people (Granek 2010: 57). After interviewing more than 100 respondents, he concluded that grief was an illness, and a matter for medical science. Doctors were now advised to monitor patients’ grief work, and later empirical studies by other researchers resulted in the same perspective on the phenomenon. In the 1960s, however, a critique of this strongly normative idea of grief work emerged. For example, in 1967, the anthropologist Geoffrey Gorer identified the cultural requirement to be happy as an obstacle to people grieving in ways more appropriate to their needs (Granek 2010: 61). In the late 1960s, Elisabeth Kübler-Ross also formulated the famous five stages of death and grief (isolation and denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance). The jury is still out on whether it is reasonable to regard grief as a normative process in this way, but most contemporary scholars reject this view. It now appears that grief is much more individualised than any theories about phases or stages would imply (Guldin 2014).
There is also a more biological track in grief research, beginning with Darwin, and particularly associated with John Bowlby, a psychoanalyst who formulated an influential psycho-biological theory about the bonds between children and parents. This theory has also been deployed in research into patterns of grief. Colin Murray Parkes in particular has refined Bowlby’s approach by conducting empirical studies of the process and of various interventions for complicated grief. Parkes (1998) summarised the grief research up to that point and grouped it into four leading types: (1) stress and crisis theories that explain grief as a stress reaction; (2) psychodynamic theories in the Freudian tradition; (3) attachment theories in the tradition of Bowlby; and (4) psychosocial theories about life transitions. Similarly, he identifies three basic models for the current scientific knowledge about grief: (I) phase models that attempt to describe the grief process in a more or less linear fashion; (II) the medical model, which looks at grief as a medical condition; and (III) the grief work model, which emphasises the importance of the bereaved person acknowledging their loss. All of these models have, however, been strongly criticised (Walter 1999: 103), and there is currently little consensus in the field. In a review, Leeat Granek concludes that, in the early 1990s, researchers were almost exclusively concerned with grief’s dysfunctional nature. This book can be seen as an attempt to move in a different direction – one that stresses the idea that grief is existentially interesting in and of itself, and not only because of its possible clinical and pathological forms. According to Granek, the dominant themes of current research – which are not central to this book – are quantifying grief (the development of diagnostic symptom scales and lists); grief and trauma; continued discussion of the stages theory; individual differences in terms of grief reactions and mastering them; and above all else, complicated grief, in other words grief as an illness (Granek 2010: 65). While these themes are important, the focus in this book is on grief’s very essence.
In addition to the changes in recent centuries in the practice of grief – and research into it during the same period – it is also relevant to mention changing relationships to death. Historically, far more research has been conducted into death than grief. The biggest name in the field is the French historian Philippe Ariès, who researched changing attitudes to death from the Middle Ages to modern times (Ariès 2009). He divided the history of death into the following epochs: the tamed death (the medieval approach, in which death was considered ubiquitous and familiar due to high levels of mortality and widespread rituals); the death of self (from the early Renaissance, when more elaborate ceremonies were introduced and the dying were even permitted to plan their death); the death of the other (the increasing alienation from death in modern society, and an increasing focus on the mourner, as discussed above in a Victorian context); and finally the forbidden death – a modern phenomenon, in which, according to Ariès, death is more taboo than ever. Death is now increasingly controlled and institutionalised in hospitals, separate from ordinary life. Grief is therefore, almost by necessity, more readily seen as a pathological condition to be treated, rather than a necessary experience governed by societal norms (see Jacobsen and Kofod 2015).
Jacobsen has recently proposed a new, fifth phase to Ariès’ chronology, which he calls the spectacular death. In the twenty-first century, death is designed, staged and rendered spectacular to a greater extent than previously (Jacobsen 2016). Not in all cases, of course, but it can be identified as a significant historical shift away from the taboo that used to epitomise the modern era. Tony Walter has criticised the widespread notion of the death taboo, and in a new article speaks instead about the pervasive dead (Walter 2019). His contention is that the twenty-first century has witnessed the reintegration of death into everyday life. He bases this on a wide range of trends, including grief theories that emphasise continued bonds with the dead, digital memorials on social media, renewed interest in angels and the afterlife, and new funeral practices. He presents plenty of evidence to suggest that the widespread thesis of death as the last great taboo was at best oversimplified, and possibly even completely wrong.
Just as I began this chapter by referring to a series of cultural representations of grief, I could have done the same with regard to death. There are films and TV programmes about death, death cafés, and death features prominently as a theme in novels and visual art. The history of death is, at its core, a story of what the focus has been in the management of the transition from life to death.5 That focus shifted from the medieval concern for the soul and its salvation to early modernity’s interest in the corpse (it was only slowly and gradually that scientists were allowed to examine dead bodies at all) (Walter 1999: 135). In modern times, the focus switches again, to interest in the bereaved. Grief practices are no longer primarily for the sake of the deceased – to ensure a good journey to the hereafter – but for the sake of the bereaved, to ensure a good psychological journey through the rest of their lives. This is probably most true in Protestant societies, which do not subscribe to a particular funerary theology (in the form of a sacrament or ritual to help the dead on their way to heaven) (Walter 1999: 33). In simple terms, we have moved from a religious culture to a psychological one; from care for the soul of the deceased, to care for the psychological well-being of the bereaved. This perspective is consistent with cultural analyses highlighting the fact that psychology has in many ways replaced religion for the individualised human being. In effect, psychologists are becoming more and more like the new priesthood, offering advice, relieving symptoms and aiding the development of the individual (Brinkmann 2014b).
Despite the background outlined above, this book will not explore the theme of death in depth, as it serves merely as a backdrop for an analysis of grief, for which death is a necessary precondition. However, it is valid – if unsurprising – to note that there are parallels between the developments over time in relation to both death and grief. In short, both show signs of increasing individualisation – away from fixed rituals and templates, to individual choices regarding death, burial and grieving practices. In extension of this, Tony Walter (1999: 207) has summarised the recent history of grief and divided it into three epochs:
1800–1950 (approx.): Early industrial society and Romantic culture. The Victorian era’s aesthetic cultivation of grief, with a range of practices to maintain the memory of the dead.
1950–1980 (approx.): Complete modernity and technical rationality. Focus on ‘grief work’, standardised stage and phase theories and increasing medicalisation.
1980–present (approx.): Late capitalism and consumer society. Individualisation and subjectification of grief (‘the customer is always right’), underlining that everybody grieves differently.
For Walter, the current conception of grief is torn between, on the one hand, a ‘modern’ understanding, where grief is framed by standardised theories about phases, and in which health systems are on hand with diagnoses and treatments for those who fall outside the normative frameworks; and on the other, a ‘post-modern’ understanding, in which grief is seen as an individual experience of suffering, which must be allowed to proceed free from the judgement of others. The post-modern understanding also includes the possibility of ‘post-traumatic growth’, i.e. that the experience of loss may give rise to existential reorientation and personal development. The problem with the former (the ‘modern’ understanding)
