Mediator Deathwork

ABSTRACT

The most discussed and analyzed form of deathwork is the dyadic therapist ↔ client relationship, but this far from exhausts the various types of professional work involving the dead. Mediator deathwork is where the professional gleans or constructs information about the dead, edits and polishes it, and publicly presents the edited version in a public rite; this entails a triadic flow of information: the dead → the mediator → public rite. Examples include pathologists, coroners, American funeral directors, funeral celebrants, obituary writers, spiritualist mediums, and museum curators. Other types include barrier deathwork (in which the professional insulates the living from the dead—the dead | the living— as in British funeral directing), and intercessory deathwork in which priests send prayers the other way, from the living to, or on behalf of, the dead: mourner → priest → the dead. The article focuses on mediator deathwork because, though it is the most widespread form of deathwork, it is the least discussed and analyzed.

Acknowledgments

I thank David Aldridge, Jan McLaren, John Pearce, and the Death Studies editor and reviewers for their very helpful comments on drafts of this article.

Notes

¹Mediums claim to receive messages from the dead and often work within the tradition of spiritualism, a movement dating from the mid-19th century. It is to be distinguished from spirituality, a term that has become fashionable from the late 20th century and refers to a highly individualized religiosity.

England and North America use different terms for the various death-related newspaper columns. I use English terminology. So, obituary refers to a piece of extended prose, usually written by a journalist or other professional writer, about the life of a recently deceased person. The much shorter announcement of the death and time and place of the funeral is a death notice. Subsequent short notices inserted by family or friends, typically at anniversaries, are to be found in a newspaper's in memoriam column.

³Bereavement counselor tends to be English usage, grief therapist American.

⁴In an increasingly bureaucratized health care system, however, the doctor–patient relationship is no longer a pure dyad but includes managers, statisticians, the computer, and the ever-present threat of litigious lawyers. The general practitioner is now a mediator, not between the living and the dead, but between the patient and these other actors (Helman, 2002).