In this posthumous volume Jill Anne Kowalik analyzes pathological grief in 17th and
18th-century Germany. Early chapters outline the methodological prerequisites and the main
theoretical underpinnings for her multidisciplinary study of mentality and give an overview of
the theories and practices of consolation in the Western tradition. She traces the origins of
pathological grief to the trauma of the Thirty Years War and analyzes mourning practices as
evidenced by funeral sermons for their punitive theological content. Rather than helping these
practices actually intensified the trauma of loss. The second part of the volume addresses the
work of German writers such as Moritz Nietzsche Freud and Goethe for their psychologically
acute depiction of the effects of pathological mourning.
