Psychology & Religion
This discussion board is to be used for conversing on Remembrance, Commemoration and Memorials and in relation to Psychology and Religion. Particpants may begin new lines of discussion for others to comment on or add views. The aim is to offer an opportunity for debate, discussion and to stimulate research.
Below are comments sent to me after the last seminar by The Venerable (Air Vice-Marshal) Robin Turner CB DL which people may like to respond to –
I found the whole day very interesting, as with all the seminars so far. From a personal point of view, perhaps because I completed three tours of duty in Germany while serving with the Royal Air Force both during the Cold War and after the collapse of the Eastern Bloc, I was particularly interested in Gerd Knischewski’s paper.
In terms of other activities/events to be suggested, I have none but I was particularly interested in the comparison between what might be termed personal and corporate bereavement, i.e. how a community or nation copes with loss. Some years ago I did some academic work in the field of bereavement studies – all very out of date now, but I well recall William Worden’s book Grief Counselling and Grief Therapy (1991) in which Worden defines, among other things, four “Tasks of Mourning”, which are,
I. To accept the reality of the loss.
II. To work through the pain of grief.
III. To adjust to an environment in which the deceased is missing.
IV. To emotionally relocate the deceased and move on with life.
The context of these is clearly in the area of personal bereavement but coming away from the seminar, I began to wonder how they might apply in a collective sense. It strikes me that “remembrance” is very much concerned with all four of these “tasks” and that the erecting of memorials such as the Cenotaph, the NMA, town and village war memorials, the collective observation of occasions like Remembrance-tide and so on are part of a corporate means of coping with grief. The on-going work of the RBL could be thought to be very much connected with Tasks III & IV. I wonder if there is any value in investigating parallels between the individual and the corporate, as well as remembering the different ways remembrance is done in different cultures.
I wonder whether there might be a psychologist who specialises in this field who might have some thoughts to share with us at another seminar. I don’t feel qualified to offer myself – I am not an academic and my work in this field is very out of date by now, these are simply some random thoughts on my part and there may be no mileage in them, but I thought it worth at least raising the question!
Robin Turner.
The comparison between individual and corporate (or socio-cultural) grief is interesting, but I don’t think they are directly comparable. As Robin suggests, there are several stages of mourning, including the resolution of grief through anger, pain and finally acceptance; but can we argue that society in some sense is similar? I do think there are similarities in that there are stages, but there are fundamental differences because society is not a thinking mind, a psychological reality. The stages of a societal period of mourning seems to link to time and generations. The generation who experience a significant war (though all wars are significant to participants) will remember it deeply; their children will remember it through them, and their children through their grandparents. At this point the memory is still within individuals. Once a war is out of living memory then the grieving process is – at the individual level – finished.
We do have to take other things into account. Did the society win or lose the war? That will complicate the memory of it. Was there significant material loss or physical change such as the Western Front of the First World War? How are the historians interpreting the war?
These things (and others) create a complicated picture. If we examine wars before WWI then perhaps it is fairly straightforward, memories of most wars fade with living memory. There may be memorials and accounts of some of these wars, but we do not employ remembrance to them, just history and a sense of the past. WWI changes everything for our society at least. We professionalised remembrance and have perhaps disrupted the stages of mourning for our society. If we retain the psychological model then society has become pathological, unable to achieve resolution, as remembrance (as opposed to history) only occurs during mourning. What we need to do with remembrance as it is used today in our society is to lose the psychological analogy and use remembrance for purposes such as education and history.
We can only mourn those of the First World War for so long. Now the participants are dead perhaps it is time to change?
I am not sure how to start a new thread, so I will reply to myself, but this is really about religion. I would be interested in hearing from others about the role of religion in remembrance.
Personally, as an atheist, while I very much value these services, I do have problems with the role of religion in commemorative services. While I would rather save my stronger views for face to face discussion, I do wonder what the range of views are regarding the very strong link between the Christian religion and remembrance services in the UK. We are, I think, trying to remember those of other nations and other religions in our modern world, but we exclude most people through the Christian service. I am not trying to criticise tradition, but I do wonder whether the traditional 11 November service belongs to an earlier era.
Your exam question: We all want to remember, but we don’t need religion getting in the way. Discuss.
“Lest we forget” – Dr Hunt! Your suggestion that it may be sensible to cancel the traditional 11th November service is a sure way to guarantee that our young people will forget! Tradition, its rituals in family and in society, whatever its form, situation and manner, is a method of imparting values, of celebrating of remembering and of imparting knowledge. In your ‘Education’ post you question the best methods of educating our young people and then in this turnaround, propose something which can only be to the detriment of ‘Remembrance’ for young and old alike.
We may no longer be a wholly religious society and of course we are definitely a multi cultural one. However, the ceremony on November 11th, yes, with its religious aspect, remembers the fallen of all wars, from all cultures and is inclusive to all participants, at the Cenotaph, the NMA or wherever, and to those who (still)watch, in their huge numbers, the service on TV. Grief unites.
The hope – it does not have to be in prayer – that war will cease; that the lives of those who were lost shall be remembered, traverses culture, religion and time. It is that way because of tradition. ‘Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori’? No of course not – but it IS fitting that we remember, with a traditional event and ceremony, those who have given their lives and who are still fighting around the world and so that the ‘old lie’ will never be resurrected through lack of education.