This approach to grief and mourning might seem to be a good thing, like picking yourself up after a fall. The idea that recovering one’s happiness should be the end goal of mourning dates back to Sigmund Freud. Over the following century, Freud’s ideas about mourning helped to foster an increasingly clinical understanding of grief. The 2022 update to the manual includes “prolonged grief disorder” and adopts the World Health Organization’s 2019 classification of prolonged grief as akin to post-traumatic stress disorder. Traditional mourning practices, with their permanent “burdens,” offer a way for those commitments to continue.

---

Persons: Sigmund Freud, ”, Queen Victoria, it’s Organizations: Health