Abstract
Superhero Grief: The Transformative Power of Loss, a collection of brief articles edited by Jill A. Harrington and Robert A. Neimeyer, integrates popular culture into the thanatology field in a novel, spirited, and relatable way. “The superhero has arisen as one of the most enduring, popular, and influential narratives of modern storytelling” (p. xviii), and the hero’s journey provides a framework for those doing grief work to move through loss. The Batman Begins line, “Why do we fall? So we can learn to pick ourselves up” (Roven et al., 2005, 00:10:41), serves as the publication’s heart, examining how loss and subsequent metamorphosis in the superhero narrative can be applied to working with bereaved individuals.
The intersection of psychology and superhero stories has been previously examined. Rubin’s, 2007 and 2019 publications consider the use of superhero narratives in clinical work with children, adolescents, adults and families, with applications in sandtray, attachment, trauma, social skill building, emotional expression, anxiety, and substance use. Betzalel and Shechtman (2017) identified that children in foster care benefitted from superhero bibliotherapy for parental loss. Other areas of exploration have included social psychology (Allison & Goethals, 2016; Carney et al., 2014; Miczo, 2016), individual psychology (Hoffman, 2020), positive psychology (Rosenberg & Canzoneri, 2008), evolutionary psychology and sexual selection (Ingalls, 2012), gender (Hall, 2020; Rosenberg, 2013; Rosenberg & Canzoneri, 2008), race (Hall, 2020), body image (Young et al., 2013), and resilience building (Fradkin et al., 2016). This is the first academic study of how the superhero archetype relates to the thanatology field.
Part I, “Historical Background: Grief, Loss and the Creation of Superheroes” explains how the rise of the Third Reich and the subsequent impact of the Holocaust birthed the superhero. “ . . . It was the artistic response to an attempted genocide of a people - the creation of meta-humans with superpowers in a time when Jewish people were oppressed and subjected to a sense of powerlessness” (Winokuer & Fowler, p. 3). Following World War II, the world was particularly primed for stories about adapting to a new assumptive world after trauma. Part II, “Understanding Superhero Grief Through Postmodern Grief Theory,” looks at how grief theory extends to superhero stories, with a particularly humorous chapter on working with Batman in therapy, imagining how he would benefit from creating grief rituals and addressing underlying feelings of guilt and loss (Doka & Martin, Chapter 6, “Understanding Grieving Styles: Batman on the Couch”).
Part III, “Types of Grief: Brief Case Studies of Superheroes,” offers insight into how the superhero universe portrays different kinds of loss. “Imaginary characters like The Flash enable audiences to identify with themselves and to cope with their own real-life difficulties from within the safe and remote realm of the fantasy narrative” (Feigelman et al., p. 73). The chapter titles of Part III alone illustrate the shear creativity and power of this book to connect with many loss types: “Deadpool and Anticipatory Grief,” “Superman and Secondary Losses,” “Magneto and Ambiguous Loss,” “Batman and Masked Grief,” “Wonder Woman and Delayed Grief,” “The Flash and Disenfranchised Grief,” “Iron Man and Chronic Grief,” and “Avengers Infinity War and Avengers Endgame: Cumulative and Collective Grief.” Part V, “Grief and Family Systems: Superheroes and Relationship Types” also offers specific clinical lessons and looks at how homicide, child loss, parenting bereaved children, spousal bereavement, and sibling loss are represented in these stories.
Part IV, “Grief and Culture: Cultural Influence in the Superhero Universes,” contains only two chapters, a microcosm of the comic book industry’s lack of diversity. Border and Allen’s chapter, “Black Panther: Exploring Grief, Ancestral Connection, and the Duty to Carry On” (Chapter 17), discusses how Black Panther, “ . . . masterfully addresses the centrality of understanding privilege, marginalization, and culture in grief and coping patterns for black male populations” (p. 93) in the context of historical loss of land and safety. A later part, Part VIII, “Superheroes, Grief Leadership, Social Justice, and Advocacy” probes how individuals can step forward, advocate, and practice grief leadership in response to traumatic losses in their communities, like the ones depicted in Black Panther.
Recommendations for using superheroes in grief counseling exist throughout the book, but are most concentrated in Part VI, “Challenges in Bereavement: Facing Adversity” and Part IX, “Superhero-Based Strategies of Care: Interventions and Creative Approaches.” Part VI delves into suicide risk assessment, complicated grief, and using Restorative Retelling for healing from traumatic loss. Harrington, Ruocco and Jordan’s article “Deadpool 2 and Suicide After Bereavement: Lessons Learned from the Merc with a Mouth” (Chapter 23) was the most comprehensive, best organized chapter of the book, with clear, laid-out clinical applications. The authors recommend using the Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors Suicide Postvention Model (stabilization, grief integration, and posttraumatic growth) to decrease Deadpool’s suicide risk following partner loss, modeling for clinicians how to support highly distressed clients.
In Chapter 36, “Childhood Grief and the Healing Power of Superheroes,” Gaffney discusses how bibliotherapy and film therapy can be valuable tools for the child therapist; superhero stories offer an opportunity to provide psychoeducation and for the child to draw parallels to their own experience. Kentor and Kaplow (Chapter 37, “Using Superheroes in Grief Counseling with Children and Adolescents”) argue, “that superheroes are particularly well-suited to clinical intervention with bereaved children” (p. 215), as approximately half of the 20 most popular superheroes have experienced traumatic parent loss. Additional interventions discussed in Part IX include the expressive arts and mindfulness.
Part VII, “Posttraumatic Growth, Superheroes, and Personal Stories Addressing the Five Factors,” features one personal story of loss to help illustrate each of the five posttraumatic growth domains (Tedeschi and Calhoun, 2004): relating to others, new possibilities, personal strength, spiritual change, and appreciation for life. As Moore writes in Chapter 26, “Posttraumatic Growth, Superheroes, and the Bereaved,” The irony of Posttraumatic Growth is that it occurs within the context of distress and ongoing symptoms of trauma and loss. Superheroes are powerful characters not just because of their strength, skills, smarts, and the service they provide, but because of their continued wrestling with a roller coaster of painful, often conflicting, emotions and their own frailty in order to do it. (p. 158)
Storm, Superman, Wonder Woman, Dr. Strange, and the Dark Knight are used respectively to illustrate the grief journeys of each author and how suffering can co-exist with growth.
The book concludes with a helpful section on “Suggested Resources,” broken down by topic, but those with only casual superhero knowledge would have benefited from an additional appendix listing what aspects of grief could be illustrated by each superhero story or similarly, which superheroes fall under each loss category (e.g., homicide). This way a clinician could easily identify which superhero narrative to use in session and/or to recommend specific bibliotherapy or cinema therapy interventions.
The short chapters in this book provide an opportunity to feature many voices, appealing to a wide audience with varying clinical approaches. The book as a whole feels disjointed due to different writing styles and the repetition required to set up chapters (e.g., numerous recounts of Batman's background), both of which can be tiresome if reading multiple parts in one sitting. Regardless, this publication is a feat of creativity that offers an exciting, new lens through which to work with grief and loss and is an important contribution to the field.