To Have and Have Not: Adaptive Bereavement by Transforming Mental Ties to the Deceased

Abstract

Over the past decade, there has been a paradigm shift in the field of bereavement: From the traditional view that insists on the necessity of disengagement, toward a position that postulates the need for a continuing connection. The authors propose to move beyond the dichotomy that was created by the two paradigms and conceive of it as a process of transformation that involves both disengagement and connection. Drawing on theoretical frameworks of control and adaptation, the authors suggest that the relationship with the deceased may be transformed to mental representations of this person that carry substitute value.

Culture and Continuing Bonds: A Prospective Comparison of Bereavement in the United States and the People's Republic of China

“…In their sample, 63% reported feeling that their spouse was with them at times and 65% reported a desire to carry out their loved one's wishes. There is, however, little in the way of reliable empirical evidence from which to evaluate the adaptiveness of continuing bonds (for a review, see Boerner & Heckhausen, 2003). And the few recent studies that have examined these issues in the United States have failed to support the adaptiveness of maintaining continued bonds with the deceased.…”

Continuing Bonds and Grief: A Prospective Analysis

“…There is some cross-sectional evidence for an association between continuing bonds and difficulties with recovery from loss (e.g., Field & Friedrichs, 2004;Field, Gal-Oz, & Bonanno, 2003; for reviews, see Boerner & Heckhausen, 2003;Stroebe & Schut, 2005). However, these findings are open to alternative interpretations.…”

Improvement/Maintenance and Reorientation as Central Features of Coping with Major Life Change and Loss: Contributions of Three Life-Span Theories

“…The assimilative and accommodative modes are thought of as habitualized tendencies, which means that a person could have more of a tendency towards one or the other that exists independently of particular life conditions. Dispositional differences have also been suggested in terms of a preference for primary versus secondary control striving [Boerner & Heckhausen, 2003;Heckhausen, 1999]. In the SOC model, no explicit mention of dispositional differences is made with regard to an overall tendency of using SOC, or with regard to using one mechanism over the other.…”