Bereaved parents and The Compassionate Friends: affiliation and healing

Bereaved parents and The Compassionate Friends: affiliation and healing

Klass D

Omega

1984

Grief; Parents; bereavement; coping; Healing; parental bereavement

Examined the function of The Compassionate Friends (TCF), a self-help group for effective intervention in the severe bereavement after the death of a child, using a participant observation research method. Three decisions form the framework of the description: the decision to attend the group, the decision to affiliate, and the decision to transform oneself into a helper within the group. Results indicate that the decision to attend seems to be rooted in a variety of expectations, supported by a variety of experiences with professional interventions or with other self-help groups. Affiliation has a cathectic dimension that entails a unity with those whose lives have also been shattered, an appropriate object on which to attach the energy formerly given to the child, and a sense of family in a supportive community. Affiliation also has an experiential dimension that is an attempt to develop an existential stance in a problematic world based on solutions to concrete problems that are shared among the members. The decision to become a helper is the key to the TCF process, for it is the concept that helping others is the best way to help the self that allows the cathectic dimension to become complete in reinvestment and allows the experiential dimension to change from using the experience of others to sharing one's own experience.

1984

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