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Grief
Macmillan Encyclopedia of Death and Dying, (2003) by ROBERT KASTENBAUM, KENNETH J. DOKA, JOAN BEDER, REIKO SCHWAB, KENNETH J. DOKA, REIKO SCHWAB, KENNETH J. DOKA, NORMAN L. FARBEROW, MARGARET STROEBE, WOLFGANG STROEBE, HENK SCHUT, LILLIAN M. RANGE
Then there are relationships that may not be publicly recognized or socially sanctioned. For example, nontraditional relationships such as extramarital affairs, cohabitation, and homosexual relationships have tenuous public acceptance and limited legal standing, and they face negative sanction within the larger community.
The loss is not acknowledged. In other cases, the loss is not socially defined as significant. Individuals experience many losses—some death-related, such as perinatal loss, or other non-death-related losses such as divorce, incarceration, the loss of a job or material possessions, or significant change in personality or temperament that may be unacknowledged by others. Some losses may be intangible. For example, a teenager aspiring to a career in sports is cut from a team, or parents discover that a beloved child suffers from a disability or grave disease. Similarly, the loss of reputation because of scandal, gossip, or arrest can be devastating. Even transitions in life can have undercurrents of loss. Aging, for example, leads to constant developmental losses such as the loss of childhood or other losses associated with different points of life.
The griever is excluded. There are situations in which the characteristics of the bereaved in effect disenfranchise their grief. Here, the person is not socially defined as capable of grief, therefore, there is little or no social recognition of his or her sense of loss or need to mourn. Despite evidence to the contrary, both the old and the very young are typically perceived by others as having little comprehension of or reaction to the death of a significant other. Similarly, mentally disabled persons may also be disenfranchised in grief.
Circumstances of the death. The nature of the death may constrain the solicitation of the bereaved for support and limit the support extended by others. For example, many survivors of a suicide loss often feel a sense of stigma, believing that others may negatively judge the family because of the suicide. Similarly, the stigma of AIDS may lead survivors of an AIDS-related loss to be circumspect in sharing the loss with others.
The ways an individual grieves. The way in which an individual grieves also can contribute to disenfranchisement. Certain cultural modes of expressing grief such as stoicism or wailing may fall beyond the grieving rules of a given society, and thus contribute to disenfranchisement.
These examples and categories are not exhaustive, nor are they mutually exclusive. An individual's grief may be disenfranchised for a number of these reasons. And, of course, this particular taxonomy is attuned chiefly to contemporary Western culture.
Charles Corr offered another way to categorize disenfranchised grief. Corr approaches classification deductively, asking, "What is disenfranchised in grief?" He concludes that the state of bereavement, the experience of grief, and the process of mourning can all be disenfranchised.
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