Cover Image: November 2008 Scientific American Magazine See Inside

Five Fallacies of Grief: Debunking Psychological Stages

From the stages of grief to the stages of moral development, stage theories have little evidentiary support















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Second, Tavris continued, “is the guilt and pressure the theories impose on people who are not feeling what they think they should. This is why consumers of any kind of psychotherapy or posttraumatic intervention that promulgates the notion of ‘inevitable’ stages should be skeptical and cautious.”

Stages are stories that may be true for the storyteller, but that does not make them valid for the narrative known as science.

Note: This story was originally printed with the title, "Stage Fright".



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ABOUT THE AUTHOR(S)

Michael Shermer is publisher of Skeptic. His latest book is The Mind of the Market.


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  1. 1. Dolmance 11:38 AM 10/22/08

    If I didn't think I was going to die one day, I couldn't get out of bed in the morning.

    Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this
  2. 2. ZenaV 07:02 PM 10/22/08

    Indeed. It's time to stop believing everyone is like everyone else and be made to 'conform' to an idelistic textbook theory. Isn't possible. Wheter people like individuality or not, it's a fact of life. Deal with it.

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  3. 3. Dolmance 11:47 PM 10/22/08

    Sounds like what the Republicans are going through.

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  4. 4. ZenaV in reply to Dolmance 02:52 AM 10/23/08

    LOL! Ya, I think they are going thru denial from the articles of theirs I have been reading....but I figured that was a regular state of mind for them.

    Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this
  5. 5. commons 10:34 PM 1/17/09

    : People may understand moral dilemmas in different ways depending on their stage of development, as shown by their preferences for interpretations. We used The Model of Hierarchical Complexity, which provides a framework for scoring reasoning stages in any domain as well as in any cultural setting, to analyze the relationship between stage of development and understanding moral dilemma interpretations. Specifically, we analyzed items from the following instruments to help determine this relationship: 1) The Helper-Person Problem 2) The Politician Voter Instrument 3) The Anti Death Penalty Case 4) The Not Report Incest Dilemma and 5) The Stoning Case. Portuguese versions of the Helper-Person Problem and Stoning Case were also used. The Model of Hierarchical Complexity is useful for this cross-cultural application. The model offers a singular mathematical method of measuring stages in any domain because the tasks presented can contain any kind of information. The model thus allows for a standard quantitative analysis of developmental complexity in any cultural setting. Data obtained from these Portuguese versions was coordinated with data from all other English instruments. The instruments consisted of five vignettes, each one representing one of the adult stages from order 8 to 12 (concrete, abstract, formal, systematic, and metasystematic). Participants rated the quality of arguments on a 1 to 6 scale. A Rasch analysis produced stage scores for each of the stories, which were regressed against the hierarchical complexity of each of the stories. The relationship between Rasch scaled scores for each item for each of the 2 or 3 rating questions and order of hierarchical complexity was: 1) The Helper-Person, r =.982, r = .990, r = .975 2) The Politician Voter, r = .911, r = .912, r = .863 3) The Anti Death Penalty Case, r = .854, r = .807 4) The Not Report Incest Dilemma, r = .896, r = .852, r = .841 5) The Stoning Case, r= .879, r = . A factor analysis was then conducted to determine if the scales loaded and their various implications.

    Do Rasch and regression for second question in stoning case or do I leave it out because it was a bad question.
    Paper 2:

    Jonas Gensaku Miller, B.A.
    Dare Institute
    234 Huron Avenue
    Cambridge, MA 02138
    Telephone: (617) 497-5270
    jonasmill@gmail.com

    William Joseph Harrigan
    Dare Institute
    234 Huron Avenue
    Cambridge, MA 02138
    Telephone: (978) 793-0694
    williamjosephharrigan@gmail.com

    Michael Lamport Commons, Ph.D.
    Harvard Medical School
    234 Huron Avenue
    Cambridge, MA 02138
    Telephone:

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  6. 6. Lyras dad 01:11 PM 9/2/09

    This reminds me of my wife's list of "three things not to say to someone in grief":

    http://lyrasmamma.wordpress.com/2009/02/16/tre-saker-att-inte-saga-till-nagon-i-sorg/

    It's in Swedish and I'm sure automatic translation will mess it up so here's the gist (using my words):

    "You are so strong!" Nor my wife neither I feel strong in any sense of the word. It _might_ look like that, but it's only because we have to somehow keep going. We're weak, soft, vulnerable and so sad that you wouldn't want to feel even a fraction of it.

    "Are you through the worst part now?" There's no worst part. We've lost our child! It'll be a big hurting, bleeding wound for the rest of our lives.

    "Would you say it's moving forward?" That question assumes grief is a linear process. It's not. At least not to us. It's much more like chaos. Sometimes ripping our hearts out. Sometimes feeling more manageable. Always reminding us of the importance of cherishing what we have. Always reinforcing the meaning of the word "love".

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  7. 7. gheekay 10:35 PM 9/3/10

    I bought a manual called save a breakup system from

    www.saveabreakup.com and I gotta admit it helped me a

    lot, this manual teaches you tricks how to get your ex

    back, how to heal a broken heart, and how to breakup if

    you want to..I love it and it works great.

    Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this
  8. 8. Rubytaylor 06:07 AM 12/13/10

    Grieving the loss of a loved one should not be compounded by the fallacy that at some magical point one will experience a sense of closure. The reality is that a long, hard grieving process may be ahead. Hopefully, with the passage of time, assimilation of feelings of loss and integration of the grieving experience will occur, the trauma will be mitigated, and a renewed sense of purpose in life will prevail.

    http://www.griefout.com/

    Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this
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