ABSTRACT
Humans establish coherence and meaning through the ordering of events into a narrative template; however, the narrative of a violent death of a loved one is so incoherent and meaningless that its retelling invalidates both the life narrative of the teller and the deceased. For violently bereaved individuals, the inveterate human quest for significance can resemble more of a curse than a romantic ideal. This chapter proposes that a central goal of psychotherapy with survivors of violent loss is to help them integrate these fragmenting experiences more adequately and to promote the ongoing revision and expansion of their life narratives over time. Experiencing violent loss disrupts the narrative processes relevant to organizing historical events, as well as destroying the fundamental assumptions that endowed the life story with significance. Violent loss outpaces emplotment and invalidates thematic assumptions, breaching both the what and the why of the survivor’s life narrative.
