‘I thought they should know... that daddy is not completely gone’: A qualitative case study investigation of ‘sense of presence’ experiences in bereavement and family meaning making Edith Steffen and Adrian Coyle Department of Psychology, University of Surrey © Edith Steffen and Adrian Coyle

Sensing the presence of the deceased Sensory Quasi-sensory ‘feeling of presence’ Sense of veridicality Positive affective concomitants Incidence: 50 per cent of the bereaved population

Sense of presence experiences in the Western bereavement literature Grief work perspective – ‘wishful psychosis’, ‘denial’ Attachment theory – ‘searching behaviour’, ‘secure- base’ function Medical model – ‘hallucinations’, ‘illusions’

Recent theoretical perspectives Continuing bonds (Klass, Silverman and Nickman, 1996) Meaning making/meaning reconstruction (Neimeyer, 2001, 2006) Post-traumatic growth (Calhoun & Tedeschi, 2006)

Rationale for the family study Socio-cultural dimension of meaning making Significance of family meaning making in bereavement (Nadeau, 2008) Lack of social acceptance, reluctance to disclose (Steffen and Coyle, 2011) Impact of cultural context on family meaning making (Doran and Downing-Hansen, 2006)

Research questions What role(s), if any, might sense-of-presence experiences play in a bereaved family? How do family members experience and make (shared) sense of this phenomenon? What might be the personal and social implications of disclosing this experience? How is this experience perceived to impact, if at all, on the family as a whole?

Method Family case study (1 mother, 3 children – 12, 14, 16) ‘Ethnographic’ framework Primary data: group and individual interviews Secondary data: notes from participant observation opportunities collected over six months Analysis: interpretative pluralism (Coyle, 2010; Frost, 2009, 2011; Kincheloe et al., 2011)

Analytic procedure Primary data analysis 1.Thematic analysis of interview data from a phenomenological perspective 2.Micro-level discursive analysis of interview data Secondary data analysis 1.Repeated readings of field notes and noting key themes 2.Contextualisation of primary findings by drawing on ethnographic observations/interpretations

A. Making sense of sense of presence 1. Sense of presence experiences as veridical events ‘He said clearly my name, and it was, it’s his voice.’ (Mother) 2. Sense of presence as requiring a scientific explanation ‘I think that a lot of things like this do have a scientific explanation behind them. I don’t think that it’s a- a supernatural kind of message or something. I think whilst we can’t explain it, um I think there is probably some sort of explanation behind it.’ (Anna)

B. Individual meanings of sense of presence experiences (1) 3. Sense of presence as beneficial ‘I see this as a sign of comfort. “I’m with you still and always will be”’ (Mother) Sense of presence as comforting Sense of presence as confirming the continuing bond Sense of presence as strengthening beliefs

B. Individual meanings of sense of presence experiences (2) 4. Sense of presence as disturbing ‘I think it’s slightly scary because to me it doesn’t seem right, so it’s something unnatural that shouldn’t happen.’ (Anna) ‘[I]f he was here, he wouldn’t really be in heaven and that would be like breaking the rules of religion’ (Neil) Sense of presence as dissonant Sense of presence as uncomfortable Need for certainty

C. Perceived impact of sense of presence on the family 5. Sense of presence as conveying the father’s continued participation in family life 6. Sense of presence as concerning the perceiver 7. Lack of impact of sense of presence on the family as a whole ‘I’m sure that they’ve impacted the person who’s had these sort of experiences but I think as a family it hasn’t really, or at least it hasn’t affected me because I don’t really believe it and I’m not sure my brothers do either.’ (Anna)

Summary of findings (1) Phenomenological o supernatural versus scientifically explainable o beneficial versus disturbing o impact versus no impact Discursive o claiming objectivity o dismissing experiences o minimisation

Summary of findings (2) Ethnographic o division between the mother and the children o generational differences o cultural differences o challenges to the mother’s parental authority

Key points Macro-social tendencies played out at local level Case-specific findings Meaningful insights from different epistemological perspectives (pluralist paradigm) Complexity is highlighted Going beyond intra-psychic focus

Thank you Dr. Edith Steffen CPsychol HPC Registered Counselling Psychologist Surrey and Borders NHS Foundation Trust The Open University New School of Psychotherapy and Counselling