Grief: The Price of Love

by Svend Brinkmann, Tam McTurk (Translator)

Wherever love and death meet there is grief.  It affects us all regardless of ethnicity, age, class, or sexual orientation.  Grief is universal – it has endured across time, societies and cultures from the earliest human communities to the present day.  But the way we deal with grief is changing. Increasingly, we are diagnosing grief as a medical condition to be treated rather than embracing it as a natural part of being human.

In this book, Svend Brinkmann gets to the heart of what it is to grieve, arguing that the sorrow we experience after the death of a loved one is a necessary and meaningful dimension of human existence.  However painful, it unites us all.  As humans we are uniquely privileged to feel grief.  Rather than trying to escape or smother grief, we must allow ourselves to feel and accept it as the price we pay for love.

208 pages, Paperback

Published June 15, 2020

About the author

Svend Brinkmann (født 23. december 1975) har været professor i almenpsykologi og kvalitative metoder på Det Humanistiske Fakultet på Aalborg Universitet siden 2009. Han er uddannet cand.psych. fra Aarhus Universitet.

Svend Brinkmann har skrevet og redigeret en lang række bøger og mere end 150 artikler. Derudover har han udgivet artikler og bogkapitler på syv forskellige sprog. I almenheden blev han i 2014 kendt for bogen Stå fast, hvori han gør op med, hvad han beskriver som tidens (selv)udviklingstyranni. Svend Brinkmann har også medvirket i radioprogrammet Netværket på P1 fra 2009-2016 og var i 2014 vært på DRK programmet Lev Stærkt.

Svend Brinkmann har gennem sin karriere modtaget mange priser og legater. Blandt andet modtog han i 2015 DR's formidlingspris Rosenkjærprisen og Gyldendals formidlingspris sammen med Lene Tanggaard.

Reviews

[Francie Kaye · Rating 4 out of 5]

The capacity to love is a precondition to grief. I like how the book discusses grief beyond the psychological take, it actually mentions its physicality (biology) and emotions (Affective). I particularly like Chapters 4 and 5 which discuss Grief Embodied and grief as Cultural. I also like the introduction I got to new concepts like the "extendedness of emotion," meaning grief as an emotion is not just understood as an internal state but social signals, designed to influence others. I think the entire thesis up to the conclusion of the book is to look at grief as a foundational emotion that is essential in one's human experience (without romanticization). The price we pay for love.

[C · Rating 3 out of 5]

A much more theoretical book than I expected (my fault, really), but some lucid moments about collective mourning and the pathologization of grief.