Application of Elias’s figurational theory to a cross-cultural study of bereavement counselling between Northern Ireland and Uganda.

In this cross cultural analysis of bereavement counselling, Elias’s figurational framework presented a strong explanatory potential for understanding death and bereavement practices in different contexts. An application of figurational theory facilitated an analysis of the integration of the social dimension of loss with intra-psychic processes; differences in sociogenetic and psychogenetic relationships across cultures were explored and the implications of these different relationships identified.
This qualitative study utilised semi-structured interviews with purposively recruited Ugandan (n=18) and Northern Ireland counsellors (n=20), to explore their perceptions of services offered. The findings addressed four interweaving themes: the counselling context, characteristics of the counsellor, characteristics of the client and the counselling practice. A set of broad dimensions were identified from the secondary literature which appeared to differentiate attitudes to, and experiences of, death and bereavement in contemporary Western and African societies. The empirical realities highlighted how closely NI and Uganda fitted with these dominant paradigms.
Elias’s figurational theory with its emphasis on both the relational nature of social life and its processual character, provided an explanation for these ideal types and for the similarities and differences identified in the findings. This was contrasted with Freud’s ahistorical, psychic unity model which offered limited explanation for differences. Figurational theory suggests that grieving is shaped by the social regulation of bereaved individuals, which varies according to the structural complexity of the setting. This accounts for variations in the collective or individual response to death, the duration and intensity of mourning with an emotional or economic focus, and for differences in the concept of self as autonomous or directive.
One example of this was seen in the different ways counsellors responded to the personal impact of their work. A different level of psychologising was anticipated according to the structural complexity of each setting. Within NI, and relative to Uganda an increasing need for self-regulation and increasing foresight to negotiate a life which contained multiple interdependencies was evident. Informants in NI offered a reflective account of the impact of bereaved individuals on themselves, they acknowledged a ‘causal’ relationship between their pain and that of their clients, and sought to be objective in how they dealt with the emotional cost of this work. In contrast, the Ugandan informants appeared more likely to respond to their clients and to their own emotional pain in an emotive and a subjective way with little evidence of reflection.
Thus the context of counselling was understood to represent the social factors, the sociogenesis, which impacted the psyche, the psychogenesis of individuals. Counsellors and clients were seen as inseparable from the broader contextual structures which shaped the development of the psyche and ultimately the experience of grief and the practice of bereavement counselling.