The existential realities of grief and bereavement: phenomenological investigations of retrospective and prospective dimensions of parental loss

Our poster outlines the basic analytical and methodological strategy of a pending 3-year investigation into the existential dimensions of grief. The project is divided into two main foci: 1) a retrospective investigation into how bereavement of a parent in childhood/adolescence shapes the various experiential modalities of personal existence in adulthood; 2) a prospective focus investigating the process of initial adjustment after bereavement and how the person gradually achieves a reflective appropriation of the new existential situation after the loss of a parent.     As such, we are both interested in attaining an understanding of the pre-reflective and embodied dimensions of grief as it sediments and manifests throughout personal history, as well as how this dimension gets narrativised in transitions towards a more reflective stance on the existential modification instituted by bereavement. Methodologically our design stands out by including a strong focus on the embodied and prereflective dimension of personal existences and connecting this with narrative accounts. The theoretical basis for this approach has been presented in recent publications by the authors (Køster & Winther-Lindqvist 2017 and Køster 2016, 2017) and will be explicated in the poster session.