between 11 and 17. Using the Capabilities Approach as an analytical lens, the paper discusses the ways in which work shrinks the already limited leisure capabilities of the participants. In the face of fatigue and time scarcity, children adapt their leisure preferences to the available leisure cultures. Simultaneously, however, they display agency in various ways so as to gain time and protect their leisure rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper critically analyses deaths in prison in England and Wales. It focuses on how the state's 'truth' about the nature and extent of these deaths has been challenged and develops an alternative perspective which situates these deaths in the context of a system built on violence and systemic indifference and where state agents are protected by a culture of immunity and impunity. It also illustrates the often-abysmal treatment of the families of dead prisoners and the struggles they have engaged in, alongside the charity INQUEST1, to establish the actual truth about the deaths of their relatives and to hold to account those responsible for these deaths, many of which were preventable. The paper concludes by outlining a range of radical alternatives to the current baleful situation including humanising prisoners and removing the stigma of less eligibility which has prevailed for 200 years and has legitimated the pain and punishment inflicted on them by the state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This special issue entitled "Futures of Digital Death: Mobilities of Loss and Commemoration" explores the topic of digital death and how technologies are reconfigured by and reconfiguring social relationships with the deceased and dying loved ones as well as the larger ecosystem supporting such relationships. This Introduction article starts with an overview of the past research on digital death intended to provide a relevant context for the five papers included in this issue. Then, we reflect on how the current papers, or the present research, build on the past and can be used to address existing gaps and to inform future new research directions in order to move the field forward. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Food systems students can benefit from a critically reflective, anti-oppressive, and culturally responsive classroom. In this paper, we share 37 students' reflections on their experiences in two such courses. Qualitative analysis was done in NVIVO to identify emergent themes. Students connected personal experiences of trauma, oppression, grief, as well as nourishment, resistance, and self – care to food systems case study themes. Students' reflections demonstrated how anti-oppressive and culturally responsive practices created inclusive and safe spaces for students to grapple with complex issues and share vulnerable personal experiences that deepened their learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Congealing the Abject: Blood in performance as feminine-feminist meaning-making by Laura Hartnell explores how blood – in three forms, three representations – evokes the abject in three Australian feminist performances. Through a performative exploration of Adena Jacobs' The Bacchae, Olivia Satchell's let bleeding girls lie, and Casey Jenkins' Casting Off My Womb, this paper explores blood as a tool for affectively engaging with women's bodies, grief, rage and trauma. Weaving together critical theory with autoethnographic accounts of being in-audience, written using performative writing, this paper explores how the representation of blood in performance ushers us into the feminine-feminist abject. For Kristeva, the abject is a rejection of blood and other bodily waste and fluids and her reclamation of abjection is a defiant and celebratory journey into all that the masculine Symbolic has deemed too disgusting, horrific, excessive – too bodily – to confront. This paper argues that blood in performance ruptures the Symbolic order, plunging us into the abject and therefore into an affective, bodily state where meaning is primarily made not through language, logic, and reason, but through affective forces that push and pull, slip and slide, glisten and congeal, much like blood. This feminine-feminist, abject form of meaning-making is inherently performative, and the performances explored in this paper demonstrate how blood in performance – forming a spectrum from the literal to the abstracted – opens a space within the masculine Symbolic order in which feminine-feminist meaning-making can emerge. By writing performatively about these performances, this paper aims to affectively evoke the ways in which blood 'congeals' the abject, offering us a place to explore bodily and embodied trauma, grief, rage through a feminine-feminist lens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Canadian Journal of Art Therapy is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Research shows that grief affects the body and brain in many ways, from changes in memory, behavior, body function, and immune system. Grief also takes different forms. Grief is an individualistic journey, yet we tend to judge others based on our personal experiences, rather than taking a wholistic, therapeutic approach. This paper explains how our brain, behaviors, and emotions are all engaged during bereavement, and how to best help grieving colleagues and subordinates. This paper demystifies the concept of grief and provides practical advice for working with a grieving employee or colleague, specific to the library setting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores post-abortion experience and identifies key themes that may arise while working with individuals who have had an abortion. This paper aims to revisit and deconstruct the issue of abortion and place it in the sociopolitical context from which it arises. The research included draws from multiple disciplines including art history, the politics of inclusivity and the interconnections between identity, oppression and privilege, as a way to understand the intricacy of one's experience of abortion and approaches the topic through an intersectional feminist lens. The paper explores art therapy as a powerful approach to depict loss, and questions how we can create a safe therapeutic space for our clients in order to allow them to further explore their post-abortion experience. Two key themes were explored; 'self and body as a compass' and 'working with the "invisible loss" and recreating the narrative; Art therapy approach'. The first theme touches on the sociopolitical ideas imprinted on the body and how a therapeutic space may allow an individual to further explore the memories associated with their experience. The second theme further looks into how art therapy can be a powerful approach for the exploration of themes that emerge post-abortion, as well as the importance of being able to encourage agency in our client to choose their own way of using the therapeutic space. Finally, I have included my own use of creating and reviewing artwork as a form of self-reflexivity. This paper explores the post-abortion experience and identifies two key themes that may emerge while working with individuals who have had an abortion. The first theme is; 'self and body as a compass' and the second; 'working with the "invisible loss" and recreating the narrative; Art therapy approach'. I have drawn from my own art-making process in response to the topic and a contemporary artist's personal body of work, called Tony Gum, in order to navigate the themes explored in this paper. This paper will hopefully help to start conversations around how we can create a safe therapeutic space for our clients and how we can support them in the way they want to use the therapeutic space to further explore their experience. Research recommendations are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of European Journal of Psychotraumatology is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Numerous veterans have observed that one does not heal from war, but rather one learns to surrender to the complicated losses that wartime experiences bring. Veterans have pushed back against stereotyped images of themselves as heroes, victims, or perpetrators. Many have challenged the implications of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as a diagnosis, as well as the effectiveness of evidence-based treatment procedures for PTSD. Work emerging from the Veterans’ Art Movement by a poet, a photographer, and a “Combat Paper” maker will be discussed in relation to the tasks of mourning, reparation, and formation of postwar narratives. The work of these veterans offers useful insights into the psychosocial implications of unresolvable traumatic loss, as well as detailed strategies for the creation of therapeutic mourning spaces. Through a variety of artistic practices, veterans have created opportunities to transform themselves and their communities from mere bystanders to attuned witnesses of the dire consequences of war. Their work calls our attention to the therapeutic actions of aesthetic representation and art-making in the communalization of war trauma. Additionally, they expand our understanding of art practices for the identification of postwar losses and the working-through of moral injury. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper traces the centrality of rivers in twentieth-century and contemporary popular music and poetry in the regional context of Punjab in the north-west of the subcontinent. In contrast to the riverine imaginations in the songs of eastern or central India, we look at the very different evocations of rivers—both real and conceptual—in the subcontinent's north-west. Rivers feature centrally in the love legends, devotional and folk poetry, and songs of Punjab, and here we trace a river-based 'hydropoetics' in Punjab, querying land-focused perspectives. From the metaphysical and the sacred to the sensual, and from the realms of the quotidian to those of mourning and trauma, we argue that in Punjab, 'singing the river' is central to people's definitions of regional and ontological identity, and to the way they understand their place in the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conversational agents (CA) are thought to be promising for psychotherapy because they give the impression of being able to engage in conversations with human users. However, given the high risk for therapy patients who are already in a vulnerable situation, there is a need to investigate the extent to which CA are able to contribute to therapy goals and to discuss CA’s limitations, especially in complex cases. In this paper, we understand psychotherapy as a way of dealing with existential situations and position CAs in the context of the therapeutic experience of patients. This experience is determined by the patient’s unique personal context and specific therapy goals. We suggest that psychotherapy is a fundamentally dialogical activity, because it crucially involves work on the self and one’s self-narrative. This brings us to our central question: is it possible for CAs to engage in a productive therapeutic dialogue, given their limitations as epistemic agents? We will discuss several of those limitations, show how these undermine the possibility of engaging in a therapeutic dialogue, and illustrate those limitations through discussions of the cases of grief and abuse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores three cases of celebrity miscarriages or pregnancy losses as mediated on Twitter. Through an exploration of how ambiguous grief is mediated in social media, this paper highlights the way gender, race, celebrity, and grief intersect in social media spaces. Using interdisciplinary work from media studies, gender studies, disability studies and trauma studies, this article offers a way to recognize how digital media offers space for coping to everyday people through mediations about and by celebrities, even while policing the boundaries of those celebrities' grief. In exploring the complexity of this type of digital mediation this article offers an entry point through which to understand other digital mediations of loss, grief, and trauma in social media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the vast developments in research on loss and grief, dominant grief models fall short in reflecting the comprehensive issues grieving persons are facing. Three causes seem to be at play: grief is usually understood to be connected to death and other types of loss are under-researched; the majority of research is done from the field of psychology and on pathological forms of grief, hardly integrating research from other disciplines; and the existential suffering related to grief is not recognized or insufficiently integrated in the dominant models. In this paper, we propose an integrated process model (IPM) of loss and grief, distinguishing five dimensions of grief: physical, emotional, cognitive, social, and spiritual. The integrated process model integrates therapies, tools, and models within different scientific theories and paradigms to connect disciplines and professions. The comprehensive and existential understanding of loss and grief has relevance for research, clinical settings and community support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Students with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) are at an elevated risk for exposure to bereavement, persistent negative mental health effects after loss, and layered and traumatic forms of grief. Despite this increased risk, students with IDD are too-frequently overlooked by school-based mental health professionals, leaving educators, community members, and family members without needed support. There are actionable steps that school-based mental health providers can take to adapt existing approaches to grief support and build consultee capacity to intervene with individuals with IDD. This paper reviews terminology surrounding the concept of grief, summarizes biases about IDD that have contributed to care disparities, and offers considerations for including grieving students with IDD in mental health consultation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of European Journal of Psychotherapy & Counselling is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Clients seeking sex therapy can bring into the clinical space a vibrant religious, spiritual and/or faith practice. Even those clients who do not consider themselves religious, often come to sex therapy with a prior relationship to a religion or with a higher power. While this relationship can be a source of strength, it may include a history of trauma, pain, and grief. This intersection of sexuality and faith can be a powerful clinical space; however, it is not without its challenges, specifically when shame, guilt and remorse are associated with the client's sexual experiences. Mental health professionals skilled in sex therapy are ideally positioned to support these clients; however, they are rarely trained in incorporating client religious issues. This paper seeks to expand professional discourse on supporting clients at the intersection of sexual and faith well-being. First, we discuss why mental health clinicians focused on sex therapy need to incorporate a faith informed practice lens. Next, three case studies are presented to highlight the intersection of psychosexualtherapy and a client's faith. The discussion section subsequently highlights preparation needed by mental health professionals and offers suggestions for better professional training in this specialty area. Finally, faith informed clinical interventions are presented. People seeking a sex therapist bring their spirituality, religion, faith, or belief practices to therapy. Clinicians must acknowledge this aspect of a client's life and recognize that it can play a key role in their healing. Sex therapists rarely receive training in faith issues. This paper attempts to bridge that gap. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Peskin, in his last paper (this issue), proposes a wide relational framework for understanding the roots and contexts of painful, unresolved mourning. In Freud, the work of the mourner takes place solely in the person's inner world and reflects the mix of feelings the person had toward the loved one. Peskin describes a specific family dynamic which influences how a person is able to grieve, beyond the relationship with the lost loved one. Within the family, a "ranking of grief" emerges, which delineates who has priority in grieving, and who has to "defer" grief in accord with these implicit rules. Unearthing these dynamics, calls for an active form of therapeutic witnessing. In this discussion, a double meaning of deferring grief is explored. In Peskin's examples, grief is held back when deferring to the demands of a dominant family member. As a result, the expression of the mourner's grief is also deferred, postponed, to be possibly expressed at a later time. Another variety of deferred grief is described, using as an example the narrator in Proust's In Search of Lost Time. Peskin asserts the right to mourn as a fundamental human right. This discussion ends with speculation about the societal conditions which may frustrate or encourage mourning. The assertion of the right to mourn ties this paper to Peskin's earlier contributions on the effects of dehumanization following horrific trauma. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the social visibility of children from Gaelic Irish and settler families during the 17th and 18th centuries given the very significant economic and cultural changes which followed the Plantation of Ulster. Predominantly Protestant settlers from Britain ousted native Catholic congregations from traditional places of worship, which became Protestant churches, and graveyards were now shared with Planter families. Using information from the south and west of the province of Ulster, it examines how children's memorials may signify the religious, social and/or ethnic identity their families wished to express. It explores how distinctive familial plots were perhaps one means of maintaining complex Gaelic Irish kin relationships in danger of erosion and may have helped settlers replace or strengthen social networks from their original homes. High status interments which included children in prestigious native burial grounds may also have been a means of control and a powerful symbol of subjugation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the issue of the death of migrants and invites us to recognise bodily vulnerability and precariousness when confronted with the faceless and nameless dead migrant. It explores mourning and grief as a political relational act between strangers (us and the dead migrant) in very difficult moments. There is an obliteration of identity which is furthered by the responses of receiving countries, whose struggle with masses of need causes them to deny individual stories of suffering and to respond with the opening and closing of borders, a large-scale system response that means nothing to the individual migrant story. Westernised societies have developed a 'forgetful memory.' We turn to the work of Judith Butler to help us start thinking of the possibility of a relational theory based on Butler's theory of grief and mourning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the affective force of the Cambodian genocide among Cambodian-Australian women. It draws on Lily Cho and Avtar Brah's understanding of diasporas as communities that are connected to histories of loss, grief and displacements (Cho [2007]. The Turn to Diaspora. Topia, 17, 11–30) and embodying a 'homing desire' (Brah 1996) and Avery Gordon's ([2008]. Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.) theory of 'haunting' to explore the traces of historical trauma. Through anaccount of a Cambodian-Australian woman living in Cambodia, this paper demonstrates that intergenerational hauntings can provoke affective states that are embodied, encompassing emotions such as sadness, guilt, pain, and joy, tied to longings and connections with one's history and heritage. Certainly, embodied hauntings reflect histories of grief and loss, and yet from this loss, something else, something beyond psychopathology emerges. Highlighting the generative possibilities of affect, this paper examines how intergenerational hauntings can open up new ways of thinking about identity and agency. As illustrated by Sanna's story, hauntings can be expressed by a desire to actively engage with the past, recover histories and 'return' to Cambodia. In particular, this paper explores how trauma is experienced and embodied from mother to daughter, highlighting the gendered nature of intergenerational hauntings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The experience of politicians leaving elected office is under-researched. This paper examines the experience of leaving political office drawing on empirical research in the United Kingdom with 30 elected politicians, including 20 who had left office, either having been defeated in election or having chosen not to stand for election, and where possible their partners. The sample also included 10 interviews with current politicians about their expectations of transition from elected office. The paper considers the findings from a psychological and a sociological perspective and suggests features that predict a problematic adjustment to the loss of political office. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the course of an analytic career, life events will impact the analytic relationship. Analysts get pregnant. Analysts divorce their spouses. Analysts get ill, and analysts lose their loved ones. In this paper, I describe the ways that the unexpected, traumatic and public loss of my fiancee and partner of 12 years impacted my work with patients. In particular, I explore how the destabilized and vulnerable self-states that arise out of the bereavement can facilitate transformation in one's patients. I argue that the analyst's capacity for authentic engagement arises out of the analyst's open surrender to her vulnerability as a human being engaging with another human being. The impact of the analyst's vulnerability and the unique opportunities for therapeutic growth this can facilitate are demonstrated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractIn light of the COVID-19 pandemic, a pediatric hospice in Ottawa, Ontario, implemented a Virtual Bereavement Group Program, necessitating a reorganization of care delivery during the global crisis. This paper outlines the program and assesses the feedback of families who participated in the program following the death of a child or grandchild. Participants expressed high levels of satisfaction, indicating its potential as an effective approach for pediatric bereavement care beyond the pandemic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Experiencing the ghosts of the departed is a common, cross-cultural experience of grief; such interactions are part of so-called externalized continuing bonds and represent an ongoing relationship with the departed. This paper characterizes people's reported supernatural experiences with the spirits of their deceased dogs and analyzes them in the context of bereavement, externalized continuing bonds, and disenfranchised grief. Using a thematic analysis, 544 candid online comments from social media where people shared their supernatural experiences were studied. These comments fell into two major themes with six subthemes: physical experiences (hearing, seeing, and touching the ghost of a dog) and interpreted experiences (seeing signs in nature, receiving visits from the deceased dog in dreams, and attributing feelings and phenomena to the spirit of the dog). How people described the feelings associated with these supernatural visits were also studied; three themes were found: Positive Feelings, Mixed to Sad Feelings, and Messages. The vast majority of reported feelings (74.6%) were positive, bringing people comfort, reassurance, and a sense of protection. While psychology largely characterizes externalized continuing bonds – particularly seeing ghosts – as negative and even maladaptive, this is in conflict with the findings. These supernatural experiences may serve a different role for grieving dog guardians. Given that disenfranchised grief is common due to the lack of cultural support for people mourning their dogs, and grief over companion animals is often complicated by guilt, these supernatural experiences may serve as an important source of comfort and a way for the bereaved to engage with loss. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent years have seen a shift in the number of bereavement studies examining daily grief processes, but our knowledge is still limited due to the lack of dyadic research. In this paper, we explored the change in mental health in the course of a seven-day dyadic diary with bereaved couples who lost their child during pregnancy, labor, or afterward. We conducted dyadic latent growth curve analyses. In the bereaved parents who experienced a pregnancy loss, we found reduced grief (for both partners) and anxiety symptoms (only for women) and no changes in depression symptoms or personal strength levels across the diary days. In the bereaved parents who lost their child during labor or afterward, both partners' grief and depression symptoms and women's anxiety symptoms stayed stable, men's anxiety symptoms decreased, but women experienced a decline in their personal strength. Overall, negative aspects of mental health showed no sign of a dyadic diary's harm to the bereaved parents and even pointed to increased mental health in some respects during the study. However, a feeling of reduced capacity to deal with difficulties during the diary was also observed in women. Our findings indicated that both negative and positive aspects of mental health should be considered to evaluate the impact of diary studies on the participants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reporting on a qualitative study involving in-depth interviews, this paper seeks to elucidate the nature and factors associated with emotional responses in archivists working with records detailing human suffering and atrocity, and working with individuals in the community whose lives intersect with the archives. Results detail the impact of these exposures on archivists; and factors influencing emotional responses to traumatic exposures such as the nature of exposure, personal history and connections to the traumatic material, professional engagement and expectations, and the organizational context. Recommendations for mitigating the emotional toll of archival work arising from the data are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how Lucy Hutchinson used alchemical imagery to illustrate her evolving grief in her Elegies. An early form of chemistry, alchemy was thought to be not only purifying and healing but also deceptive and harmful. Hutchinson's grief is similarly mutable, she suggests, as she traces her fluctuating emotions in the wake of her husband's death. Even as she stresses the isolating nature of her mourning, her alchemical language highlights her engagement with other writers, including John Donne. She adapts Donne's lyrics to suit her own poetic aims, echoing his alchemical language to add nuance to her depictions of her grief. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic created an unprecedented physical and mental health crisis on an international scale. Clients and therapists alike navigated the fears and uncertainty surrounding the virus, often in an environment of social isolation. The following paper presents a brief overview of the unique stressors and psychosocial factors impacting therapeutic work in the time of the coronavirus pandemic, including fears of the virus and social transmission, relational stressors due to isolation, grieving in isolation, fear of death, financial challenges, and the transition to telehealth. In addition, this paper aims to provide specific interventions and helpful approaches for psychotherapists navigating the novel challenges and demands to their clinical work through an AEDP (Accelerated Experiential Dynamic Psychotherapy) perceptive. This includes finding an entry point for accessing the pain: undoing aloneness; moving through the pain: dyadic affect regulation; and paying close attention to vitality within suffering: searching for transformance. Recommendations for the health and care of the clinician are also discussed, such as attuning to self-needs, anticipating and detecting dysregulation, staying with the good, meaning-making, identifying and responding to burnout, and the importance of receiving personal therapy and clinical supervision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Later in his life, Carl Gustav Jung became increasingly interested in the alchemical process as a symbolic representation of the individuation journey. By focusing on the stages of the nigredo and the albedo, this paper expands upon the importance of these steps in the psychological process of individuation. Jung (1970a) wrote that individuation "gathers the world to oneself" rather than shutting one out from the world (p. 136). This is an aspect of the journey toward wholeness that is especially relevant in our current era of climate crisis. By exploring the nigredo and the albedo deeply, we can begin to see the many shades of blue that lie underneath. These blues, and the idea of feeling blue, offer a pathway to empathy and understanding through our shared grief. With a careful examination of The Red Book: Liber Novus (Jung, 2009), after a time of traumatic ambiguous loss, and amplified with the images of ice in our warming world, this paper takes a paradoxical journey. From the blues of the Arctic ice to the bright red of Liber Novus, this black and white path becomes illuminated with a variety of colors. This expanded, empathetic view of the complex image of ice brings with it the gift of the rubedo, a renewed hope born out of death, grief, and chaos. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay considers the literary legacy of Charlotte Perkins Gilman's 'The Yellow Wallpaper' (1892) by arguing that the 'papered wall' continues to signify confinement and trauma in the Paris of James Baldwin's novel Giovanni's Room (1956) and the Boston of Jhumpa Lahiri's short story 'A Temporary Matter' (1999). In the first essay to analyse these three texts together, I contend that such comparative reading generates new critical and interpretative insights that further our understanding of these writers' work. In each text, wallpaper becomes a crucial motif suggesting the absence of a permanent home and the traumatic aftereffects of an unnamed, male baby's birth. But whereas Gilman focuses upon occluded female experience, Baldwin and Lahiri recuperate a father's sorrow in the wake of a stillbirth. That Giovanni's heterosexual relationship and the child it produces cannot survive reveals Baldwin's striking, mid-century critique of America, France, and Italy as sites of heterosexism and gay oppression. While Baldwin masculinises postpartum grief and anticipates later debates about queer futurity, Lahiri exposes the fragility of an outwardly successful Bengali American couple, whose slippery foothold in late-20th-century America is powerfully exposed through the death of their son. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes our critical analysis of interviews with youth about self harm (heretofore, referred to as embodied expression). We noted participants' relationships with people and systems, and the power that characterized the relationships. Grief and rage were expressed about the exclusions and expulsions that had occurred, the "unbelongings" imposed within the systems being described. We heard the expressions of resistance and place-claiming that wounding and scars served for the participant/storyteller. Finally, we consider "counter-listening," when embodied expressions are heard for their grief and rage about unbelonging, as well as for their agency and reclaiming of place and belonging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes the concept of mapping-ofrenda, which envisions mapping as a form of mourning and remembering while living in the context of migration. Inspired by the traditional Mexican ofrenda, the mapping-ofrenda aims to collect, curate, and represent posthumous memories. It can be produced collaboratively or individually, built with physical or digital maps, shared with other people, or kept private, and be dedicated to a single deceased or to an entire community. Through the process of co-designing two online ofrenda-maps with two Latina-American women living in Montreal (Canada) we identified some of the potential of mapping-ofrenda, including its capacity to stimulate our memories and remember stories on the verge of disappearing, to ground them to places, and to share them with people that might live far away. Mapping-ofrenda can also be a way of making visible the global geography of migration through highly intimate memories and acknowledging both the very personal and the highly universal need to remember and grieve. Finally, the main value of mapping-ofrenda in the context of migration, may be its capacity to reactivate and strengthen existing links and connections between people that are still alive but that may live far away. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This historical discussion paper is an overview for nurses working in mental health of medieval and Early Modern texts known as Ars Moriendi literature, which focuses on the art of dying, grief and loss. Primary and secondary historical documents are used to describe Ars Moriendi literature and how historical understandings of death and dying were shaped within a spiritual context. Ars Moriendi concepts are compared with modern Western secularised and medicalised notions to prompt reflection on historical versus modern approaches to dying, grief and loss. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The focus in this paper is on a specific time point in an adoption matching process. Empirical data from interviews, observations and group analytic processes are juxtaposed to hone in on emotional labor of the social work role. The author discusses the use of a 'many minds' research method to demonstrate how analytic practices can be enriched by collaborative thinking and group processes. This paper pays tribute to Claire Winnicott's work by foregrounding the complexity and generative potential of the social work relationship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Experiencing bereavement as a child or young person (CYP) can have long-lasting effects. The societal and environmental burdens of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic exacerbated the experience of loss and grief for many CYP, who were unable to access their usual the support networks. However, it is still unclear what is currently known and not known about the experiences of CYP bereaved during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. This review used the framework of Arksey and O'Malley and included five stages: (1) identifying the research question; (2) identifying relevant studies; (3) study selection; (4) charting the data; (5) collating, summarizing, and reporting the results. The methodological quality of the included studies was also assessed using the Critical Appraisal Skills Programme tool. The PRISMA framework was used for reporting the results. The electronic databases Medline, PsychINFO, CINAHL, and PubMed were searched for relevant articles. A total of three papers meeting the inclusion criteria were included in this review and two main themes identified: (1) support (which included sub-themes; social isolation and the impact on support; support from family and friends; wider support networks); (2) Emotional impact of bereavement during a pandemic. Access to support networks is crucial for CYP to understand and process their emotions relating to their bereavement experience. The pandemic meant that many usual support networks such as family and friends were inaccessible to CYP, who struggled to deal with their experience of grief during this time. Schools are a valuable support mechanism and can help CYP understand their emotions through open discussions about their bereavement. The limited empirical evidence currently available in this area of research demonstrates an important need to further understanding of the long-term impacts of dealing with pandemic-related loss in childhood [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]