ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a sampling of research ideas that might enlarge and enrich the chronic sorrow knowledge base. Research that includes openness to findings of such positives as strength, satisfaction, pleasure, humor, philosophical maturity, and realistic perspective will contribute to balance. The knowledge base is so thin that chronic sorrow is open to research across a multitude of variables. Comparing persons with severe chronic sorrow with those who demonstrate minimal or mild responses of chronic sorrow and who have similar "objective" losses at equivalent times in the grieving process might identify important coping mechanisms or personality variables that mitigate the distress of chronic sorrow. In some circumstances, persons with self-loss can transcend and transform chronic sorrow. The role and function of the fantasy of what should be or could have been deserves meticulous attention, as it is central to the discrepancy that is at the core of chronic sorrow.
