Sometimes a psychological phenomenon becomes so well-known that even people with no training whatsoever in psychology are familiar with it. That’s true for the five stages of grief, as described by the psychiatrist Elisabeth Kubler-Ross back in 1969. When someone dies, she suggested, the first reaction of the loved ones left behind is denial. Anger comes next, then bargaining, then depression. Finally, after all those stages have passed, mourners experience some acceptance of their loss.
Originally, Kubler-Ross formulated the stages of grief to describe the reactions of patients who had terminal illnesses. But she never conducted a systematic study of people’s reactions to the death of a loved one, and whether those reactions change over time in the way she predicted. Over the years, researchers have stepped in to try to see whether Kubler-Ross was right.
They found that, with regard to the order in which various reactions peak over time, Kubler-Ross was spot on. She was wrong, though, about the frequency with which the bereaved experience different emotions. The most important conclusion of research on stages of grief, though, is that there is no one way to grieve. Different people mourn in different ways. Their stages may be different than the ones Kubler-Ross described, or they may not go through different stages at all.
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