Grief: A Study of Human Emotional Experience

Grief is one of the most distressing, unsettling, and puzzling experiences that we face. During times of profound grief, the world as a whole appears somehow altered - distant, unfamiliar, unwelcoming, unpredictable. Other people may seem to go about their business in another realm, which one surveys from outside. Along with this, the deceased may be experienced as present and absent in a range of interconnected and tension-riddled ways. People often struggle to articulate and to comprehend these and other aspects of grief. Furthermore, lack of comprehension on the part of oneself and / or others can exacerbate painful feelings of being lost and alone.

A number of interesting philosophical questions therefore arise, concerning what experiences of grief consist of and how grief, in its various guises, should be conceived of. However, philosophers have paid surprisingly little attention to the topic. Although grief is more often addressed by other disciplines, what remains lacking is a detailed, wide-ranging, cohesive, and concise account of what grief-experiences actually consist of.

The overall task of this project is to develop such an account, by employing a philosophical method that combines phenomenological research (research concerning the structure of human experience) with work in philosophy of mind. The project will also draw on insights from other disciplines, including psychology, psychiatry, literary theory, religious studies, and cultural anthropology (supported by an interdisciplinary advisory group). Research will be structured around three main thematic areas:

1. Emotion and Perception: By relating the topic of grief to broader research on perception and emotion, we will (a) offer new insights into the nature of temporally extended emotional processes, (b) clarify how 'everything seems somehow different' and how this aspect of grief relates to the more localized recognition of loss, and (c) explore relationships between perception and emotion by analysing experiences of presence and absence.

2. Interpersonal Experience and Understanding: We will bring a substantial body of social cognition research into dialogue with the 'continuing bonds' literature on grief. The latter emphasizes various ways in which relations with the deceased are retained, rather than abandoned. In contrast, social cognition research (in philosophy, cognitive science, and elsewhere) concerns itself exclusively with how we experience, think about, and relate to the living. By showing how relations with the dead need to be accommodated too, we aim to open up a substantial, new, and important area of inquiry. In so doing, we will also investigate ways in which emotion is interpersonally and socially regulated, and clarify the nature of bereavement hallucinations.

3. The Bounds of Grief: We will ask what distinguishes grief from other forms of emotional experience and how healthy grief-experiences might be distinguished from pathological forms of grief and from depression. This latter issue is of particular importance in psychiatry, where there has been considerable debate. By formulating the most detailed and discerning analysis of grief-experiences to date, we will help to resolve the issue.

The principal contributions of the research will be to:

* fill a significant gap in the philosophical literature, by addressing an important but neglected topic in unprecedented depth.
* cast new light on a wider range of topics, including the nature of emotion, perception, and social cognition.
* provide a novel and detailed analysis that will inform future research on grief-experiences in philosophy and other disciplines.
* contribute to current debates in psychiatry, with potentially important implications for psychiatric classification, diagnosis, and treatment.
* make broader contributions to practice and public understanding, by clarifying aspects of grief that people find unsettling, confusing, and hard to describe.

Anticipated impacts of the project fall into three main categories. In the course of developing an novel account of what it is to experience grief, we will:

(a) seek to inform and support the activities of various practitioners whose roles involve responding to grief, by providing them with new insights into what grief-experiences consist of.
(b) make our research findings freely and easily accessible via our website and publicize them widely, so as to enhance public understanding of grief and, with this, the ability to respond to it.
(c) assist in determining whether and how typical grief differs phenomenologically from pathological forms of grief and from depression, thus making a significant contribution to ongoing debates in psychiatry, with potentially important implications for classification, diagnosis, and treatment.

All three impacts will arise from the same set of research findings, and for the same reasons. Although grief is addressed by a range of academic disciplines, a detailed, wide-ranging, and integrated account of grief-experiences remains lacking. Formulating such an account centrally involves addressing a number of philosophically puzzling aspects of grief. For instance, it is unclear how experiences of the deceased as present or absent should be conceived of, how one's experience of the world has changed when 'everything looks somehow different', what the various constituents of grief-experiences are, and how those constituents relate to one another. Our project will do the required philosophical work.

As the proposed research will make clear, how we respond to experiences of grief depends in part on the manner in which we understand them. Furthermore, our responses have potentially important roles to play in shaping how grief-processes unfold. Failures of understanding can exacerbate suffering, magnify a sense of disorientation and confusion, and make the world seem all the more unpredictable and devoid of comfort. Conversely, relations with other people can also play pivotal roles in processes of self-regulation. For instance, the co-construction of narratives that organize and make sense of events can play a role in lending coherence to the world and shaping how one engages with it.

In short, understanding influences practice, which acts upon the relevant experiences in important ways. Hence we will involve a variety of practitioners in the project, in order to share our findings with them, learn more about their own work, and -in so doing- identify, explore, and actualize potential impacts. They will include therapists, bereavement counsellors, nurses, hospital chaplains, and employees of relevant charities.

Given that grief is also of interest to a wider public who are affected by it and often deeply puzzled by it, the project will include broader public engagement, through publications, the website, the Twitter feed, support from the University of York's Media Relations Team, and an affiliation with the university's Death and Culture Network (which is dedicated principally to public engagement, with considerable relevant expertise that we can draw on).

Commitment to investigating a wide range of impacts will be complemented by a more specific focus on clinical impact. There is ongoing debate over whether and how typical or healthy grief can be distinguished from forms of pathological grief, major depression, and other psychiatric diagnoses. Debate has been reliant upon and consequently hampered by accounts of experience that are insufficiently discriminating to decide the issue. Our phenomenological analyses will be more detailed and discerning than anything else that has been offered to date. The project will therefore involve prominent psychiatrists and clinical psychologists from start to finish, with the aim of making a significant contribution to the task of determining which psychiatric classifications, diagnoses, and clinical responses are appropriate, and when.