For those of you reading this who have read many of my posts, or for those of you who are new to reading this post and others… One common feature you will find is that I will throw out into the ether so to speak questions that I don’t have the answers to. However, what I do is deconstruct the ideas of people who fervently believe that they do have the answers to questions. I hate it when people call me dogmatic yet I’m the one simply asking a question that makes them very uncomfortable. They realize that what I am doing is deconstructing their position and making them realize they don’t have the answer or theirs is shaky at absolute best. However, the problem I have found out over the years is they then turn to me after I have deconstructed their idea, and say “well what is the answer?” My response is always the same. I don’t know but I can tell you what you just told me is absolutely wrong, illogical, against all known evidence or such and such. In these situations, I’m not trying to act like “a know it all” quite the opposite. Instead I am simply pointing out the fallacies, lack of logic, violation of logic, or ignorance of evidence to the contrary. 

Now we come across a similar problem as we did with the 12 steps for alcohol. People are trying to apply one model to every single psychological event. In this case, those five stages were intended to be for people with terminal illness. For those of you who are not certain of them:

Denial

Anger

Bargaining with God (Higher power)

Depression

Acceptance

However, lay people as of which I give more of a free pass to, as well as lazy psychologists have now tried to adapt it, and say that it’s applicable to every type of grief a person experiences. Therefore, a loss of a loved one. A loss of a limb, job, a car, a pet, just insert your own example. You name any type of loss in your life and you can I guess apply these five stages to it yet they were intended for terminally ill people and family of them. Also these were meant to be descriptive not necessarily prescriptive. This is psychological laziness to apply these stages to everything on the part of people in psychology number one who I’m mainly attacking here. Then very secondarily which I can’t blame the lay person for not realizing is that you can’t do that. You cannot take one model that was intended for one specific thing and apply it to anything that appears at face value to be similar. This is cognitive laziness at its best. Who am I to say that a 10-year-old who is dumped by his or her girlfriend, experiences grief in these five exact stages similarly to a 16-year-old or 25-year-old who is dumped? What about a 45-year-old who’s had a 20-year-old marriage. Am I to believe literally that the same five stages applied to each of these groups of people the same? Keep in mind it was intended to be descriptive and applied to terminally ill people and family. It was not initially meant for being dumped or the other mentioned losses.

I remember over two decades ago reading something online, (I take no credit) of someone in psychology showing how vague the stages truly are in reality. They pointed out going to their car in the morning. First they try to start it. It does not start. They try again and again and again. Thus entered Denial. Then they start banging on the steering wheel, now the second stage, Anger. Now they start pleading with their chosen higher power, which is Bargaining. Then they mull over how their car is broken and now we have Depression. Finally they go back into the house and call a taxi to get to work. Acceptance is now here. The whole point of this example the person wrote about was to show how these basic 5 stages don’t have to merely apply to death and dying, and that they are so basic and vague. Yet in reality we all would agree that a person dying is far worse than a taxi to work in the morning. This is exemplary as to why we don’t just apply models on a whim.

To the main point especially since these stages were intended for terminally ill people. Off the top of my head as I sit in front of the computer now that we have decades of research on this topic. It was written in 1969 now 55 years ago why not more stages or subdivisions? Well much to my amazement (trying to find that year) a gentleman David Kessler came up with a 6^th stage of “Meaning.” Okay, I’m at least happy someone thought of something more. The issue with the “Meaning” concept is this becomes prescriptive whereas the 5 initial stages were descriptive. So philosophically it changes everything. With the “6^th” stage he uses basic cognitive restructuring to help people create meaning of the loss. I totally approve of this generally. Yet we have the same issue, why not off the top of my head before grief is shock or again insert your own verbiage as far as nuance or subdivisions of these stages. With his “6^th” stage we could have variance depending on the type of loss. I hope to see other people investigate this with regards to a loved one, job, pet and so on.

I think of this as a counseling psychologist and we look at development, will there be differences in age, type of loss (pet, job, marriage, car) ? Such as do 10-year-olds experience the process differently than a 45-year-old. This is very analogous to the problem of freud. Saying that there is/was the id, ego and superego. Every time I have come across someone who likes psychoanalysis, I say why wasn’t it broken up into nine different subdivisions of the mind. For example, the sub-id, id, ultra-id, sub-ego, ego, ultra-ego, inferior-superego, super ego, ultra-superego. So that is 9 subdivisions. Now every single time I have given that exact example to someone sympathetic to freud, I always either get a blank stare, or some backpedaling which is embarrassing for both of us. As anyone who can read this can clearly see you can mix and match any of these together and even come up with more than if you are clever and creative with language, maybe 15/20/25 divisions of the mind who knows. So why am I to believe that a 10-year-old and a 45-year-old experience grief of a break up in the exact same way? Also note, this is not even to get into transgendered relationships, or same sex/gender relationships that’s onto itself potentially entirely different. I don’t know. Explain to me why is it not possible that for the 10-year-old it might be seven stages of grief of a breakup. Whereas for the 45-year-old it might be 15 or 20 stages, or lesbians differ from gay men?

Alert yourself to the fact that I am not giving an answer. I am simply calling this into question and asking others to give me the answer. I was speaking recently, with a newly acquainted friend, who is very philosophically oriented. He simply pointed out not on this topic, but a different one that people are simply lazy at thinking. I completely agree with what he was saying, and this applies to scientists as well. In the end for those of you not officially in science read up on your topic of interest. For example, how people grieve being dumped, then think of your own hypothesis as to the stages for either boys or girls who are 10. Then contrast that with what you think may be the difference between those 10-year old’s and say 15 or 25-year old’s and 45-year old’s stages of grief. Of course, you have to absolutely keep in mind gender/sex differences and cultural considerations.

In the end models that were intended for one psychological phenomenon may not be appropriately in whole moved to another area of life. That is cognitive laziness. Sure, when something is well established with actual scientific evidence I’ll use it as a starting point yet much like the 12 steps of AA they were not originally intended to be in whole used for ALL drugs, eating disorders, depression/anxiety etc. The 5 stages of grief were meant for terminally ill people.

What is even more potentially serious in this situation is the implication of normality. Some people applying again these stages to the loss of a loved one (of which it was not intended) may feel guilt they don’t go through these stages “correctly.” This is very bad because just because these are out there the person and I have seen this clinically, feel guilty, or even depressed because they perceive themselves as “not normal” when in actuality each person experiences grief and such in different ways.

All in all you will experience the loss of anything in a different way than other people. Also realize that psychologically you cannot in whole or even sometimes in part transfer a model to a new area it was not intended for. I remember reading/listening to Steven Pinker, an awesome psychologist of language comment on the dangers of using an analogy. There can be (and I am bastardizing his eloquent speaking ability) unintended carryover effects using an analogy that is actually misleading. An example and I can’t remember if he used it or I got it somewhere else. They say, “the brain is rewired with drugs, head hits etc”. Well, using the wiring analogy is dangerous because with my limited knowledge of wiring sometimes you can cut back the rubber coating, reattach the wires, use electrical tape and the item works. That is however not how neurons in the brain work.

So be careful with anything that implies stages, steps, levels, periods, layer etc. Many times, it can be simply to get a publication, interview, journal article or some other accolade. In the case of Kubler-Ross this person was clearly doing something groundbreaking. Yet there can and very well may be some grad student who has a far more sophisticated version. Just don’t be fooled by face value similarities.