ABSTRACT
It has become common of late to differentiate “spiritual” from “religious.” In a pluralistic and individualistic world, the distinction probably represents a protest against the particularity of most religions, and it represents the modern split between personal experience and social forms. Linking objects are objects connected with the child’s life that link the bereaved to the dead; they evoke the presence of the dead. The numinous feeling is clearer in the many people who sense the presence of the child in their religious experience of prayer, ritual, and religious ideation. Bereaved parents can find solace in memory. Unconflicted and peaceful memory is often at the end of a difficult process of separating self-representation from the inner representation of the child. In identification, the inner representation of the child is integrated into the self-representation in such a way that it is difficult to distinguish the two. Solace is found in a sense of reinvigorated life, in renewed feelings of competence.
