The Nature of Grief: The Evolution and Psychology Reactions to Loss by John Archer

by John Archer

The Nature of Grief is a provocative new study on the evolution of grief. Most literature on the topic regards grief either as a psychiatric disorder or illness to be cured. In contrast to this, John Archer shows that grief is a natural reaction to losses of many sorts, even to the death of a pet, and he proves this by bringing together material from evolutionary psychology, ethology and experimental psychology.This innovative new work will be required reading for developmental and clinical psychologists and all those in the caring professions.

Genres: Psychology, Grief

Paperback Bunko

First published March 12, 1998

Reviews

[Stephen Simpson · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was expecting more about the evolution of grief (biological functions/consequences, conservation of certain traits/reactions, etc.). Admittedly, there are a lot of definitions and interpretations of "evolution", but there was less of what I was expecting here in terms of the biology of grief.

What the book had a lot of was studies, interpretations, and syntheses of numerous studies on grief. They were interesting and useful, but not necessarily novel (other books have presented similar interpretations of the same data).

[Linda · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book covers scientific studies on grief and theories about the science behind grief. I thought it was very interesting. Naturally, there are not many scientific studies on grief because you don't typically approach someone who has just had a loss and ask the person for permission to observe and do experiments while they are grieving. But, extrapolations can be made from what science knows about similar processes and information they can gather from surveys and interviews at a later point.