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Background for the Study

The nature of grieving

The death of a loved one creates a mix of emotions in the survivor. Anger, sadness, longing, and love create a painful and conflicted psychological state of being. Freud coined the term "grief work" in 1917 and described it as the way "bereaved people continue to act, in so many ways, as if the lost person were still recoverable" (Freud, 1917/1952, p. 58). There are distinctions between normal grief and traumatic or complicated grief. Lindemann (1944) defined normal grief as "an acute reaction to a distressing situation" (p. 141), and he found a complex of five components in the normal grief response: somatic distress, preoccupation with the image of the deceased, guilt, hostile reactions, and loss of patterns of conduct. Early grief researchers concluded that the grieving process was (more or less) complete when the bereaved person was able to break all ties with the deceased. In his most recent book on bereavement, a synthesis of much of the grief research to date, Parkes (1998) says that the purpose of grief work is to build a new image of the dead person and the relationship to him or her by undertaking a process of gradually putting together a "jigsaw puzzle" so that the bereaved can find a new image and a place in his or her life for the lost person (p. 71). When grief is severe, a bereaved person may be disabled for months or years. Complicated or traumatic grief occurs when the death is sudden and/or violent, or when the bereaved has negative memories of or unfinished business with the deceased. The reason so much emphasis is currently placed on factors of traumatic grief is that preliminary studies have shown that people suffering this intensity of pain are prone to suicide, cardiac arrest (Parkes, 1998) (Jacobs, 1999) and other fatal illnesses that could be prevented by relieving grief. Coming to terms with the loss of a loved one involves what Devers (1994) calls balancing the memories of the deceased in order to gain a sense of closure. Without contact from deceased loved ones the bereaved might cling to psychologically troubling memories that could impede the grieving process. She adds: "When conflicts remain buried in the unconscious they can create confusing and damaging emotions in the survivor. They may surface in unhealthy ways, such as misdirected anger, self-pity, depression, anxiety, or even psychosis. The goal of healing is to confront those issues and resolve them. After-death communication (ADC) facilitates this process (p. 131)."

Although ADC is no longer thought by the psychological research community to be necessarily hallucinatory or pathological, the role of ADC in recovery from deep grief is not yet clearly defined, well understood, or socially supported. American culture generally denies death (Wass, Berardo, & Neimeyer, 1988) and the grieving process of survivors (Rosenblatt, Walsh, & Jackson, 1976). As a result, grieving members of society have had very little support and have been reluctant to discuss their experiences, fearing that their experiences would be invalidated as grief-induced hallucinations or wishful thinking (Devers, 1987, 1994; Glick, Weiss, & Parkes, 1974; Kalish & Reynolds, 197"3"; MacLaren, 1980; Parkes, 1970; Rees, 1971, Stevenson, 1983; Whitney, 1982; Yamomoto, Okonogi, Iwasaki, & Yoshimura, 1969).

If there is to be a cultural paradigm shift in western society which accepts ADC as a normal and beneficial aspect of life and death, it will be because the majority of people experience it, talk about it, and accept it as real. It is the sudden nature of ADC or any other anomalous event, that may catalyze a paradigm shift in its percipient. A personal paradigm shift is not unlike a macrocosmic social paradigm shift, described by Kuhn (1970) as occurring when an accumulation of anomalous experiences reaches critical mass. Then things previously unacceptable become an accepted part of everyday life. When enough people experience ADC and talk about it publicly, there will be a paradigm shift in the acceptability of the experience in mainstream society. When that happens, bereaved people who are having these experiences will be better supported by counselors, clergy, psychologists and psychotherapists.

After-Death Communication Defined

ADC is a form of anomalous psi experience. Cardena, Lynn, and Krippner (2000) define anomalous experience as "…an uncommon experience… or one that, although it may be experienced by a substantial amount of the population (e.g., experiences interpreted as telepathic), is believed to deviate from ordinary experience or from the usually accepted explanations of reality"(p. 4). "Psi is a hypothetical construct relating to the presumed anomalous transfer of information or energy for which there is, arguably, objective evidential support" (Bem and Honorton, 1994 p. 53). Reports of anomalous events "appear to stand outside of modern science's concepts of time, space, and energy" (Krippner, 1995, p. 4).

The exact nature of psi phenomena is unknown (Krippner, 1995), but psi events are usually grouped under headings: (1) psi gamma (extrasensory perception or ESP) e.g., information obtained in non-ordinary ways, such as telepathy, clairvoyance, post-cognition, and precognition. This is receptive psi in which anomalous information flow is reported; (2) psi kappa (psychokinesis) where an organism seems to influence living, static or moving systems from a distance, e.g., objects or organisms are moved from one location to another; and (3) psi theta: e.g., past life reports, mediumship, near death and out-of-body experiences, ADC, and voices manifested on electronic devices.

ADC Through History

Recorded since ancient times, contact from the dead purportedly occurs spontaneously and unbidden by the deceased, or it can be initiated by the percipient, for example, through a medium. A 1991 public opinion poll revealed that nearly half of all Americans felt they had, at some time in their lives, been in the presence of a deceased friend or relative (National Opinion Research Center, 1991). In the last six years (1997-2003) there has been a resurgence of movies with plots where the main characters discover that consciousness survives death and that the dead and the living help each other. It appears there is a current groundswell of interest and awareness on the part of the American public regarding communication from the dead, and more people seem to be willing to talk about their experiences without fear of pejorative comments from others regarding their state of mental health. ADC experients are getting validation from each other, evidenced by the recent resurgence of movies with plots based on ADC and survival of consciousness (e.g., "Dragonfly", 2002" and "The Sixth Sense", 1999) and documentaries, (e.g., Life Afterlife [sic], (1999), which featured ADC investigators Dossey (1993), Guggenheim (1995), Kubler-Ross (1969), Radin (1997), Tart (1986), and Schwartz (1999). John Edward, a medium featured in Life Afterlife [sic] (1999), and in Schwartz' (1999) study of the effect on mediumship on bereavement, now has his own daily primetime show, "Crossing Over".

Guggenheim and Guggenheim (1995) coined the term "after-death communication" when they created The ADC Project in May, 1988 to conduct the first in-depth study of ADC. They interviewed 2,000 people who lived in all 50 American states and the ten Canadian provinces, collecting more than 3,300 firsthand accounts from people who believed they had been contacted by a deceased loved. Subsequently they wrote the first book on ADC, Hello From Heaven in 1995.

Methodology for This Study

In contrast to quantitative research, qualitative research "refers to the methods and techniques of observing, documenting, interpreting attributes, patterns, characteristics, and meanings of specific, contextual, or gestaltic features of phenomena under study" (Leininger, 1985, p. 5). Phenomenology is a qualitative method that isolates and identifies the essences of lived experiences. It is a perspective that makes us look at life experiences in their context against the horizon or background of the percipient's life world in order to discover meaning (Moustakas, 1994). In phenomenological research, anything that presents itself to consciousness is of potential interest, whether the object is imagined or real, subjectively felt or empirically measurable. Truth is an interpretation of some phenomenon. The more shared the interpretation is within a culture, the more factual it seems to be, but it is still only an interpretation.

Published research has established that (ADC) events experienced by bereaved individuals are common, natural, non-pathological, and helpful in facilitating the grieving process. This study further explored how ADC affects the grieving process of the bereaved, and more specifically, how ADC may result in a sudden, complete, and spontaneous lifting of the burden of grief. No attempt was made to demonstrate that consciousness survives death; however, it is important to discuss whether ADC percipients believe that it does, and if their experiences help them to resolve grief, recover from the loss, and live meaningful lives.

Potential participants responded to notices in the San Diego Holistic Nurses' Newsletter, an announcement made at the 1999 Noetic Sciences Conference, and the Guggenheim website www.after-death.com , asking for bereaved individuals to participate in ADC research. Seven people were selected for interview from 18 completed questionnaires. The criteria for interview selection were that percipients felt that: (1) their ADCs reduced their grief; (2) in the hours or days after their ADCs their grief was less intense because of the experience(s); (3) their ADCs were life-changing in some way; and (4) they were willing to participate in a taped interview with the researcher. The study did not include anyone who had an ADC experience and ignored or minimized it; nor does it include anyone who had an experienced they perceived as negative and then discarded. Additionally, the participants had positive ADCs which benefited them even if they were initially frightened by them. Interviews were semi-structured, transcribed verbatim, and then analyzed using phenomenological reduction methods of Moustakas (1994) , Hycner (1985), Munhall (2000) and Drewry (2002) to extract the essential constituents common to all of the ADC experiencers, and the meaning ascribed to these events by them.

Thirteen types of ADCs were found in the literature review: (1) sensing presence of the deceased, (2) hearing the actual vocal quality of the deceased, (3) telepathically communicating with the deceased, (4) touch, (5) visual, (6) taste, (7) fragrance, (8) dreams, (9) out-of-body, (10) telephone calls from the deceased, (11) precognitive (living person has a communication with deceased individual before knowing of the death), (12) psi kappa (moved objects), and (13) unusual natural phenomena, e.g., birds, rainbows.

The seven participants collectively experienced 40 ADCs of the types listed above with the exception of taste, which is rarely reported. In addition to the 13 types of ADC listed above, participants in this study reported sexual ADCs (the tangible, physical presence of the deceased is perceived by the survivor), mystical ADCs, and ADC messages delivered through radio-broadcast songs.

Eight themes emerged from the phenomenological reduction: (1) unexpectedness of ADC establishes authenticity for bereaved individual; (2) cues for recognition are specific to the deceased and reinforce authenticity; (3) bereaved considers self-delusion before accepting the experience; (4) after ADC, bereaved reports immediate relief, comfort, hope, love, emotional stabilization, encouragement, forgiveness, and the joy of continuing relationship; (5) ADC assists bereaved in completing unfinished business with deceased; (6) bereaved may reframe relationship with the deceased as a result of ADC; (7) may reframe relationship with self, and (8) may reframe relationship with God or the divine.

Participants said they felt blessed and privileged to experience ADCs, even if initially frightened or saddened by the initial contact. To varying degrees, they reported an expanded awareness of the meaning of life and death, feared death less, felt confirmed in who they believe themselves to be, and had a new understanding of themselves in relation to a bigger picture or universal grand plan. All said they had a "knowing" that consciousness and love survive death and look forward to reunion with loved ones. All were able to begin to grieve, continue grieving with a sense of completion of unfinished business, or complete grieving because of their ADCs, depending upon where they were in the grieving process at the time of interview. It is important to note that while ADC lessens the intensity of grief, comforts the survivor and may later actually change the percipients' worldview, it cannot generally be said to neutralize or resolve grief instantaneously.

Findings cannot be generalized to larger populations of bereaved individuals; however, emerging data suggest future research lies in (1) the further study of ADC-facilitated grieving, and in (2) the potential that ADCs hold for the percipients' self-actualization process after they have completed the grieving process. An anomalous psi experience, ADC falls into the domain of Exceptional Human Experience (EHE), an area of research begun in 1990 by Rhea A. White (http://www.ehe.org). White (1990, 1997, 1998), who started the Exceptional Human Experience Network in 1995, found that by going beyond the phenomenological, event-centered issues (such as ADC) into questions of personal meaningfulness of the whole experience (before, during, and after), experiencers could become more aware of who they are, and the "More" (James, 1902) they can be. Anomalous or exceptional experiences can be points of catalytic transpersonal insight. To varying degrees on a pragmatic/esoteric continuum, the participants experienced, as a result of their ADCs, long-term, liberating, transformational changes in awareness of self, relationship with the deceased, and new understanding of the meaning of life, death, and the divine.

Drewry's (2002) research contributes to the paradigm shift already in process, and helps to de-stigmatize the ADC phenomenon by (1) adding to a body of knowledge that can be utilized by counseling and medical professionals who might better understand and support bereaved people who are experiencing ADCs; and (2) making study results available to the general public (www.damarisdrewry.com) so that bereaved individuals can learn what ADC is, how the deceased communicate, and how to recognize communications for the comfort and life-changing opportunities they offer.