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Affective meditation on the Passionwas one of the most popular literary genres of the high and later Middle Ages. Proliferating in a rich variety of forms, these lyrical, impassioned, script-like texts in Latin and the vernacular had a deceptively simple goal: to teach their readers how to feel. They were thus instrumental in shaping and sustaining the wide-scale shift in medieval Christian sensibility from fear of God to compassion for the suffering Christ.Affective Meditation and the Invention of Medieval Compassionadvances a new narrative for this broad cultural change and the meditative writings that both generated and reflected it. Sarah McNamer locates women as agents in the creation of the earliest and most influential texts in the genre, from John of Fécamp'sLibellusto theMeditationes vitae Christi, thus challenging current paradigms that cast the compassionate affective mode as Anselmian or Franciscan in origin. The early development of the genre in women's practices had a powerful and lasting legacy. With special attention to Middle English texts, including Nicholas Love'sMirrorand a wide range of Passion lyrics and laments,Affective Meditation and the Invention of Medieval Compassionilluminates how these scripts for the performance of prayer served to construct compassion itself as an intimate and feminine emotion. To feel compassion for Christ, in the private drama of the heart that these texts stage, was to feel like a woman. This was an assumption about emotion that proved historically consequential, McNamer demonstrates, as she traces some of its legal, ethical, and social functions in late medieval England.

Pain is a central and recurring theme in Leopardi's theory. The poet analyzes its causes, dynamisms and remedys. In order to face pain, Leopardi suggests patience, habit, passing of time and, in particular, illusions. Leopardi's theory of pain is closely connected with his pedagogy of savoir vivre. Keywords. care - pain - Leopardi - sorrow - suffering

Purpose Palliative care patients experience chronic sorrow with loss in dignity and meaning in life. Logotherapy is an effective way to cope with loss. This study aimed to evaluate the effect of logotherapy on chronic sorrow, dignity, and meaning in life of palliative care patients. Methods This study was conducted with 58 adults hospitalized due to advanced cancer and assigned to either intervention or control group by simple randomization. Data were collected with descriptive information form, Palliative Performance Scale, Patient Dignity Inventory (PDI), Prolonged Grief Disorder Scale-Patient Form (PGDS-PF), and Meaning in Life Questionnaire (MIL) on admission, at the 4th and 8th weeks. The intervention group received eight sessions of logotherapy. The control group received routine care. Results The mean scores of PGDS-PF ( p  = 0.01), PDI ( p  = 0.01), and searched meaning subdimension of MIL (MIL-SM) ( p  = 0.11) decreased in the intervention group compared to controls, both at the 4th and 8th week evaluation. The mean score of the present meaning subdimension of MIL (MIL-PM) ( p  = 0.02) increased at the 4th week evaluation but decreased at a non-statistically significant level at the 8th week. The mean scores of PGDS-PF and PDI increased in the control group while MIL-PM and MIL-SM decreased, both at the 4th and 8th week evaluation. Conclusions Logotherapy was found effective in decreasing the sorrow and dignity-related distress of palliative care patients, while increasing finding meaning in life. Logotherapy is recommended to be used by palliative care professionals to empower patients. Trial registration Clinicaltrials registration number and date: NCT05129059, 19/01/2021.

Grief and bereavement are a universal part of the human experience. The impact of grief on human lives is increasingly evident as the COVID-19 pandemic, environmental disasters, and—in the United States in particular—gun-related violence upend normal life and expose vast swaths of society to recurring and profound trauma. It was only in 2022, with the publication of DSM-5-TR and in the context of considerable scientific progress, that prolonged grief disorder (PGD) was included as a formal diagnosis, one also reflected in ICD-11. Now, this new handbook provides both clinical and non-clinical readers with a science-based approach to identifying and addressing PGD, along with what might be termed \"normal\" grief. In extensively referenced chapters filled with illustrative case studies, this guide examines topics such as • What constitutes bereavement• How \"simple\" bereavement differs from PGD and how to manage them clinically• Grief in children and the importance of a life cycle approach• Cultural factors and their impact on the experience of grief• Stigma and attitudes toward treatment• Diagnosing and treating PGD With consequences that include suffering, social isolation and loneliness, poor physical health, shortened life expectancy, and suicide, it is critical that PGD be recognized and treated as quickly as possible. Thus, Grief and Prolonged Grief Disorder is a necessary resource: Its evidence-based approach gives readers the tools they need to recognize grief in themselves and others, strategies for the clinical management of typical grief, guidance on the specific treatment for PGD, and tips on when to refer patients for specialty care.

This article investigates the experience of beauty and eco-sorrow with the aim of depicting some painful truths, as well as existential responses to eco-sorrow. The article begins by portraying the attributes of the experience of beauty, relying on an emended version of Christopher Bollas’s notion of transformational objects and Buber’s I–Thou experience. This lays the foundation for explicating the attendant experience of eco-sorrow, which entails the painful recognition of (1) the degradation of the Earth and a loss of beauty, (2) the extinction of other species, (3) human-caused climate disaster, and (4) existential insignificance and impermanence. The latter is further understood in terms of Giorgio Agamben’s notion of the ontological rift, which is produced and maintained by the Abrahamic religious traditions and Western political philosophies. Recognition of the ontological rift, which is a defense against existential insignificance and impermanence, is a key part of the experience of eco-sorrow. The last section explores responses to beauty and eco-sorrow, such as despair, nihilism, forced hope/optimism, flights of fantasy, and, ideally, a categorical demand for inoperative care.

Perhaps it is not well to open too frequently the deep wells of past sorrows that we may drink the bitter draughts which memory offers. Still, we would not forget the past; our glorious past! with all its terrible trials, its untold sufferings, its unwritten history. The Christian never forgets the dying groans on Calvary, that gave to him his souls salvation: neither can an American citizen forget the great price paid for the life and liberty of this nation. Next to love of God is love of Country. It is not my object to awaken any morbid feelings of sentimental sorrow; or again to open the deep [a] wounds which time has healed. Neither do I wish to serve up to an unhealthy imagination a dish of fearful horrors from which a healthy organization must turn away. I would only ask you to look at the shadows a little while, that the light and life, of peace and plenty which now fill our land may by contrast impress upon your hearts a picture more beautiful than any artist could ever [struck through] place on canvas. Shadows always make the light more beautiful.

Ecological changes evoke many felt losses and types of grief. These affect sustainability efforts in profound ways. Scholarship on the topic is growing, but the relationship between general grief research and ecological grief has received surprisingly little attention. This interdisciplinary article applies theories of grief, loss, and bereavement to ecological grief. Special attention is given to research on “non-death loss” and other broad frameworks of grief. The dynamics related to both local and global ecological grief are discussed. The kinds of potential losses arising from ecological issues are clarified using the frameworks of tangible/intangible loss, ambiguous loss, nonfinite loss and shattered assumptions. Various possible types of ecological grief are illuminated by discussing the frameworks of chronic sorrow and anticipatory grief/mourning. Earlier scholarship on disenfranchised ecological grief is augmented by further distinctions of the various forms it may take. The difficulties in defining complicated or prolonged grief in an ecological context are discussed, and four types of “complicated ecological grief” are explored. On the basis of the findings, three special forms of ecological loss and grief are identified and discussed: transitional loss and grief, lifeworld loss and shattered dreams. The implications of the results for ecological grief scholarship, counselling and coping are briefly discussed. The results can be used by psychological and healthcare professionals and researchers but also by members of the public who wish to reflect on their eco-emotions. They also have implications for policy makers.

This article explores the Ma’badong dance in the death rituals of the Torajan culture in Indonesia, emphasizing Gerardus van der Leeuw’s expansive definition of dance as a comprehensive expression of the human spirit. It argues that dance transcends a mere reflection of the soul, positing that sorrow in the Ma’badong dance is a manifestation of divine presence. This dance, still practiced today, embodies a theological aesthetic of “the beauty of sorrow,” examined through several dimensions. Firstly, it expresses sadness and empathy towards death. Secondly, it universalizes the human body as an instrument of sorrow. Thirdly, it celebrates life amidst grief. Fourthly, it provides a language of lamentation, creating a space for encountering God. Lastly, the Ma’badong dance affirms that God is present in the dancers’ sorrow. This article presents the Ma’badong dance as a profound theological aesthetic, where sorrowful movements become beautiful, facilitating remembrance of self, others, and God.