The social construction of anticipatory grief

Graham Fulton, Chris Madden and Victor Minichiello

Social Science & Medicine, 1996, vol. 43, issue 9, 1349-1358

Abstract: As medical technology prolongs life and facilitates the early diagnosis of terminal illnesses such as AIDS, the concept of anticipatory grief requires further scrutiny. The original concept of anticipatory grief has become widely accepted. This paper, however, argues that the uncritical acceptance of this concept rests primarily on the authority of the biomedical model, which has focused analysis on the predictable symptomatology of the grief process, integrating this understanding into health care. This paper provides a critical review of the concept of anticipatory grief, highlighting conceptual shifts which are required if the concept is to be relevant to the subjective experiences of people who are confronted with life-threatening illness. The paper discusses the relevance of understanding the conceptual confusion which exists in the literature between "anticipatory grief" and "forewarning of loss". It is argued that grief may be the response to a loss of meaning, and that the psychological process of adjustment to loss requires individuals to engage in the reconstitution of purpose and meaning in their lives. Distinguishing between what is being expressed for past and present losses and what responses occur when individuals focus on various aspects of their future may shed light on some of the inconsistent and contradictory findings surrounding research on anticipatory grief.

Keywords: anticipatory; grief; social; construction; forewarning; of; loss; bereavement (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1996
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0277-9536(95)00447-5
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:socmed:v:43:y:1996:i:9:p:1349-1358

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/supportfaq.cws_home/regional
http://www.elsevier. ... _01_ooc_1&version=01

Access Statistics for this article

Social Science & Medicine is currently edited by Ichiro (I.) Kawachi and S.V. (S.V.) Subramanian

More articles in Social Science & Medicine from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().