Give Sorrow Words

Perspectives on Loss and Trauma

John H. Harvey

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317711254
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psicología
• Subtopic: Emociones en psicología

Throughout our lives, we are influenced by the sensation of loss. Whether implicit or obvious, the impact of this sense of loss affects our daily thinking and behavior. This new text provides a comprehensive introduction to the study of loss via exploration into three major types of loss: loss of important relationships (divorce or perhaps the dissolution of important relationships and friendships); losses that damage who we are, our self-esteem (loss of employment); and losses resulting from victimization (being the target of violence or prejudice; loss of home in a natural disaster).

Students of sociology, theology, and family studies will find this text of key interest. Moreover, professionals in these fields, including the fields of trauma and loss, will appreciate the thorough literature review, practical language, clinical interventions, and case highlights.

1
CHAPTER
Introduction to the Study of Loss: Why is Give Sorrow Words Needed?

Those of us at the front lines know that life is a collectivity and that we are morally and ineluctably bound to remain vulnerable to the suffering of others.

—J.L.William (1997)

We are healed of a suffering only by experiencing it to the full.

—Marcel Proust

□ Loss: A Universal Experience

The above quotes reflect part of the vast landscape of what we as humans understand as grief and sorrow. Words such as Shakespeare’s are universal and timeless in their appeal to what in time all humans will realize: Life is full of losses, small and large, sustainable and sometimes insuperable and incalculable in their impacts. An important goal of the present book is to enhance the degree and depth of discourse about loss and trauma in scholarship, education, and ordinary people’s perspectives on their lives. As a scholar and teacher, I find that younger and older people alike perceive a need to discuss both their own individual losses, and loss and trauma in more collective and abstract terms.

The Proust quote above represents well the commitment that many people feel to face up to loss and in so doing recognize their responsibility to all beings who suffer. To a degree, as will be articulated in this book, we all are ineluctably bound to and interdependent with other beings, including other animals, in their suffering and loss. By recognizing that interdependence, we help ourselves deal with our own inevitable losses and at the same time expand our humanity of feeling toward and acts on behalf of others.

The present book is designed to give voice to many people who have suffered major losses and to selectively review different scholarly approaches to loss and trauma. Its theme is found in the title Give Sorrow Words, a proclamation that has been made in many contexts and by many commentators, from scholars to ordinary folk who have known deep psychological pain due to loss and trauma. The present book is needed to provide a forum to discuss the rapidly developing literature on loss and trauma and to tell stories of major loss and how people have coped with loss.

Recently, I heard of the suicide of a psychologist with whom I had worked when he was a doctoral student in counseling psychology. The suicide occurred in the psychologist’s forties, after decades in which he suffered severe depression. Like the writer William Styron (1990), this person had battled his depression with great courage and yet continued to sink deeper and deeper into its clutches, despite years of therapy, having become a marathon runner, and having achieved reasonable success as a psychological practitioner and college teacher.

What apparently no one outside this psychologist’s mind could appreciate, however, was his own sense of powerful, pervading loss from his childhood, through his many years of education, to the point in mid-life when he decided the world and his loved ones would be better off without him. His suicide letter suggested as much and spoke of his own cognitive framing of more extant events as serious losses. For example, he wrote of the impact of possible loss of insurance benefits and a humiliating interaction with an insurance agent in that context. These experiences apparently finally tipped him over the brink in experiencing what Shneidman (1996) has referred to as “psychache,” a powerful psychological dynamic in many suicides (cf. discussion of suicide in Chapter 10).

Why did this psychologist conclude that he could not go on when others in perhaps more daunting situations and with more difficult histories of loss have decided to fight on? In this book, it is contended that the sense of loss that we all feel at times needs to be better studied and understood by psychology. It is suggested that a psychology of loss and trauma that focuses on people’s naive understanding of their own and others’ losses and that is broad and interdisciplinary in nature can be better articulated to contribute to this understanding.

From early in our lives to our death, we are affected by a sense of personal loss, whether from losses we personally experience or losses incurred by those whom we love. The impact of this sense of loss may be implicit, lurking in the background of our thinking or daily behavior. Or it may be terrifying and staring us in the face. Trauma and death are devastating because of the feelings of loss that we attribute to them. As Weiss (1998) has argued, there are at least three kinds of major losses. There are losses of important relationships (as in divorce or dissolution of close relationships and friendships). There are losses that damage who we are, our self-esteem. These include losses of employment or roles that we play in organizations or communities or families. There are losses resulting from victimization, including being the target of violence or losing one’s home or possessions due to a natural disaster. These losses may humiliate us or seriously impede our working life or ability to trust and relate intimately to others. These types of major losses and trauma, involving reductions in symbolic or physical resources in which a person is emotionally invested (i.e., my definition of “major loss,” Harvey, 1996), comprise fertile material for our inquiry in this volume.

□ An Extensive Literature

Loss and associated grief-work have received extensive analysis and research by behavioral scientists and social commentators. The present discussion will mention a fragment of that literature that will inform the later discussion of different types of loss and how people deal with them.

Judith Viorst’s (1986) classic book on loss, Necessary Losses, deals with many of the natural losses that people incur as a part of living. Viorst pointed out that natural losses such as the loss of one’s sexual virginity, our friends as we move from place to place, and physical health as we reach the latter stages of our lives, are natural and come in due course for every person. Some experience more “out-of-season” losses, such as losing those who died at early or at mid-life because of accidents, cancer, AIDS, and the like. Viorst eloquently said of loss:

… natural, unavoidable, inexorable. And these losses are necessary because we grow by losing and leaving and letting go. … For the road to human development is paved with renunciation. Throughout our life we grow by giving up. We give up some of our deepest attachments to others. We give up certain cherished parts of ourselves. We must confront, in the dreams we dream, as well as in our intimate relationships, all that we never will have and never will be. Passionate investment leaves us vulnerable to loss. And sometimes, no matter how clever we are, we must lose. (p. 3)

But does everyone who experiences these losses experience growth as a consequence? I doubt it. I will argue in this book that the key to trying to transform losses into something that is positive is the hard work of the mind and spirit to give our losses meaning, to learn and gain insights from them, and to impart to others something positive based on the experience. Not all of us will be so inclined to search diligently for meaning in our losses. Not all of us will want to learn from them. Not all of us will use loss experiences to motivate us toward helping others who also are struggling with their diminished hopes and resources. Some are too diminished themselves to even consider how they might try to help others. The real power of Viorst’s book, however, is her message that people experience a plethora of types of loss in a full lifetime.

Therese Rando in Treatment of Complicated Mourning (1993) provided a comprehensive discussion of the nature of loss as it pertains to psychological intervention. She suggested that that there are primary losses and secondary losses. A secondary loss, according to Rando, is a physical or psychosocial loss that coincides with or develops as a consequence of the initial loss. As an illustration, with the death of a loved one, a survivor will experience the loss of the loved one’s presence, may have financial difficulties associated with the loss, and may have to relocate. Each of these rippling effects is considered a secondary loss, I will return to Rando’s interesting analysis in Chapter 11 when the topic of treatment for extended mourning is discussed.

From my own position, all of these types of loss that Rando defines as secondary may also be seen as part of the primary loss package. They occur, however, at distant points from the initial loss. Rando’s argument about secondary loss is important because it highlights the rippling, long-term effects associated with major loss. In some cases, it is unclear when the end of the chain of associated losses is reached—in fact it may not be reached until the survivor also dies (Harvey, Orbuch, Weber, Merbach, & Alt, 1992)!

Some people are overwhelmed by a key loss at one point in their lives, never fully deal with the loss, and then are staggered even more by losses later in life. Psychoanalysts have long contended that non-mastered losses from one’s past—such as the unresolved death of a parent when one is young—will come back to interfere with mourning a current loss (Volkan & Zintl, 1993). Other types of particularly haunting loss are the loss of a child, suicide, and any kind of loss which occurs unexpectedly and at an early point in the life cycle.

George Levinger (1992) presented a useful set of distinctions about the nature of perceived loss. He noted that the extent to which a person perceives loss (or a deprivation in personal resources) after the death of a close other depends on several factors. These factors include: How close (or involving or interdependent) was the relationship? Did the death occur unexpectedly, or did it occur only after a protracted period of illness? If the individual’s death involved a long terminal phase, a survivor probably can begin the process of mourning (which may involve story development and confiding) in anticipation of the death. Levinger posited that when a dying person expresses a clear desire to stop living, it helps his or her loved ones to accept the ultimate death. In fact, they have a clearer answer to the question of why he or she died—the individual wanted to, perhaps in the context of suffering from a terminal illness. Levinger also suggested that when there is a prolonged severe illness prior to death, a survivor may begin to pull away emotionally from the dying person; this step is a defense mechanism that helps the survivor better accept the certainty of the impending death and begin the mourning process.

Along the lines of Viorst’s position, Robert Weiss (1988) made the following valuable statement about the relative nature of healing from loss:

Loss is inescapable. Deaths, estrangements, and separations are part of life. Recoveries tend to be either more or less adequate; only rarely can they be said to be either complete or entirely absent. Most of us have character structures influenced by partial recovery from loss. … Loss and pain are inescapable, but permanent damage should not be. (Weiss, 1988, pp. 50–51)

Colin Parkes (1988) noted that grief following bereavement is aggravated if the person lost is the person to whom one would turn in times of trouble. Faced with the biggest trouble ever experienced, this person repeatedly turns to a confidant who is not there. Parkes suggested that such a situation, which often occurs when a spouse dies, is exceedingly difficult to resolve:

The familiar world suddenly seems to have become unfamiliar, habits of thought and behaviour let us down, and we lose confidence in our own internal world. (p. 55)

In her inimitable way, Emily Dickinson said as much too when she wrote, “Heavenly Hurt, it gives us—/ we can find no scar, / But internal difference, / Where the Meanings, are” (Johnson, 1979), It is these “meanings” to which I will turn next.

Laurie Palmer’s (1987) poignant book Shrapnel in the Heart tells many stories of survivors of individuals killed in Vietnam who have left notes and very personal memorabilia at the Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial Wall (see also Glaser & Palmer, 1991). These messages have been written as part of the survivors’ attempts to release their feelings and to make sense out of something that essentially was senseless—the loss of life of tens of thousands of soldiers—mostly very young people—and innocent Vietnamese citizens. In large measure, the Wall made it appropriate to be expressive. As Palmer said after she had tracked down a sample of persons who had left memorabilia:

People, I found, not only want to talk about the person they lost in Vietnam, they need to talk. It is a deep yearning in many, suppressed because of the wildly erroneous notion that by now they should be “over it.” (1987, p. xiii)

The Wall made it appropriate to be expressive because it represents a nation’s official homage to its fallen sons and daughters. As important, the Wall stimulated expression because it expresses grief itself! It expresses grief in the enormous number of names of those who died. It expresses grief in its blackness. It expresses grief in its chasm into the earth—like a grave. But it also expresses hope as it rises out of the earth at its ends. The Wall provided a place for those who grieve the losses of the Vietnam War to come and share with others who grieve, and for all to come and stare in sadness and awe.

□ Emphasizing People’s Construction of Meaning

This book will emphasize people’s construction of meaning and the use of accounts or stories to communicate meaning. The “account-making,” or storytelling, perspective on coping with loss will be described in Chapter 2. This perspective focuses on how, when, and why people search for and construct meaning in connection with their dilemmas of living.

Several influential theories in psychology emphasize people’s search for meaning. Such an emphasis can be found in Heider’s (1958) seminal ideas that led to attribution theory in social psychology. Kelly’s (1955) personal construct theory also embraced this perspective. Some of the most systematic recent work on people’s search for meaning in situations involving severe stressors has been done by Thompson and colleagues (e.g., Thompson & Janigian, 1988).

Why is meaning so important to our lives? As suggested by theorists such as Heider (1958), when people feel that they have a sense of understanding for events, they feel more control in dealing with those events. As has been pointed out by Thompson (1998), some stressors may be so daunting that they defy direct actions designed to establish control. Still, a person may feel a sense of secondary control via acceptance of the situation and making the best of it whether cognitively, behaviorally, or emotionally. Finding meaning usually is instrumental to finding hope and feeling agency in coping with loss (Snyder, 1994).

An essential focus for a psychology of loss and trauma must be on the individual’s perceived meanings of events. Frankl (1959) provided penetrating insights into the power of people’s ascription of meaning in allaying pain and suffering, even in situations involving horror, degradation, and deprivation. Frankl emphasized acts of meaning such as reaching out and connecting with someone else, making a creative work, and adopting an attitude of hope as steps that may facilitate the construction of meaning. People often have difficulty finding hope in their lives because of the meanings they gave to personally challenging or devastating loss events.

The suicide by the top U.S. naval officer Admiral Mike Boorda in 1996 is as illustrative of this point as was the example of my psychologist colleague at the beginning of the chapter. Boorda apparently felt that his honor as the only enlisted man to rise to the highest officer position in the Navy was about to be defamed and that he and the Navy were about to be humiliated by news stories suggesting that combat medals he had worn were not deserved. So he killed himself just prior to an interview with Newsweek magazine. Why could not Boorda or the psychologist we initially discussed have reconstructed meanings for their situations such that the ultimate act of self-destruction was not necessary? We do not know, but we do suggest that their own unique experiences of loss were involved in their decisions.

We are constantly constructing and reconstructing meanings, and ourselves in the process (Mead, 1934). In life crises, this constructive enterprise can be one of our most effective antidotes to depression and loss of hope. Echoes of Frankl’s conception can be found throughout scholarly and popular literature on...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• 1 Introduction to the Study of Loss: Why is Give Sorrow Words Needed?
• 2 Definitions and an Account-Making Perspective
• 3 Loss of Close Others to Death
• 4 Loss of Close Others by Divorce or Dissolution
• 5 Loss Due to Senseless Violence
• 6 Loss Due to War and Genocide
• 7 Loss Due to Disease Processes and Accidents
• 8 Impoverishment, Homelessness, and Loss of Employment
• 9 An International Perspective on Loss and Trauma: The Case of Romania
• 10 Disenfranchised Grief and Stigmatization
• 11 Adaptation
• 12 Epilogue: Practical Strategies for Coping with Major Loss
• References
• Index