Prolonged Grief Disorder: An Implementation Gone Awry and a Researcher Going Gonzo

Abstract

In this article I discuss the muddled implementation of Prolonged Grief Disorder in a Danish context. I do this by drawing on my fieldwork, which has been ongoing during the last couple of years. I begin by describing how my initial research design suffered a breakdown that mirrored the breakdown in the implementation of the Prolonged Grief Disorder diagnoses. This breakdown became defining for my work and through the application of what I call gonzo sociology I was able to critically engage in the field of grief research in Denmark. I describe what gonzo research is, and then, following this, I tell the story of how I stumbled into the field of grief research in Denmark and the process of realization I went through. The article is thus structured as a narrative that relays both how I came to embrace gonzo research as a form of methodology, but also the story of what my encounters in the field showed me. I do this because I cannot separate the story of how I went about it from what I came to discover—methods, theory and results are intertwined. Gonzo research aims at going into the field and participating, co-creating the discoveries and pushing the boundaries for research, both in its way of doing research and in its way of reporting said research. Thus, the form of the article is alternative and balances between journalistic endeavor, academic research and autoethnography.

Sorgens kultur, del 2

“…Den danske implementering, som forventedes at pågå i projektets løbetid, har vaeret alt andet en gnidningsfri, og til dags dato er sorgdiagnosen stadig ikke en realitet i Danmark. Selvom dette for nogle af centerets forskere har indebåret en akut mangel på forskningsgenstand (Lund, 2021), har det ikke stået i vejen for at projektet har mundet ud i en raekke artikler, monogra er og antologier når vi i år saetter punktum med en afslutningskonference i på Aalborg Universitet i december 2021. 1 Centralt for arbejdet i Sorgens kultur har vaeret overbevisningen om, at ethvert kvali ceret bidrag til diskussionen om hvorvidt diagnosticeringen er udtryk for en rettidig anerkendelse af lidelsen ved komplicerede og forlaengede sorgreaktioner, eller en overdreven patologisering af et menneskeligt grundvilkår, bør forholde sig både til hvad sorg er for en entitet, og hvordan diagnosticeringen haenger sammen med det samfund, vi lever i dag.…”

Relationality and Finitude: A Social Ontology of Grief

“…After the abandonment of static phase-, task-and stage models of bereavement, the common knowledge of what to do when one is in grief is limited to the conviction that putting words on grief and sharing one's feelings is a step in the right direction. The therapeutization of grief that comes as a side effect of the ongoing diagnostization seem to proffer from this conviction (Lund, 2020). Even though psychiatrists, psychologists and psychotherapists are not necessarily expected to be the solution to the suffering of grief, they are often well-willing recipients of all the words that need to be spoken for grief to heal (Walter, 1999, pp.…”

Grief as Disorder: On the transformation of grief from existential emotion to pathological entity

“…They are, though, all bound together by my 'voice', and they are all focussed on the culture of grief I am looking at, and the overarching question of what has made possible the existence of PGD. As I explain in further detail in my article, Prolonged Grief Disorder -An implementation gone awry and a researcher going gonzo (Lund, 2021), shortly after I was engaged as a Ph.D.-student I had to rethink my plans. I thought I was going to research the implementation of Prolonged Grief Disorder in Denmark and along the way figure out how individuals were being diagnosed, why they were diagnosed, and how they experienced this.…”