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Grief and the Imminent Threat of Non-Being

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2018

S. Sunder Das
S. Sunder Das*
Affiliation:
University of New South Wales, Kensington, N.S.W. 2033, Australia
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Extract

The experience and meaning of grief differs with the progression of self-awareness of the experiencer in his ontogenetic evolution from utter dependence to differentiated integration. Autonomy, achieved by very few adults, carries with it the connotation of transcendence over mere obedience and conformity to the canons of society. This is different from deviance in two important respects. Deviance is a movement in a horizontal direction away from cultural dominance, and therefore could manifest itself in antisocial activities. Autonomy, being a movement in a vertical direction, is supra-cultural and non-conformist rather than antisocial. All this has a great deal to do with existential grief, the experience of which can change according to the level of ontology of the experiencer. The following operational definitions are needed to treat the subject of ontological grief in a meaningful manner.

Type
Abstract
Information
The British Journal of Psychiatry , Volume 118 , Issue 545 , April 1971 , pp. 467 - 468
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1971 

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References

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