Joyful Stoic Death Writing: An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis of Newcomers Contemplating Death in an Online Group
Kate Hammer, William van Gordon
Journal of Humanistic Psychology June 30, 2023 DOI: 10.1177/00221678231178051 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Qualitative study Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Sample size | 6 |
| Population | Six adult participants in a UK program, 28 Days Joyful Death Writing with the Stoics |
| Duration | 28 Days |
| Citations | 2 |
| Key findings | The authors report that daily Stoic death writing within a temporary community ("communitas") appears to have potential to provoke personal death awareness and undermine death taboos, accompanied by self-reported changes in emotional clarity, psychological flexibility, worry, and rumination. They propose that open programs like 28 Days could support idiographic approaches in intervention science, including practitioner training. |
Abstract
Death awareness, which is an integral part of Stoic philosophy, has received little attention in either therapeutic training or empirical psychological research. This study seeks to address this gap by investigating participants’ experiences of completing a Stoic death writing intervention. To understand newcomers’ experiences being in-daily-death-contemplation, in-depth, semi-structured interviews conducted in December 2021 with six adult participants in a UK program, 28 Days Joyful Death Writing with the Stoics , were analyzed using interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA). Analysis generated two primary themes: Contemplative Context and Death Contemplation Significance. Contemplative Context included the experiences of a temporary, unstable community (called communitas), otherness (called alterity), and the wider world. Death Contemplation Significance included death and other personal losses, and gains such as personal purpose, positive emotions/experiences, and beneficial behaviors/activities. Findings indicate daily death writing in communitas appears to have potential to provoke personal death awareness and undermine death taboos, accompanied by self-reported changes in emotional clarity, psychological flexibility, worry, and rumination. Furthermore, operationalizing open programs like 28 Days could contribute to idiographic approaches emerging in intervention science, including via augmenting practitioner training. Future studies could investigate practitioners, trainees, and more experienced Stoics as well as develop novel assessment means for evaluating death awareness.