About 15 years ago one of the authors of this book and I participated in a meeting of the International Work Group on Death, Dying, and Bereavement (or IWG for short), a sort of invitational “summit conference” for grief and loss scholars and professionals. Intrigued by the then emerging diagnosis of complicated grief, we took advantage of the unique structure of IWG to propose a small work group to discuss the topic and to draw upon the long and deep experience of several of the participants in the meeting to gain a clearer understanding of “the work of mourning,” and its personal, systemic and cultural complications. We then met together with eight other senior colleagues in the field for a dozen hours over the next few days, letting the conversation move forward spontaneously toward the “growing edge” of our own understanding, rather than the usual sort of “conference talk” in which one expert after another holds forth about something he or she seems to have all figured out, while others are cast in the passive role of listeners.
It was in this context of animated conversation among peers of various disciplines—sociology, psychology, social work, medicine—that several men in the group began to explore factors that complicated grieving from a variety of vantage points, from the struggle to rework centrally important life meanings in the wake of loss, through processes of disenfranchised or unacknowledged grief, to competing social and historical discourses that framed the role of male and female grievers differently. Curiously, the typically outspoken women in the group sat silently through much of this conceptual romp, until one of our elder members, who had been knitting increasingly furiously during the exchange, finally threw down her needles and afghan in exasperation and blurted out, “But where’s the feeling in all this intellectualization?!” Appropriately called up short, we males in the group looked blankly at one another for a moment before general laughter rippled through the group, and we realized as one that we had in fact just exemplified the gendered styles of engaging grief that we had been trying to examine! We therefore began again, moving toward a sharper understanding of the complications that could arise from the dominant styles of mourning in men and women, including a penchant for a cognitive approach to loss for the former, and for a more emotionally resonant engagement with grief for the latter.
In many ways Doka and Martin’s Grieving Beyond Gender represents an extended answer to our work group’s passionate question. More importantly, perhaps, it represents a thoughtful, clinically useful response to the questions raised by grief counselors about how to understand the quite different modes of mourning displayed by different clients—whether the tearful wife trying to share with her spouse her feelings about the traumatic death of their child, or the taciturn husband at a loss as to how to help his wife move beyond her painful emotion. Equally, Doka and Martin tackle questions that can arise for the deceased themselves, as when their mode of expressing their grief emotionally, cognitively, or actively fails to square with the expectations of others in the broader culture, in the family, or even in their own minds.
At the heart of Doka and Martin’s thesis is their resistance against a “one size fits all” approach to mourning. Instead, they erect a clarifying distinction between intuitive grievers, who naturally gravitate toward the exploration and expression of the turbulent emotions that can follow a cardinal loss, and instrumental grievers, who seek cognitive and practical mastery of the challenges it poses. Such stances, as the authors note, may be reinforced by socialization practices regarding the proper roles of women and men, respectively, but they are not simply reducible to gender, as a host of other factors ranging from basic inborn temperament to preferences for emotion regulation equally influence grieving styles and the adaptive strategies to which they give rise. Helpfully, the authors are careful to ground each pattern of adaptation or conceptual distinction in concrete clinical vignettes of adults and children struggling with a range of losses, so that the distance between theory and practice is consistently bridged in a way that promotes real-world applications.
What sorts of questions can the reader expect to be answered in the pages that follow? Although these are too numerous to summarize, a sample would include, “How do the coping styles of intuitive and instrumental grievers differ, whatever their gender?” “Are there blended styles that combine aspects of both, and what are the pros and cons of this more integrated stance?” “How can the misunderstandings that arise within families about very different patterns of grieving be overcome?” “How can we understand the apparent capacity of some grievers to master their emotions, and does this represent a pathological or resourceful stance?” “What does a bereaved person need, when he or she feels stuck in a grieving pattern that is dissonant with his or her own sense of identity, as with an emotional male who experiences pressure to maintain a sense of ‘manly’ self control?” “How do grieving styles evolve across the adult lifespan?” “How does one’s tendency toward high or low levels of self-monitoring or chameleon-like adjustment to different social settings interact with one’s grieving style?” “What light do models of cognitiveevaluative processes in emotional expression or studies of repressive coping shed on private and public adaptation to loss?” “How do various Jungian personality types grieve differently?” “What is the role of culture in shaping universal and specific dimensions of the grieving experience?” Engaging such questions and proffering possible answers provides generous leads both for researchers looking to investigate novel issues on the leading edge of grief theory, and for clinicians in the trenches seeking fresh approaches to working with bereaved clients. The latter in particular are likely to benefit from the broad synopsis of helping strategies that Doka and Martin discuss, including various bibliotherapeutic, narrative, self-help, expressive arts and ritualistic approaches. Throughout their extensive review of these models and methods, the authors are consistent in embracing two implicit principles: choose techniques that respect both instrumental and intuitive grieving styles, and build on the griever’s strengths, rather than concentrate only on deficits.
In summary, Doka and Martin have once again pushed forward the boundary of our understanding individual differences in responses to bereavement, in a compact book that fulfills its promise to elucidate Grieving Beyond Gender. I am pleased that the Routledge Series in Death, Dying, and Bereavement provides a vehicle for making it available as a welcome resource to a broader professional community.
Robert A. Neimeyer, PhD
Series Editor