On Bereavement

Tony Walter

oct 1999 · McGraw-Hill Education (UK)

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'Insightful and refreshing.' - Professor Dennis Klass, Webster University Religion Department, St. Louis, USA

'A tour de force.' - Dr Colin Murray Parkes, OBE, MD, FRCPsych, President of CRUSE

Some societies and some individuals find a place for their dead, others leave them behind. In recent years, researchers, professionals and bereaved people themselves have struggled with this. Should the bond with the dead be continued or broken? What is clear is that the grieving individual is not left in a social vacuum but has to struggle with expectations from self, family, friends, professionals and academic theorists.

This ground-breaking book looks at the social position of the bereaved. They find themselves caught between the living and the dead, sometimes searching for guidelines in a de-ritualized society that has few to offer, sometimes finding their grief inappropriately pathologised and policed. At its best, bereavement care offers reassurance, validation, and freedom to talk where the client has previously encountered judgmentalism.

In this unique book, Tony Walter applies sociological insights to one of the most personal of human situations. On Bereavement is aimed at students on medical, nursing, counselling and social work courses that include bereavement as a topic. It will also appeal to sociology students with an interest in death, dying and mortality.

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Tony Walter is a lecturer in sociology at the University of Reading. He has written extensively about death in modern society, particularly funeral reform, and has lectured widely to a range of groups from the Royal Society of Arts to hospices, bereavement groups and clergy. He is currently researching the increasing interest in reincarnation in the West, the media's interest in death, and new approaches to bereavement care.