During times of profound grief, the world as a whole appears somehow altered – distant, unfamiliar, unwelcom ing, unpredictable. Grief is one of the most distressing, unsettling, and puzzling experiences that we face. As a second step, the working group aims to set up some inter-disciplinary collaborative empirical projects to address the most pertinent research needs as identified by the review. The first aim of the working group is to develop a state-of-the-art review of the area.
How may these experiences differ across populations and across the lifespan?.How diverse are these experiences, what are the dimensions of variation, and should different types of experience be distinguished?.What are the distinctive features of bereavement-related perceptual and/or perception-like experiences of the deceased?.Questions to be addressed by the working group: This is closely linked with differences in worldviews, culture and belief systems, important to consider when reviewing the literature so as to avoid either uncritically adopting or transferring conceptual perspectives. There is a wide diversity in conceptualising and making sense of these experiences. Furthermore, qualitative studies into these experiences have contributed to a more nuanced understanding (Parker, 2005 Tyson-Rawson, 1996 Hayes & Leudar, 2016 Steffen & Coyle, 2011), pointing to their phenomenological variability as well as to their relational meaningfulness, suggesting, for example, that the nature of the pre-death relationship is crucial in understanding the forms and functions of the experience. While these experiences are sometimes described as hallucinations, it is unclear whether or how they are phenomenologically and conceptually consistent with standard definitions of hallucinations (Baethge, 2002 Ratcliffe, 2017). Despite their mostly positive valence, there is an ongoing controversy around the adaptiveness of such experiences in grief (Field & Filanosky, 2010 Kamp et al., 2018 Simon et al., 2011). Such experiences mostly tend to be reported by the bereaved as comforting and helpful (Chan et al., 2005 Daggett, 2005 Datson & Marwit, 1997 Parkes, 1970 Steffen & Coyle, 2011), although the proportion of distressing or unwelcome experiences may be higher among children and adolescents (e.g. Taken together, these experiences, which tend to be associated with a sense of veridicality, are extremely common among bereaved people, with prevalence rates of 50-60% having been reported across different studies (Grimby, 1993 Kamp, O'Connor, Spindler, & Moskowitz, 2018 Olson, Suddeth, Peterson, & Egelhoff, 1985 Rees, 1971). This latter experience, the ‘felt presence’ of the deceased is consistently reported as the most frequent type of perceptual experience in bereavement, followed closely by auditory or audition-like experiences. people report that they can somehow sense or feel the physical proximity of the deceased loved one. This can involve having sensory impressions such as the visual, auditory, tactile and olfactory perception of the deceased or a quasi-sensory ‘feeling’ or ‘non-specific awareness of presence’ (Datson & Marwit, 1997 Rees, 1971), i.e. It is a frequently reported occurrence in bereavement to continue to have sensory and quasi-sensory experiences of deceased loved ones, a phenomenon often also referred to as ‘bereavement hallucina tions’ (Castelnovo, Cavallotti, Gambini, & D'Agostino, 2015).
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