4th Global Conference
Wednesday 12th July - Friday 14th July 2006
Mansfield College, Oxford
Session 3: Attachment and Trauma
Chair: Reyhan Valri Gork
Attachment Trauma, Sudden Death and Anticipatory Grief: The Chamorro
Sample
Stephen
W. Kane and Vera de Oro
University of Guam, UOG Station, Mangilao, Guam
Fifty nine female Chamorro subjects in a sample size of sixty six responded to the Family Crisis Scale to determine their emotional and psychological reactions to threatened loss, anticipation of loss and sudden death of a family member. A corollary interest was an inquiry into culture specific mental health interventions which could be recommended for this population. Subject’s responses to the instrument resulted in the development of the Chamorro Family Crisis Scale with two variables ranked more stressful when compared to the western Family Crisis Scale. Further results revealed that twenty five per cent stated there was no emotional difference between situations of threatened loss, anticipated loss and sudden death. Of the twelve subjects who listed a sudden death in the family in the last year, seven likewise reported the occurrence of a divorce. The most frequent attachment traumas in the past year included threat of dissolution of the family, loss of a job and a family member leaves temporarily. And finally, sixty two percent of respondents ranked most stressful more than once to FCS items. These results are discussed within a context of an examination of the Chamorro culture and an application of attachment concepts.
"Sudden Unexpected Death": Magic, Contingency,
and the Uncertainty of Signs
Otniel
E. Dror
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel
Paul Feyerabend
was basically right. The study of ‘Voodoo death’—“the
casting of a fatal spell on a person…with the result that the
person…is said to die”--presented a persuasive argument
for the reality of inexplicable physiological processes. Voodoo death
remained and remains a contentious issue, generating new models and possibilities
regarding the mind-body problem, the status of the dead body (i.e., the
autopsy), the reality behind alternative modes of healing, and the placebo
and nocebo effects. It retains, to present the matter more poignantly,
a magical presence in the midst of modern biomedicine.
In this presentation
I study the history of ‘sudden unexpected
death’ during the post-Second World War period. Sudden death--the
abrupt cessation of life in a seemingly healthy individual--emerged as
a major focus of physiological and clinical concerns during the 1950s
and 1960s in the West. I draw on Ronald Barthes’ analysis of the fait
divers, Philip Fisher’s study of the Vehement Passions,
Foucault’s history of the clinic, and the history of medicine and
physiology, in order to study the disruptive and transgressive dimensions
of ‘sudden unexpected death’. I argue that postwar ‘sudden
unexpected death,’ which was conceived as characteristic of modern
Western lives, was modeled on ‘voodoo death’--which during
the interwar years had been framed as a distinct phenomenon of non-Western
and ‘primitive’ cultures. The voodoo experience was now
discovered in a variety of acute medical emergencies that were observed
in every-day western lives--the acute stress of modernization.
Complicated Grief Faced by the Families of
Death Row Inmates: Obstacles to Effective Grief Therapy
Sandra
Jones
Department of Sociology, Rowan University, Glassboro, New
Jersey, USA and Licensed Clinical Social Worker
The families of
death row inmates experience unique grief and loss issues that have largely
been neglected by scholars and clinicians alike. They require our attention
in order to provide a greater understanding of the experiences and needs
of these families. This study uncovers the meaning that lies within the
specific forms of grief and loss experienced by family members who currently
have a loved one on death row or have already lost their loved one to
an execution. The concepts of disenfranchised
grief (Doka, 2002) and nonfinite loss (Bruce and Shultz,
2001) are utilized to bring attention to the ways in which the circumstances
surrounding an execution complicate the grieving process for the family
members of those condemned to death. Obstacles to effective grief therapy
for these family members are further examined and addressed within this
study.
Qualitative interviews were conducted with 50 family members of Delaware
death row inmates. While the number of those on death row in Delaware (N=
16) is relatively small, for nearly a decade this state has held the
distinction of being that which executes more people per capita than
any other state in the United States. The reactions of family members
to having a loved one on death row are varied and complex, yet they include
the following common responses: social isolation; loss of the assumptive
world; intensified family conflict; diminished self-esteem; fragmented
sense of security, trust, and meaning; guilt and shame; and a chronic
state of despair. The barriers interfering with these family members
receiving effective grief therapy are numerous. They include a reluctance
to seek therapy due to the stigma associated with their loss, difficulty
trusting others, and a disillusionment with the same mental health community
often seen as having failed their loved one on death row. When these
family members seek therapy, they often find that traditional models
of grief therapy fail to address the symptoms of their complicated grief.
Mourning my Mother
Leeat
Granek
York University, Canada
My mother’s death was not a surprise. Despite 17 years of relative psychological and physical health living with cancer, the last year of her life was a violent struggle against the disease that aggressively invaded her body. I am by training a Psychologist. I know all about the stages of grief. I thought I would be prepared. I wasn’t. I agree with Didion (2005), who has written, “Grief, when it comes, is nothing we expect it to be” (p. 26).
Holub writes,
How can
we tell where one person ends and another begins? The material finitude
of our bodies is evident, but the borders of the soul are less definite…Love
blurs the boundaries between one soul and another… When
the tenuous coupling of a person’s
body and soul is undone by death, the bond of body and soul within each
person who has been close to the met/metah (dead person) is also weekend….
And so it is that a survivor must mourn, to heal and repair the bond
between his or her own body and soul- literally, in some measure,
to stay alive (Holub, 1994, p. 344).
This paper is about the grief process as it is really lived. It is, as Holub eloquently writes an attempt to ‘stay alive’ by repairing the bond between one’s own body and soul through the rituals of mourning. In Jewish theory, there is a concept called Tikkun Olam. It is taught that G-d created the world by forming vessels of light to hold the Divine Light. But as G-d poured the Light into the vessels, they shattered, tumbling toward the realm of matter. Thus, our world consists of countless shards of the original vessels entrapping sparks of the Divine Light. Humanity’s task involves helping G-d by reuniting and mending together the scattered Light that is found in the shards, raising the sparks back to Divinity and restoring the broken world. Mourning my mother has taught me that people are reflections of the cosmic broken vessel and that I am a broken vessel too. People who are grieving often say that they feel like they are shattered into a million pieces. Mourning is the slow, painful process of literally stitching together the pieces of ourselves including the body and the soul that was split with the death of our loves, to become a new kind of scarred and scared vessel that holds a different light than before.
© Inter-Disciplinary.Net 2006