Grieving Beyond Gender

Understanding the Ways Men and Women Mourn, Revised Edition

Kenneth J. Doka, Terry L. Martin

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781135844288
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Psychologie
• Subtopic: Geschichte & Theorie in der Psychologie

Grieving Beyond Gender: Understanding the Ways Men and Women Mourn is a revision of Men Don't Cry, Women Do: Transcending Gender Stereotypes of Grief. In this work, Doka and Martin elaborate on their conceptual model of "styles or patterns of grieving" – a model that has generated both research and acceptance since the publication of the first edition in 1999. In that book, as well as in this revision, Doka and Martin explore the different ways that individuals grieve, noting that gender is only one factor that affects an individual's style or pattern of grief. The book differentiates intuitive grievers, where the pattern is more affective, from instrumental grievers, who grieve in a more cognitive and behavioral way, while noting other patterns that might be more blended or dissonant. The model is firmly grounded in social science theory and research. A particular strength of the work is the emphasis placed on the clinical implications of the model on the ways that different types of grievers might best be supported through individual counseling or group support.

SECTION I
Definition and Overview

If you have ever wondered why you grieve differently from others you know, or why someone you love is not reacting to the same loss in the same way as you, you are not alone. Perhaps you are curious about why the majority of your clients show deep feelings about their losses, yet others seem scarcely affected. Or, maybe you are concerned about those hospice bereavement cases that do not respond to any of your offers of support, even though, given the nature of the death, your team may have “coded” them as being “at risk.” This book addresses these and other issues concerning grief and loss. But first, we establish the foundation for our efforts and define terms.

Chapter 1 introduces the thesis for the rest of the book—that individuals grieve differently and that two basic patterns can be drawn from the literature and from case reports. Furthermore, neither of these two patterns is necessarily desirable over or superior to the other. The book traces the history and development of the thesis and briefly describes the instrumental and intuitive patterns of grief. The chapter concludes with an outline of the book.

Chapter 2 revisits the many definitions and various aspects of grief, grieving, mourning, loss, and bereavement. After a review of existing models, a new way of understanding grief is introduced that is based on the creation and distribution of energy. The chapter goes on to explain how and why this energy manifests differently from person to person.

Chapter 3 reintroduces the instrumental and intuitive patterns of grief and differentiates between the two patterns by the experience of grief, the expression of grief, and primary and secondary adaptive strategies. This chapter further explores the more commonly recognized intuitive pattern.

The fourth chapter explores in some depth the instrumental pattern, particularly emphasizing distinct aspects and variations within that pattern. The chapter concludes with a brief discussion of a blended pattern of grief that combines, to a greater or lesser degree, elements of both the instrumental and intuitive patterns.

The final chapter in the section, Chapter 5, explores disordered variants of the patterns. It begins by differentiating maladaptive or “dissonant” patterns from initial responses to a loss and introduces several types of dissonant patterns. This chapter also ties certain male dissonant patterns to the notion of gender role strain. The section ends by considering the relationship of dissonant patterns to complicated mourning.

Is the zeitgeist or spirit of the times right for such an understanding of grief, as well as for the general premise of the patterns of grief? For example, it is quite possible that the enthusiastic responses to concepts such as “death as taboo” or “disenfranchised grief” would have been substantially muted during less favorable historical times. Likewise, there have been periods where a more rigid concept of grief may have prevailed. Many may find our ideas questionable, yet there is a tremendous heuristic value in proffering these novel and (some would say) risky hypotheses. You, the reader, must be the judge.

CHAPTER 1
Introduction and Plan of the Book

When Brad’s infant son died, he was surprised and troubled at the extent of his wife’s grief. Every night she disconsolately cried herself to sleep. He was also perplexed at his own lack of tears. “Why am I not grieving?” he constantly asked himself. Yet as he asked this question, he would be alone in his workshop sculpting a memorial stone for his child. “What is wrong with me? Why can’t I feel grief?” he reflected, as he pounded his hammer on a chisel.

Friends often wondered about Alicia. When her husband John died, she used the insurance to finance her graduate education. She thinks of John frequently, taking comfort that her new job has allowed her to continue to support their family. But friends keep questioning her, wondering, as one put it, “if she is doing too well.”

Bob, too, wondered about his grief. When their son, a training pilot, was lost at sea, his wife availed herself of all the counseling the airline provided. All Bob wanted to do was to take his own plane up every afternoon to search for signs of wreckage.

☐ Understanding Patterns of Grief: Beyond Gender

All of these individuals are grieving a significant loss. And all are troubled by what they believe to be inappropriate responses to loss. In fact, each has effective ways to experience and adapt to his or her losses, yet they each reflect a societal understanding that the keys to experiencing grief lie in overtly expressing emotion and consciously seeking support.

Grieving Beyond Gender: Understanding the Ways Men and Women Mourn challenges that presumption. Its basic thesis is that there are many different ways in which individuals experience, express, and adapt to grief. Affectively oriented strategies are one way, but other strategies, building upon activity or cognition, can be equally effective.

This book describes two patterns of grieving. One is an intuitive pattern where individuals experience and express grief in an affective way. In this pattern, grieving individuals will find adaptive strategies that are oriented toward the expression of affect. But there is another pattern as well, one that we label instrumental. Here, grief is experienced physically, such as in a restlessness or cognition. Here the adaptive strategies individuals use tend to be, as the vignettes indicate, cognitive and active as well. These two patterns are seen as end points on a continuum. Many individuals may exhibit more blended patterns that draw from both intuitive and instrumental reactions and responses in the ways that individuals experience, express, and adapt to loss. Other individuals may show inconsistencies between the ways that grief is experienced and expressed. We label such inconsistent patterns as dissonant. Both dissonant and blended patterns are also discussed within the book.

This instrumental pattern is typical of the way many men grieve, due to contemporary patterns of male socialization. Yet as the book emphasizes, while there is a clear relation between gender and grieving patterns, this is not seen as deterministic. Women also may exhibit an instrumental style. And many women and men represent grievers who demonstrate more intuitive patterns. Clearly, patterns are influenced by gender but not determined by it.

This book is written primarily for grief counselors, psychologists, social workers, mental health counselors, pastoral counselors, and other therapists—especially those who work with men and adolescent boys. Although strongly affirming that these grief patterns are influenced but not determined by gender, the book offers a corrective, building on some of the most current research on the psychology of men, to the bias toward affective expression described in the next section. That corrective also may offer a value for academicians in thanatology or areas related to death studies and certainly would provide validation to bereaved individuals who are trying to understand not only their own reactions to loss, but the responses and strategies of others within their intimate networks.

☐ The Bias Toward Affective Expression

Although instrumental and intuitive patterns exist, are equally effective, and have complementary sets of advantages and disadvantages, instrumental styles are often viewed negatively within counseling, self-help, and grieving literature.

This reflects a general Western bias in counseling that tends to value affective expressiveness as inherently more therapeutic than cognitive or behavioral responses. Sue and Sue (2008), in the groundbreaking work Counseling the Culturally Diverse, criticize the counseling paradigm for overemphasizing affect:

Emotional expressiveness is also valued, as we like individuals to be in touch with their feelings and to be able to realize their emotional reactions. (p. 142)

This bias, Sue and Sue note, can inhibit counseling with other cultural groups that do not place significance on affective disclosure.

This bias is also evident in what has been termed the grief work hypothesis (see Stroebe, 1997; Wortman & Silver, 1989). This hypothesis, or operating set of assumptions within the field of grief counseling, has emphasized that unless one expresses one’s feelings openly, grieving cannot be successfully accomplished. For example, Vail (1982) expressed the sentiment often found in self-help literature about grief:

Of course, those who allow themselves to experience the gamut of emotions are probably the least likely to actually go crazy. It is those of us who attempt to suppress, deny, and displace grief who eventually have real problems coping with the loss. (p. 55)

In fact, there is danger in identifying grief with any affective expression. The danger is that the absence of affect is taken to be an absence of attachment. As Weiss (1998) notes,

There may indeed be people who were attached to someone whom they lost to death, who fully acknowledge that loss, and yet do not grieve. Their absence of grief is not defensive; they simply do not grieve. I cannot, myself, understand how a relationship of attachment is consistent with an absence of separation distress or interruption of that relationship, and absence of grief or loss of the relationship, but perhaps it is. There may, perhaps, be people so fully autonomous that they can experience attachments, and on loss of those attachments, experience brief distress, after which they go on as before; or there may be some other emotional constellation that permits attachment without giving loss to grief. (p. 347)

But perhaps there is an answer to Weiss’s honest query, one that accepts both the attachment and acknowledges the grief. The answer here would be to look beyond affective distress to other expressions of grief.

This affective bias finds its boldest expression in literature about men and grief. It is unsurprising, given the bias toward affective expressiveness, that many clinicians have seen aspects of the male role placing men at a disadvantage in grieving when compared to women. Women are seen as more ready to accept help and express emotion, both of which are viewed as essential to the process of grieving. Since men are perceived as less likely to show emotion or accept help, they are seen as having more difficulty in responding to loss. Recently at a lecture, one counselor suggested that when grieving men use the word fine in answer to how they are doing, it should be viewed as an acronym for “feelings inside, never expressed.” LaGrand (1986), for example, states: “This does not mean men are not grieving; it does indicate that they may not accomplish the task as successfully as women” (See page).

The underlying assumption is that there are limited ways that one can effectively cope with loss. Staudacher (1991) expresses this succinctly:

Simply put, there is only one way to grieve. That way is to go through the core of grief. Only by experiencing the necessary emotional effects of your loved one’s death is it possible for you to eventually resolve the loss. (see page)

While later chapters explore the relationship of gender and grieving patterns, that assumption can be questioned. On the surface, if survivors were to grieve in identical ways, one would also expect analogous expressions of affect, duplicate behavior patterns, and feelings that would be indistinguishable from one another. In fact, there are many ways to cope with loss. To assert that only one pattern is acceptable is empirically ungrounded, at variance with current theory, and clinically unhelpful— points that will be further explored in later chapters.

☐ Beyond Gender: A Journey From Male and Masculine Grief

When this work began, we clearly had an interest in men and grief. It quickly moved beyond that. At the first description of what we called “male grieving patterns,” a female colleague remarked that it had validated her own way of grieving—her pattern of adapting to loss. In fact, she had responded to her own early perinatal losses in two distinct ways. She began to do some of the basic work and research on how to best support survivors of perinatal loss. Then, once that research base was established, she became a pioneering advocate who both challenged and changed the ways hospitals dealt with such losses. Her comments were taken seriously, changing the terminology for this book to masculine grief (see Martin & Doka, 1996).

There was much to recommend the use of the term masculine grief. First, it allowed us to build a clear bridge to Jung on ideas of animus– anima (1920). Like Jung, we saw masculinity–femininity as a continuum that exists within a person as well as between individuals. Even our concept of grieving patterns is that they fall along a continuum. The use of these terms draws from that theoretical base.

Second, we believe that this pattern of adapting to loss is related to gender, at least in North America and many Western cultures, even if it is not determined by it. The use of the term masculine then reaffirms that gender relationship. It seemed foolish to pretend that gender does not play a role, since it influences so many other aspects of life.

Third, we wished to directly challenge the notion, so prevalent in the popular literature, that many men are ineffectual grievers. We asserted that “masculine” patterns of coping with grief are different, but not less effective than, more “conventional” or “feminine” ways of dealing with loss. Thus, there is a practical rationale for the use of the term. Since most popular literature does offer a view of the male as an ineffectual griever, we believed that only by using a gender-related term might our work be available to clinicians interested in or dealing with male or masculine grievers.

Finally, the use of masculine and feminine has great heuristic value that will, we hope, encourage continued discussion and further research.

However, we ultimately decided to eschew gender-related terms for a variety of reasons. First, they caused confusion. Although we identified a pattern of grief that we believe many males use, we also sought to recognize and to validate female grievers who exhibit such a pattern. But for many the term masculine grief had unfortunate baggage. This was most poignantly illustrated by a conversation with such a griever after a presentation. This woman was a pioneering female rabbi, one of the first to be recognized. “All my life,” she said, “I have tried to be perceived as not just one of the guys. You described my grieving pattern. Please, use a language to describe it that does not make me ‘one of the guys’ again.”

It was confusing for other reasons as well. The distinction between masculine and male was often lost on readers who kept identifying one with another. And it made us apologize about using male examples, diverting us from a critical aspect of our work that instrumental styles are, in fact, utilized by a majority of male grievers.

Moreover, the use of gender-related terms created discomfort. To assert that “masculine” modes of coping with loss are cognitive and active seems to perpetuate stereotypes, only partly true, that view such responses as typical of male response to loss, and it implies that “feminine” responses to loss are more emotive.

In addition, the use of gender-related terms creates its own difficulties. If one end of the continuum is labeled masculine, what is the other end, the alternate pattern, called? The use of the term feminine has merit since it seems like the logical complement and is faithful to the theoretical base. On the other hand, the term conventional has merit since it reflects current conventions on grief that have tended to view seeking support and emotional responses as both desirable and normative. In addition, it avoids further stereotyping of emotional responses as feminine. But the use of the term conventional also runs the risk of appearing to place negative value on the term feminine. In short, either term has merit and complementary disadvantages.

And that raised clinical concerns. Some men who do seek support and are comfortable with emotive responses may feel threatened to hear their mode of response described as “feminine.” And women who tend toward solitary, active, and cognitive responses may resent the label of “masculine.”

In the end, use of the terms instrumental and intuitive seemed to carry far less baggage. Although these patterns will be more fully developed in subsequent chapters, it may be helpful to offer a brief description now.

First, the very experience of grief is different. For reasons that will be described later, instrumental grievers tend to have tempered affect to a loss. While intuitive grievers are more likely to experience their grief as waves of affect, instrumental grievers are more likely to describe it in physical or cognitive terms. Whereas intuitive grievers often need to express their feelings and seek the support of others, instrumental grievers are more likely to cognitively process or immerse themselves in activity.

Sam and Jenny shared their disappointment with each other several months after the sudden death of their 17-year-old son. Responding to Jenny’s accusations that he failed to validate their grief, Sam stated, “I couldn’t allow myself to miss (him) until I figured out what this meant to our family.”

This suggests that at least some instrumental grievers attempt to evaluate their experiences cognitively rather than experience them emotionally.

When instrumental grievers do respond behaviorally to a loss, it usually involves immersion in some form of activity. Sometimes this is work, but at other times it may be intimately related to the loss. They may wish to take legal or physical action in response to the loss. For example, one male client whose young daughter died of cancer found it helpful to develop a scholarship fund in her name. Others may take active roles in the funeral. Ryan (1989), while noting concern at his wife’s affective response to loss, expressed his own grief by carving his son’s memorial stone. Instrumental grievers may also focus on the problems caused by the loss, actively trying to find appropriate solutions or engaging in activities related to the loss.

When Jack’s 20-year-old daughter was killed after losing control of the car, he spent several weeks rebuilding a neighbor’s fence damaged in the accident. He later described this activity as crucial to “getting me through those first two months.”

In short, this section draws attention to the fact that grievers may experience, express, and adapt to grief differently. Cognition and activity remain two key adaptive strategies often utilized by instrumental grievers. And these strategies, like any set of adaptive strategies, may be either effective or ineffective, depending upon the particular strategy and circumstances. Subsequent chapters will explore this further.

Corr, Nabe, and Corr (2009), in reviewing the relationship between gender and grief, note three ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Series Editor Foreword
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Section I: Definition and Overview
• Section II: Pathways to the Patterns
• Section III: Implications and Interventions
• Appendix A: Grief Pattern Inventory
• Appendix B: Item Analys is and Scoring of the Grief Pattern Inventory
• References