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. I interviewed four women, ranging in age from 18 to 60, who reported encounter dreams amidst the loss of a father, a mother, a grandfather, and a husband. Two of the participants, a granddaughter and her maternal grandmother, discussed the loss of the same person— grandfather and husband to them, respectively. First, all of the women reported at least one encounter dream in which they felt visited by the dead, in spite of being aware in the dream that the loved one had died. By virtue of these dreams, most of the women realized that they could have an ongoing relationship with the dead, even when the manner and frequency with which the dead appeared did not accord with their expectations. Second, to the extent that the loss was experienced as pervasive, most of the women reported significant changes to their identity, values and beliefs, and anticipations of the future as part of their grieving process. Finally, I reflected on these narratives and my analysis of them in terms of mythobiography, a genre of qualitative research involving an imaginative and non-dualistic approach to storied experiences. ENCOUNTERING THE SIGNIFICANT DEAD: A NARRATIVE INQUIRY INTO GRIEF AND DREAMS A DISSERTATION Submitted to the faculty of Miami University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Psychology by Jeffrey R. Schweitzer Miami University Oxford, Ohio 2014 Dissertation Director: Larry M. Leitner, Ph.D. TABLE OF CONTENTS Dedication ....................................................................................................................................... v Acknowledgments.......................................................................................................................... vi Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 1 Modernist Models of Grief and Mourning .................................................................................. 2 Freud ........................................................................................................................................ 2 Lindemann ............................................................................................................................... 3 Bowlby..................................................................................................................................... 5 Parkes....................................................................................................................................... 6 Kübler-Ross ............................................................................................................................. 7 Worden .................................................................................................................................... 9 A Summary Critique .............................................................................................................. 10 Continuing Bonds Theory ......................................................................................................... 11 Phenomenology of Post-Death Encounters ............................................................................... 15 An Archetypal Approach to Grief and Mourning ..................................................................... 18 Archetypal Psychology .......................................................................................................... 18 Personifying or Imagining Things ......................................................................................... 19 Pathologizing or Falling Apart .............................................................................................. 20 Psychologizing or Seeing Through ........................................................................................ 21 De-humanizing or Soul-making ............................................................................................ 22 An Imaginal Approach to the Mourning Process ...................................................................... 23 A Backward Glance, Dionysos, and Mythic Figurations of Grief ............................................ 27 Method .......................................................................................................................................... 28 Storying Experience and Narrative Inquiry .............................................................................. 28 Archetypal Images and Mythic Reversion ................................................................................ 30 An Imagistic Approach to Narrative ......................................................................................... 31 Amy and the Orphic Gesture ..................................................................................................... 33 Seeking Participants‘ Stories ..................................................................................................... 35 Inviting and Listening to Stories ............................................................................................... 37 Inhabiting Stories ...................................................................................................................... 39 Results ........................................................................................................................................... 45 ii Liza and her Dad: Narrative Collage......................................................................................... 45 Liza and her Dad: Analysis ....................................................................................................... 82 Introduction ........................................................................................................................... 82 Flight, Melting, the Spell of Silence: Images Show What Words Will Not Say ................... 82 Freefall, Beneath the Rubble: Why is it Hard to Talk to Dad, Why is it Hard to Talk? ....... 86 Above the Rubble: Dad and Me, Dad and Not-Me ............................................................... 90 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................. 91 Hannah and Ruth: Narrative Collage ........................................................................................ 93 Hannah and Ruth: Analysis ..................................................................................................... 123 Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 123 Remembering Ruth: Artemis, Arrows, April ...................................................................... 123 What Does It Mean When You Fall Apart? ........................................................................ 126 Grief, Pothos, and Nostalgia of the Orphan......................................................................... 132 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................... 135 Marion, Rachel, and Tommy: Narrative Collage .................................................................... 137 Marion, Rachel, and Tommy: Analysis .................................................................................. 186 Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 186 Dionysos and Apollo ..........................................................................................................