Grief reactions in later life.

Abstract

Grief reactions in later life have been studied in 25 subjects, 23 of whom attended an old age counselling service. The most striking features in this group were: a relative paucity of overt grief and of conscious guilt feelings, a preponderance of somatic illness precipitated or accentuated by the bereavement; a tendency to extreme exaggeration of the common idealization of the deceased with a blotting-out of all "dark" features; a tendency to self-isolation and to hostility against some living person. These features are discussed in the light of the psychoanalytic theories of mourning and depressions in general, as applied to the psychological dynamics of later life. A brief outline of the management of these cases is given.