schema loss and grief: a new model for grief work

Abstract

Grief and bereavement are cultural techniques and underlie variants from success to failure. Although stress already ap-pears in normal grief, in complicated grief psychological overlays arise. In order to therapeutically harness these processes, phase models that require the patient to work through the grief have been suggested. After an evaluation of common phase models two addi-tions are suggested that result in a new model of grief work. In contrast to the phase models, which concern Freud’s retrograde clarification of ambivalent relationships, schema loss is seen as the inescapable starting point of grief. With the loss of a loved one, an existentially important schema that comprised the ideas and plans made with the deceased person is lost, and must be replaced with a new, functioning one. Life without the diseased is inconceivable. Griefwork should therefore not only consider the past with but also the future without an apparently irreplaceable diseased. In this process the symbolic presence of the deceased should play a crucial role.

Keywords Bereavement; grief; mourning; cognitive schema; schema loss; sense-making; weeping