6 ms·

It’s time to let the five stages of grief die (2019)

30 points by Noturos 4y ago

kderbyma 4y ago
this almost just appears to be the application of the term 'stages' as in a circuit of sort. As opposed to being independent frames which one may be in or perceiving. couldnt semantics fix this conceptually
dredmorbius 4y ago
The "problems" identified with the Kübler-Ross model seem to be twofold: - That the popular perception of the model is not what Kuber-Ross herself had in mind and communicated. This can hardly be laid on her. - That the empirical research, and it was both, has subjective elements and is again interpreted in contradiction of K-R's statements as some specific sequence of phases. I'd bring to this a few additional observations: Emotions seem to be common among at least many mammalian species. That is, both that they're a shared inheritence, and an evolutionary one. This isn't a novel observation, and the connection between emotion and evolution was first proposed, at book length, by Charles Darwin in The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Expression_of_the_Emotions_in_Man_and_Animals https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Expression_of_the_Emotions...>. Grief is one of those emotions. The notion of animal grief is well developed and much studied (see the Wikipedia overview: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_grief https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_grief>). It seems highly likely that it serves some positive adaptive purpose. As studied by K-R, one characterisation of the grief observed was of a profound change in the worldview of the patients themselves. That is, coming face to face with their own mortality or morbidity. There is also at least an anecdotal understanding of stages of grief being associated with challenges to individual or group worldviews, paradigms, or understandings. This can be seen in, e.g, responses to the notions of limits to growth, in politics, and other social contexts. What I suspect, though I've not come across any clear expression of this in scholarly literature, is that what we call grief is in actually part of a spectrum of responses to radical shifts in understanding of one's world. And that the stages, or perhaps more accurately phases or expressions relate to unlearning and relearning new patterns. That there's a value in not dropping a particular model too quickly, but that similarly there's not value in blindly holding on to a model which clearly no longer serves any specific use. The lack of any significant discussion of these elements at least to my knowledge has long struck me as distinctly odd. Checking Google Scholar currently I find at least some theoretical work, e.g., Doka Understanding Grief <https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781315545349-4/understanding-grief-kenneth-doka https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/97813155...> and Hall, Bereavement theory <https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02682621.2014.902610 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02682621.2014.90...>, though by the blurbs, these don't seem to take the leap I'm suggesting.
czzr 4y ago
No, I’m sure that can’t be right - the stages of grief are so well known they must be true. I mean, c’mon - have books and films just been lying to me all this time?! But maybe it’s not completely wrong - there must be a core of truth to it if it resonates so well. Maybe we can preserve that even if we don’t stick to the specific stages. But how could I have been fooled by this for so long? What’s wrong with me that I believed it so unquestioningly? But it’s not just me - this predates awareness of the reproducibility crisis in social sciences. It’s not so surprising that it doesn’t replicate. I’m sure there’s a deeper understanding out there, and this model wasn’t so bad as a stepping stone to that.
- slowmovintarget 4y ago
  Clapping All five, in order; nice. "Alas 5 stages, we hardly knew ye."
- rob74 4y ago
  As the end of the article also mentions, in a more recent book: > ... Kübler-Ross remarked that the five stages are “not stops on some linear timeline in grief. Not everyone goes through all of them or goes in a prescribed order.” So these are more the possible reactions that someone may have to a grievous event - not everyone will experience all reactions, and also will definitely not go through them in the given order.
- rootlocus 4y ago
  A bit forced, and they all sound like denial, but I can see all the stages if I squint.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- oxfordmale 4y ago
  The five stages of grief belongs in the same circle as hell as the other HR nonsense. It all resonates well but little is based on scientific evidence.
- Cthulhu_ 4y ago
albertTJames 4y ago
Very biased piece, written by somebody acutely grieving, and lacking in the very thing she deplores: lack of data except for two select studies that goes in her direction.
sandgiant 4y ago
In reality Kübler-Ross developed her stage model after interviewing many individuals with life-threatening illnesses. It was only the experiences of these patients that she attempted to model. I actually didn't know this, but that makes a lot more sense.
shantnutiwari 4y ago
There have been criticisms of this "model" for many years, but it has entered the public consciousness, so people assume it to be true. There was even a Simpsons episode where Homer goes thru the 5 stages in 5 minutes. "Everyone talks about it so iut must be true!" school of science. I have a similar problem with the Heroes Journey, which if you are in fiction/screenplay writing, is considered the Bible, and criticising it is like being a heretic. So much so, many books on writing assume it to be true an starting point. But I always found it to be silly, and recently found a great article that points out its a nonsense made up list of common fantasy tropes: https://talesoftimesforgotten.com/2020/12/31/the-heros-journey-is-nonsense/ https://talesoftimesforgotten.com/2020/12/31/the-heros-journ...
- UberFly 4y ago
  It actually IS a valid starting point. Generally when 90% of the stories that humans tell each other fall under certain patterns, it's OK to categorize and label them. That's all that the Hero's Journey that Campbell describes is. You don't have to rebel against them just because they're established and labeled.
  - slowmovintarget 4y ago
    This is like people claiming music theory is unnecessary. Jazz, for example, is rooted in music theory. It goes beyond it in very specific ways, but with the actual work put in to understand why. Understanding the Hero's Journey (or the Story Circle, or the 7-Point Story Structure), and why it works is a critical foundation for moving beyond it. Understand the Jolly Good Suggestion of Demeter before you code something that violates it. You have to understand the rules to the depth of "why" before your knowledge is deep enough to legitimately go beyond the rules. Find the box first. Until you do that, you can't think outside of it.
- kthejoker2 4y ago
  The first paragraph in that arti cle is deeply incorrect and sets Campbell's work up as a strawman, which you unhelpfully perpetuate here in this comment. Campbell does not "fundamentally claim" anything about "all human stories" in Hero with a Thousand Faces. He merely points out a commonly recurring pattern among a certain subset of stories (namely, stories about famous heroes) across multiple human societies and cultures, even those with limited cultural overlap. In fact, his work is like an early version of TV Tropes, giving names to thematically repeating elements of such stories. You (and that blog's author) should actually read the book before declaring it nonsense.
coldtea 4y ago
>The five stages of grief are ingrained in our cultural consciousness as the natural progression of emotions one experiences after the death of a loved one. However, it turns out that this model is not science-based, does not well describe most people's experiences, and was never even meant to apply to the bereaved. I find it applies perfectly to what I see happening in all kind of personal grief (for others and for oneself) and unmovable threat settings, so couldn't care less if it was "science based", as long as it's a descriptive observation... And, yes, obviously, not everybody will feel exactly the same. For an extreme example, some people are sociopaths and might not even feel anything at all, never mind this. Others are very shallow and selfish, and take selfies next to their parents coffins. But this is about a rough matching of what people feel and how they handle grief - not a topographical map of feelings.
- oxfordmale 4y ago
  The problem is that this is not even a rough matching what people feel. https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/supersurvivors/201707/why-the-five-stages-grief-are-wrong https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/supersurvivors/20170... "In fact, the actual grief process looks a lot less like a neat set of stages and a lot more like a roller coaster of emotions. Even Kubler-Ross said that grief doesn’t proceed in a linear and predictable fashion, writing toward the end of her career that she regretted her stages had been misunderstood."
  - coldtea 4y ago
    >In fact, the actual grief process looks a lot less like a neat set of stages and a lot more like a roller coaster of emotions. Roller-coasters still have a specific route and different stages. I'd say in the same way there can be a prevailing sentiment at each stage of grief, even if this or that sentiment comes and goes at times at all stages.
    - oxfordmale 4y ago
      It is more a disjointed roller coaster. Some stages of grief can be skipped all together or aren't experienced in a linear order.
kokey 4y ago
The version I got never portrayed it as something that's sequential and never 'ends' at acceptance and also not specifically applicable to grieving and it's also not scientific. The way I understood it is that's it's more a repetition of 5 different emotions in random order and over time some of the emotions re-occur less than the others. I think it's useful to help you observe the ways your mind tries to come to terms with things that are emotionally difficult to process, whether it's a car accident, natural disaster, an illness or even losing a loved one. That said, I certainly do imagine some psychotherapists out there taking the order literally and explaining it like that to their patients.
sharikous 4y ago
I think a better model could be considered. One that ends in acceptance but in which the other coping strategies happen in parallel.
PaulKeeble 4y ago
The vast majority of Psychological findings do not stand up over time. Of all the science being done they have by far the largest replication issue and some of the findings have caused a lot of medical harm. I don't think it can grow up to objective findings and become properly scientific in most cases so we should for the most part not pay any attention to them they just don't have the proof.
LordGrey 4y ago
My strategy: I know I'm going to get over this eventually. I might as well start now. It helps that I have aphantasia and a very poor autobiographical memory.
smitty1e 4y ago
As with K&R's C, K-R's grieving model will likely prove a resilient beast.
jeegsy 4y ago
"Not everyone experiences grief in the same way" What an insight! Its a model, with all that that implies.
im3w1l 4y ago
I always considered this more of a rule of thumb sort of like "when you throw a rock, first it goes up then it goes down"* rather than an exact equation. Like there are different reactions to something bad, they will not always all be present, and the order is not a given, and sometimes they are adaptive (the thing you are denying may in fact not be true, anger may prevent it etc). * Not just imprecise but even has exceptions. What if you throw it straight down? What if you throw it straight down, and it bounces? What if it achieves escape velocity? What if you throw it down at an angle and it then achieves escape velocity?

30 points by Noturos 4y ago

this almost just appears to be the application of the term 'stages' as in a circuit of sort. As opposed to being independent frames which one may be in or perceiving. couldnt semantics fix this conceptually

dredmorbius 4y ago

The "problems" identified with the Kübler-Ross model seem to be twofold: - That the popular perception of the model is not what Kuber-Ross herself had in mind and communicated. This can hardly be laid on her. - That the empirical research, and it was both, has subjective elements and is again interpreted in contradiction of K-R's statements as some specific sequence of phases. I'd bring to this a few additional observations: Emotions seem to be common among at least many mammalian species. That is, both that they're a shared inheritence, and an evolutionary one. This isn't a novel observation, and the connection between emotion and evolution was first proposed, at book length, by Charles Darwin in The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Expression_of_the_Emotions_in_Man_and_Animals https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Expression_of_the_Emotions...>. Grief is one of those emotions. The notion of animal grief is well developed and much studied (see the Wikipedia overview: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_grief https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_grief>). It seems highly likely that it serves some positive adaptive purpose. As studied by K-R, one characterisation of the grief observed was of a profound change in the worldview of the patients themselves. That is, coming face to face with their own mortality or morbidity. There is also at least an anecdotal understanding of stages of grief being associated with challenges to individual or group worldviews, paradigms, or understandings. This can be seen in, e.g, responses to the notions of limits to growth, in politics, and other social contexts. What I suspect, though I've not come across any clear expression of this in scholarly literature, is that what we call grief is in actually part of a spectrum of responses to radical shifts in understanding of one's world. And that the stages, or perhaps more accurately phases or expressions relate to unlearning and relearning new patterns. That there's a value in not dropping a particular model too quickly, but that similarly there's not value in blindly holding on to a model which clearly no longer serves any specific use. The lack of any significant discussion of these elements at least to my knowledge has long struck me as distinctly odd. Checking Google Scholar currently I find at least some theoretical work, e.g., Doka Understanding Grief <https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781315545349-4/understanding-grief-kenneth-doka https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/97813155...> and Hall, Bereavement theory <https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02682621.2014.902610 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02682621.2014.90...>, though by the blurbs, these don't seem to take the leap I'm suggesting.

czzr 4y ago

No, I’m sure that can’t be right - the stages of grief are so well known they must be true. I mean, c’mon - have books and films just been lying to me all this time?! But maybe it’s not completely wrong - there must be a core of truth to it if it resonates so well. Maybe we can preserve that even if we don’t stick to the specific stages. But how could I have been fooled by this for so long? What’s wrong with me that I believed it so unquestioningly? But it’s not just me - this predates awareness of the reproducibility crisis in social sciences. It’s not so surprising that it doesn’t replicate. I’m sure there’s a deeper understanding out there, and this model wasn’t so bad as a stepping stone to that.

slowmovintarget 4y ago
Clapping All five, in order; nice. "Alas 5 stages, we hardly knew ye."
rob74 4y ago
As the end of the article also mentions, in a more recent book: > ... Kübler-Ross remarked that the five stages are “not stops on some linear timeline in grief. Not everyone goes through all of them or goes in a prescribed order.” So these are more the possible reactions that someone may have to a grievous event - not everyone will experience all reactions, and also will definitely not go through them in the given order.
rootlocus 4y ago
A bit forced, and they all sound like denial, but I can see all the stages if I squint.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
oxfordmale 4y ago
The five stages of grief belongs in the same circle as hell as the other HR nonsense. It all resonates well but little is based on scientific evidence.
Cthulhu_ 4y ago

albertTJames 4y ago

Very biased piece, written by somebody acutely grieving, and lacking in the very thing she deplores: lack of data except for two select studies that goes in her direction.

sandgiant 4y ago

In reality Kübler-Ross developed her stage model after interviewing many individuals with life-threatening illnesses. It was only the experiences of these patients that she attempted to model. I actually didn't know this, but that makes a lot more sense.

shantnutiwari 4y ago

There have been criticisms of this "model" for many years, but it has entered the public consciousness, so people assume it to be true. There was even a Simpsons episode where Homer goes thru the 5 stages in 5 minutes. "Everyone talks about it so iut must be true!" school of science. I have a similar problem with the Heroes Journey, which if you are in fiction/screenplay writing, is considered the Bible, and criticising it is like being a heretic. So much so, many books on writing assume it to be true an starting point. But I always found it to be silly, and recently found a great article that points out its a nonsense made up list of common fantasy tropes: https://talesoftimesforgotten.com/2020/12/31/the-heros-journey-is-nonsense/ https://talesoftimesforgotten.com/2020/12/31/the-heros-journ...

UberFly 4y ago
It actually IS a valid starting point. Generally when 90% of the stories that humans tell each other fall under certain patterns, it's OK to categorize and label them. That's all that the Hero's Journey that Campbell describes is. You don't have to rebel against them just because they're established and labeled.
- slowmovintarget 4y ago
  This is like people claiming music theory is unnecessary. Jazz, for example, is rooted in music theory. It goes beyond it in very specific ways, but with the actual work put in to understand why. Understanding the Hero's Journey (or the Story Circle, or the 7-Point Story Structure), and why it works is a critical foundation for moving beyond it. Understand the Jolly Good Suggestion of Demeter before you code something that violates it. You have to understand the rules to the depth of "why" before your knowledge is deep enough to legitimately go beyond the rules. Find the box first. Until you do that, you can't think outside of it.
kthejoker2 4y ago
The first paragraph in that arti cle is deeply incorrect and sets Campbell's work up as a strawman, which you unhelpfully perpetuate here in this comment. Campbell does not "fundamentally claim" anything about "all human stories" in Hero with a Thousand Faces. He merely points out a commonly recurring pattern among a certain subset of stories (namely, stories about famous heroes) across multiple human societies and cultures, even those with limited cultural overlap. In fact, his work is like an early version of TV Tropes, giving names to thematically repeating elements of such stories. You (and that blog's author) should actually read the book before declaring it nonsense.

coldtea 4y ago

>The five stages of grief are ingrained in our cultural consciousness as the natural progression of emotions one experiences after the death of a loved one. However, it turns out that this model is not science-based, does not well describe most people's experiences, and was never even meant to apply to the bereaved. I find it applies perfectly to what I see happening in all kind of personal grief (for others and for oneself) and unmovable threat settings, so couldn't care less if it was "science based", as long as it's a descriptive observation... And, yes, obviously, not everybody will feel exactly the same. For an extreme example, some people are sociopaths and might not even feel anything at all, never mind this. Others are very shallow and selfish, and take selfies next to their parents coffins. But this is about a rough matching of what people feel and how they handle grief - not a topographical map of feelings.

oxfordmale 4y ago
The problem is that this is not even a rough matching what people feel. https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/supersurvivors/201707/why-the-five-stages-grief-are-wrong https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/supersurvivors/20170... "In fact, the actual grief process looks a lot less like a neat set of stages and a lot more like a roller coaster of emotions. Even Kubler-Ross said that grief doesn’t proceed in a linear and predictable fashion, writing toward the end of her career that she regretted her stages had been misunderstood."
- coldtea 4y ago
  >In fact, the actual grief process looks a lot less like a neat set of stages and a lot more like a roller coaster of emotions. Roller-coasters still have a specific route and different stages. I'd say in the same way there can be a prevailing sentiment at each stage of grief, even if this or that sentiment comes and goes at times at all stages.
  - oxfordmale 4y ago
    It is more a disjointed roller coaster. Some stages of grief can be skipped all together or aren't experienced in a linear order.

kokey 4y ago

The version I got never portrayed it as something that's sequential and never 'ends' at acceptance and also not specifically applicable to grieving and it's also not scientific. The way I understood it is that's it's more a repetition of 5 different emotions in random order and over time some of the emotions re-occur less than the others. I think it's useful to help you observe the ways your mind tries to come to terms with things that are emotionally difficult to process, whether it's a car accident, natural disaster, an illness or even losing a loved one. That said, I certainly do imagine some psychotherapists out there taking the order literally and explaining it like that to their patients.

sharikous 4y ago

I think a better model could be considered. One that ends in acceptance but in which the other coping strategies happen in parallel.

PaulKeeble 4y ago

The vast majority of Psychological findings do not stand up over time. Of all the science being done they have by far the largest replication issue and some of the findings have caused a lot of medical harm. I don't think it can grow up to objective findings and become properly scientific in most cases so we should for the most part not pay any attention to them they just don't have the proof.

LordGrey 4y ago

My strategy: I know I'm going to get over this eventually. I might as well start now. It helps that I have aphantasia and a very poor autobiographical memory.

smitty1e 4y ago

As with K&R's C, K-R's grieving model will likely prove a resilient beast.

jeegsy 4y ago

"Not everyone experiences grief in the same way" What an insight! Its a model, with all that that implies.

im3w1l 4y ago

I always considered this more of a rule of thumb sort of like "when you throw a rock, first it goes up then it goes down"* rather than an exact equation. Like there are different reactions to something bad, they will not always all be present, and the order is not a given, and sometimes they are adaptive (the thing you are denying may in fact not be true, anger may prevent it etc). * Not just imprecise but even has exceptions. What if you throw it straight down? What if you throw it straight down, and it bounces? What if it achieves escape velocity? What if you throw it down at an angle and it then achieves escape velocity?