The five stages of grief have been doing the rounds since they were first introduced by psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross in 1969. While not everyone will be able to rhyme them off one by one in the correct order, I imagine a sizable chunk of the population can name two or three without much difficultly. Certainly the friends I asked confidently told me that the first was denial and the last was acceptance. The middle three took a little more effort to nail down. For those who are still in suspense, the complete list goes like this: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance.
But a more interesting question to ponder is how these obscure responses to grief have become so widely recognized, seemingly embedded into the collective consciousness. I’d like to think this is due to people having a natural curiosity towards psychology, but I might be giving humanity far too much credit. I also don’t believe there are many dog-eared copies of On Death and Dying, the book where Kübler-Ross first mentions the five stages, lying on the modern-day bookshelves of the world. The only other explanation is that we have been fed this information by the all-powerful, all-knowing teacher we call the television set.
Sure enough, after a little digging I discovered that these five stages have had an interesting a varied career in the entertainment industry. According to the website www.ekrfoundation.org the Kübler-Ross model has appeared in over 50 TV shows, including Breaking Bad, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Frazier. They have also been referenced in big hit movies like The Bucket List and Deadpool. Given this widespread coverage there is a real possibility that anyone who has watched TV has been exposed to the five stages in some form or other.
The reason for this widespread exposure might be difficult to pinpoint but one possible explanation could lie in the structure of the five stages of grief themselves. A compelling story or character arc is defined by the journey from conflict to resolution. As it happens the path from denial to acceptance closely follows a similar type of journey. But the question has to be posed: can we really trust television to give a balanced and accurate representation of these psychology concepts, or any concepts for that matter? Sadly, I think we already know the answer to this question.
Since its inception, television has given us wildly distorted views on what is possible in the real world. One only needs to consider the idea of quicksand and instantaneous DNA results to realise screenwriters have a habit of exaggerating the truth. The same goes for the way the Kübler-Ross model is portrayed on the screen. Screenwriters have employed a generous amount of poetic licence.
For starters, Kübler-Ross never defined a specific order in which people progressed through the five stages. In some cases, acceptance was experienced first; in other cases, acceptance was last. It’s also worth noting that Kübler-Ross wasn’t aiming to create a universal model for loss; she was merely observing how patients reacted to a terminal illness diagnosis. TV shows, however, would have you believe that the five stages of grief are experienced for the most mundane reasons like losing a wallet or going through a casual breakup. This simply isn’t accurate.
It should also be mentioned that a growing number of psychologists and psychiatrists are calling for the five stages to be scrapped and disregarded altogether. While Kübler-Ross's work brought much-needed attention to the area of grief and bereavement, there has been a demand for the findings to be backed up with empirical data. Unfortunately, her model was mostly based on anecdotal evidence and lacks rigorous scientific support.
So the next time a friend of yours claims they're experiencing the denial stage after losing a job packing shelves in Aldi, I want you to fold your arms, look them dead in the eye, and tell them they're talking nonsense.