Phenomenological Reflections on Grief during the COVID-19 Pandemic

TY - JOUR

T1 - Phenomenological Reflections on Grief during the COVID-19 Pandemic

AU - Ratcliffe, Matthew James

N1 - © The Author(s) 2022

PY - 2022/7/28

Y1 - 2022/7/28

N2 - This paper addresses how and why social restrictions imposed during the COVID-19 pandemic have affected people’s experiences of grief. To do so, I adopt a broadly phenomenological approach, one that emphasizes how our experiences, thoughts, and activities are shaped by relations with other people. Drawing on first-person accounts of grief during the pandemic, I identify two principal (and overlapping) themes: (a) deprivation and disruption of interpersonal processes that play important roles in comprehending and adapting to bereavement; (b) disturbance of an experiential world in the context of which loss is more usually recognized and negotiated. The combination, I suggest, can amount to a sort of “grief within grief”, involving a sense of stasis consistent with clinical descriptions of prolonged grief disorder.

AB - This paper addresses how and why social restrictions imposed during the COVID-19 pandemic have affected people’s experiences of grief. To do so, I adopt a broadly phenomenological approach, one that emphasizes how our experiences, thoughts, and activities are shaped by relations with other people. Drawing on first-person accounts of grief during the pandemic, I identify two principal (and overlapping) themes: (a) deprivation and disruption of interpersonal processes that play important roles in comprehending and adapting to bereavement; (b) disturbance of an experiential world in the context of which loss is more usually recognized and negotiated. The combination, I suggest, can amount to a sort of “grief within grief”, involving a sense of stasis consistent with clinical descriptions of prolonged grief disorder.

U2 - 10.1007/s11097-022-09840-8

DO - 10.1007/s11097-022-09840-8

M3 - Article

SN - 1568-7759

JO - Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences

JF - Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences

ER -