Want to create an interactive transcript for this episode?
Podcast: New Books in Psychology
Episode: Pauline Boss, "The Myth of Closure: Ambiguous Loss in a Time of Pandemic" (W.W. Norton, 2021)
Description: How do we begin to cope with loss that cannot be resolved? The COVID-19 pandemic has left many of us haunted by feelings of anxiety, despair, and even anger. In The Myth of Closure: Ambiguous Loss in a Time of Pandemic and Change (W.W. Norton, 2021), pioneering therapist Dr. Pauline Boss identifies these vague feelings of distress as caused by "ambiguous loss," losses that remain unclear and hard to pin down, and thus have no closure. Collectively the world is grieving as the pandemic continues to change our everyday lives. With a loss of trust in the world as a s...