DEATH OF A SPOUSE AS A PSYCHOSOCIAL CRISIS

THE CONTEXT OF ERIKSON'S LIFE CYCLE THEORY

This research examines the death of a spouse viewed as a psychosocial crisis for the surviving member of the union. Erikson's (1982, pp. 55-72) life cycle model provides the conceptual basis for this examination.

Behavioral system balance is a manifestation of successful adjustments and adaptations, even though observed behavior may not appear to be consistent with accepted cultural or biologic norms for healthy behavior. Living systems can and do operate at varying levels of effectiveness and efficiency, but, to be able to operate at all, some minimum level of balance, both internally and externally, must be maintained. A behavioral system possess sufficient flexibility to react effectively to usual variations in the forces acting upon it, and it possess sufficient stress tolerance to permit effective adjustment to many extreme variations in these forces. There occur instances, however, when the stress level reaches a point when balance in the behavioral system temporarily or permanently is lost. Such a point for many, perhaps most, persons is the death of a spouse (Gilewski, Farberow, Gallagher, and Thompson, 1991, pp. 67-75). Research indicates that grief associated with the loss of a spouse persists for a minimum of 30 months subsequent to the death (Thompson, Gallagher-Thompson, Futterman, Gilewski, a

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rdless of perceptual accuracy" (Epstein, 1986, p. 69). Cognitive phenomena are grouped into three categories. The first category, referred to as automatic thoughts, is comprised of an individual's stream of consciousness thought and visual images, which occur as responses to life events. Such automatic thoughts related to events may "be biased by systematic cognitive distortions" (Epstein, 1986, p. 68). The second category is comprised of an individual's expectancies "about the probabilities of . . . responses" to one's own behaviors (Epstein, 1986, p. 68). Such expectancies influence one's behaviors, and such expectancies "are susceptible to systematic" cognitive distortion (Epstein, 1986, p. 68). The third category of cognitive phenomena includes one's "unrealistic and irrational beliefs about the nature of intimate relationships" (Epstein, 1986, p. 68). Systematic distortion related to one's automatic thoughts occurs through a variety of thought behaviors. The most frequent of these thought behaviors are over generalization--an assumption that behavior of one's is invariant, arbitrary inference --jumping to conclusions, selective abstraction--where one ignores a part of the available information, and all-or-nothing thin
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Kaplan Worth, Crisis Suffering, Gilewski Farberow, Holmes Rahe, Crisis Behavioral, Scale SRRS, Turner Helms, Caserta Lund, Lewis Lewis, Erik Erikson, crisis intervention, aguilera 1990, death spouse, epstein 1986, life cycle, human development, aguilera 1990 25, life event, 1991 pp, 1990 25, event changes, life event changes, 1982 pp 55-72, goal crisis intervention, epstein 1986 68,
Approximate Word count = 2775
Approximate Pages = 11 (250 words per page)

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