Grief. Svend Brinkmann

Grief - Svend Brinkmann


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as we have both a concept of death as the inevitable end point of life and the ability to love particular individuals. Love and death are both prerequisites for grief. Other species feel depressed and suffer separation anxiety, which superficially resembles grief, but I argue in this chapter that it is not actual grief – at least not in the way that humans grieve. Grief requires a reflexive awareness of finitude and emotional relationships that other species only possess on a rudimentary level. In this way, grief tells us something essential about human beings, that they can be understood as grieving animals, or at least as animals with the potential to grieve. If this is true, then humans should not just be understood as rational animals, as Aristotle believed (or Homo sapiens, the thinking person), but on a deeper level, as beings with the potential to have certain emotional relationships with the world and other people (we might call such a species Homo sentimentalis) – a potential that manifests itself, not least, in grief.

      Chapter 5 examines grief as something that is not only in the body but also in culture, in the form of material practices and systems of symbols. Grief is something felt and enacted along with others in a cultural setting consisting of cemeteries, memorials, photo albums, heirlooms and so forth. In other words, grief has both socially and materially distributed aspects. Psychology is plagued by a problematic individualism, in which grief and other psychological phenomena are assumed to be exclusively states that exist ‘inside the mind’ of the individual. Understanding grief as a socially and materially distributed phenomenon bypasses this individualism. It enables us to understand how grief is shared through traditional cultural practices, and even ‘outsourced’ to others, such as professional mourners, or ‘keeners’ in Ireland. Music, rituals and physical objects help to shape grief in a variety of ways. The chapter therefore looks at the socio-material context of the experience of loss and grief.

      It is worth noting that while the chapters collectively provide a holistic understanding of grief – from how it is experienced by the self, via phenomenology, to an understanding of the importance of body, sociality and materiality – they can also be read in isolation. Chapter 5, on the ecology of grief, is probably the most challenging, because it is the one that diverges the most clearly from the prevailing, individualistic understanding of grief. It may aid understanding to first read this introduction and then Chapter 7.

      Although the book primarily seeks to convey general psychological perspectives on grief, I also wish to illustrate the discussion with references to various cultural and artistic idioms, including poetry and fiction (e.g. Joan Didion, Naja Marie Aidt), TV shows (e.g. Black Mirror), visual art (e.g. van Gogh, Munch) and theatre (both Greek tragedies and modern experimental drama). The point of this is not just to make the book more accessible. Rather, it reflects my conviction that art is more than an expression of an artist’s irrational creative power, devoid of context – it is a systematic study of the many dimensions and phenomena of human experience, including grief. Science studies the world through its special methods and then conveys the results, but art does more than merely narrate – it also shows the phenomena being examined, which facilitates a more nuanced understanding than is possible with linear research methods. With this in mind, I hope that the book will prove useful to professionals in areas like psychology, psychiatry, philosophy, sociology, anthropology and theology, as well as to anyone interested in grief as a basic human experience. Although the book is primarily about grief as an emotion that usually follows the death of someone close, it also identifies grief as a basic existential state that is better encapsulated by art than by science. In his poetry collection Rystet spejl (Shaken Mirror), Søren Ulrich Thomsen writes of loss:

      which is huge and dusky

      full of scents and unrecognizable figures

      reflected in polished floors.

      Even the very old feel bereft

      when they sit staring in dayrooms

      and suddenly remember

      that they have lost their parents.3


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