The thymus of the five phases of mourning: not only is there no evidence that they exist, but they can be harmful

Denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. For years we have heard that these were the stages of mourning, but the investigation of recent years is clear: of that nothing.

The first psychopathological model of grief was elaborated by Sigmund Freud in a book that now celebrates a centenary: 'Duel and melancholy'. In it, the psychoanalyst wandered around these problems and came to the conclusion that the duel was a passing version of the "withdrawal of interest in the outside world" that characterized melancholy.

The details, as is traditional in Freud, are obscure and have not held up well over time. However, his proposal to distinguish 'normal mourning' from 'pathological mourning' was collected by the rest of psychologists and psychiatrists.

As Claudia Hammond tells us, the first studies that go beyond the limits of psychoanalysis on the subject are those of John Bowlby and Colin Murray Parkes. These researchers, already in the late fifties, posed a four-stage process (numbness, search and longing, depression and reorganization), but it was not until Elisabeth Kübler-Ross published her famous pentafactorial model that this form of understand grief.

In 1973, his book 'On Death and Dying' became almost a 'best seller' and the "denial, anger, negotiation, depression and acceptance" became part of popular culture. The problem - small, tiny, insignificant - is that the model has neither feet nor head. Speaking in scientific terms, of course.

It should be said that initially Kübler-Ross posed the model to understand the experience of his own death (the Swiss psychologist, after all, was a great expert in dying people and palliative care). But science, like literature, ceases to belong to the author as soon as it is published and quickly the model began to be used for the rest of the emotional processes.

According to the Kübler-Ross model, the process should draw a change curve with a concrete form (the so-called 'w' because the expected intensity of the emotional response in each phase would have that shape):

Kübler-Ross model | Agencies
But in 2004, Toni Bisconti and his team decided to investigate the issue and, after analyzing the emotional state of people in mourning for months, came to totally different conclusions:

Toni Bisconti Graphic | Agencies
Bisconti's study not only questioned the order of emotions, but also questioned -as can be seen in the graph- the intensity of them. In fact, another study, this time from Columbia University, indicates that up to 45% of older couples did not experience severe distress at any time.

The investigation goes, little by little, having clear that the duel is a normal process - that is to say, that happens in all the human beings when suffering a loss -, in addition to dynamic, social, intimate and active. In the end, studies on grief are converging on a simple idea: personal relationships help regulate emotional ups and downs. They are like the winds of a tent in the middle of the mountain: in the face of a loss, a very negative emotional experience is linked to the problems of regulatory logics linked to the disappearance of this relationship.

That is why it is a model that can even be harmful. In fact, Stroebe, Schut and Boerner have studied the subject and have come to this same conclusion. In general, it is a model that oversimplifies the process, makes it passive, denies cultural differences and forgets the importance of the personal context.

As Ruth Davis Konigsberg, author of 'The Truth About Grief' said, to consider the Kübler-Ross model as a standard "is reassuring for people who suffer some of these emotions, but stigmatizes those who do not because they may feel they are suffering incorrectly, or that something functionally wrong inside them ".