HOW NOT TO IMITATE YOUR BETTERS:

The myth of closure: A new book argues that this popular concept doesn't exist -- and that chasing it might hurt us (Christopher Dreher, 9/04/11, Boston Globe)

In "Closure: The Rush to End Grief and What It Costs Us," Berns draws on scholarly publications and popular media to trace why closure became a staple of our discourse and how it affects us. In fact, while closure is widely considered possible, desirable, and important, she argues, it is not necessarily any of these things. Our reliance on the concept may even do us a disservice. Not only does closure mischaracterize how most people handle grief, but, she suggests, the pressure to achieve it might actually make loss more difficult.

Berns, an associate professor of sociology at Drake University, spoke to Ideas from Des Moines.

IDEAS: What do you mean when you say that closure doesn't exist?

BERNS: The idea of closure [is seen] as a new emotional state for explaining what we need and how we're supposed to respond to trauma and loss. But closure is a rhetorical concept, a made-up term ... .Closure is not something that we can simply find or something we need. It's a frame used to explain how we should respond to loss. [...]

IDEAS: The subtitle of your book is "The Rush to End Grief and What It Costs Us." Ending grief is a good thing in most cases, isn't it?

BERNS: The closure narrative assumes that grief is bad and that it's something that needs to end, and it assumes that closure is possible and that it's something good and something that people need to have. Grief is a difficult, messy experience and can be very painful. A lot of people carry loss and grief for much of their lives, but that doesn't mean that the pain is as intense as it was the first few months. You carry that loss and grief, but you learn how to integrate that into your life ... .We grieve for a reason. We grieve because we miss the person who died, or because of whatever loss we're experiencing. Our grief expresses how we're feeling and allows us to acknowledge that loss. So asking or expecting someone to try and end that quickly is really misunderstanding the importance of those emotions.

Posted by oj at September 8, 2011 7:05 AM
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