Encountering the Significant Dead: a Narrative Inquiry Into Grief and Dreams
MIAMI UNIVERSITY The Graduate School Certificate for Approving the Dissertation We hereby approve the Dissertation of Jeffrey R. Schweitzer Candidate for the Degree: Doctor of Philosophy __________________________________ Director Larry M. Leitner, Ph.D. ___________________________________ Reader Roger M. Knudson, Ph.D. ___________________________________ Reader Vaishali Raval, Ph.D. ___________________________________ Graduate School Representative Ann Fuehrer, Ph.D. ABSTRACT ENCOUNTERING THE SIGNIFICANT DEAD: A NARRATIVE INQUIRY INTO GRIEF AND DREAMS by Jeffrey R. Schweitzer Prominent grief theorists of the 20th century, from Freud (1917) to Worden (1982), have defined the ultimate task of grief and mourning as the relinquishment of bonds with the dead. Over the past few decades, however, numerous studies have shown that the bereaved not only experience the presence of the dead, but that they also tend to find such experiences highly meaningful and even healing. That said, very few researchers have studied the continuing presence of the dead in the context of bereavement dreams. For this narrative inquiry, then, I sought to examine dreams in which the bereaved encounter their loved ones and the significance of these dreams for the grieving process. Approaching the study from a narrative (Chase, 2005) and archetypal (Hillman, 1979) perspective, my three aims were (1) to learn about the phenomenology of imaginal encounters with the dead for the bereaved, namely through dreams, and the significance of such experiences for the grieving process; (2) to examine stories of grief and loss in terms of personal and archetypal mythology; and (3) to explore, and elaborate, theoretical and methodological intersections of narrative and archetypal psychology. More generally, I wished to evocatively represent and better understand this marginalized, yet quite common, kind of grief experience by way of a narrative methodology.
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