ABSTRACT
An understanding of the functions of the inner representation of a lost child for grieving parents in a mutual-support network like Compassionate Friends is enriched by psychological, spiritual, and perhaps sociological perspectives. This transdisciplinary character of the field accounts for much of the excitement of death studies, but it also raises important questions about its status as a specialty vis-a-vis more established areas of study. Death-related content is often strangely absent even in specialty courses and textbooks in which content would be essential, such as gerontology. Gerontology texts give extensive coverage to the losses experienced in the course of aging, while omitting discussion of the most fundamental losses of all, namely, of loved ones or one’s own life. Research on death anxiety is largely atheoretical, and for the most part has failed to benefit from more recent cognitive psychological formulations that could give the study of attitudes of any kind a more secure grounding.
