The aim of this article of to analyze ritual in evidence-informed treatments for prolonged and traumatic grief. A scoping review is conducted in order to give an overview of existing literature on ritual and symbolic interventions in grief therapies for prolonged grief and the type of evidence supporting these interventions. The 22 studies reported in this review reveal a variety of ritual elements ranging from symbolic expression and interaction, writing assignments, dialogue with the deceased or an imaginary person, to farewell ceremonies at the end of the treatment. The interventions are studied within different populations (e.g., bereaved spouses, perinatal loss, grief after violent death, and genocide). Almost all studies show significant effects of the grief treatment, trauma and related symptoms. However, the effects are mostly measured for the entire treatment and not separately for the ritual intervention. In the discussion we focus on the role of ritual and culture in prolonged grief treatment.

Rituals are argued to be transformative in the literature. However, a psychological understanding of transformative ritual has been lacking. Moreover, in contemporary society, meaning-making processes are more complex and uncertain, and the practice of ritualising leads to more individualised and dynamic rituals. This article explores the question how to understand ritual transformation from a psychological perspective. In this theoretical review, insights from ritual studies are combined with psychological theories to build a theoretical framework on ritual transformation. Ritual is found to be transformative in terms of (1) aesthetic distance, (2) structured performance and (3) social collaboration. Ritual is considered in this article to be a culturally scripted event that cultivates emotions and thoughts through symbolic action in a social setting. The article ends with suggestions on how to study this framework in future empirical research.

Birth is the beginning of a new life and therefore a unique life event. In this paper, I want to study birth as a fundamental human transition in relation to existential and spiritual questions. Birth takes place within a social and cultural context. A new member of society is entering the community, which also leads to feelings of ambiguity and uncertainty. Rituals are traditionally ways of giving structure to important life events, but in contemporary Western, secular contexts, traditional birth rituals have been decreasing. In this article, I will theoretically explore the meaning of birth from the perspectives of philosophy, religious and ritual studies. New ritual fields will serve as concrete examples. What kind of meanings and notions of spirituality can be discovered in emerging rituals, such as mother’s blessings or humanist naming ceremonies? Ritualizing pregnancy and birth in contemporary, secular society shows that the coming of a new life is related to embodied, social and cultural negotiations of meaning making. More attention is needed in the study of ritualizing pregnancy and birth as they reveal pluralistic spiritualities within secular contexts, as well as deeper cultural issues surrounding these strategies of meaning making.

The focus in grief theories has been increasingly shifting toward questions of meaning. In this study, we draw on the meaning-reconstruction model of grief for studying the unique case of hard drug users who have experienced a drug-related death. The social context of hard drug use, as well as the death and grief circumstances, is problematic and stigmatized. Grief narratives of 10 respondents were analyzed according to the principles of grounded theory. We identified four main themes: (1) the inhibition of emotion by drugs leading to fragmented grief reactions, (2) social exclusion and notions of disenfranchized grief, (3) the acceptance of death, and (4) meaningfulness in a “biography of losses.” Connecting these results with the literature on meaning, we find that meaning-making is a multidimensional and layered process, where some layers result in meanings made while others do not. Finally, this study emphasizes the importance of social and emotional aspects of grieving, as well as the ambiguity of the notion of successful meaning-making in relation to grief.

Death is accompanied by rituals in every culture. It seems universal that we symbolically approach this life transition. This study focuses on experiences of bereaved who could not physically attend a funeral during COVID-19. Ten Dutch bereaved were interviewed. Disembodiment in terms of (1) not participating in ritual time and place, (2) experiencing live-stream funerals as lonely, and (3) feeling a disruption of one’s grief, were revealed as main themes by thematic analysis. Without physical participation the respondents felt (partially) disconnected from the ritual and isolated from the community. The physical absence impacted ritual transformation and meaning making after a loss.