Finding meaning in loss: A narrative constructivist contribution

Abstract

Bereavement, understood as the loss of a significant person through death, can challenge the mourner’s self-narrative in a way that requires active meaning reconstruction to revise or reinstate a sense of significance and security. When this natural process of making sense of the death and one’s life in its aftermath is complicated, meaning-oriented therapy can help to reconstruct a self-narrative that integrates the loss while also affirming the value of life. In this chapter, we address two narrative processes playing a central role in narrative change in the course of bereavement: the processing of the event story of loss and the accessing of the back story of the relationship to the deceased. We then outline a Meaning in Loss therapy protocol that encompasses distinct but complementary narrative-constructivist techniques, and illustrate its application in a case study