Joyful Stoic Death Writing: An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis of Newcomers Contemplating Death in an Online Group

Abstract

Death awareness, which is an integral part of Stoic philosophy, has received little attention in either therapeutic training or empirical psychological research. This study seeks to address this gap by investigating participants’ experiences of completing a Stoic death writing intervention. To understand newcomers’ experiences being in-daily-death-contemplation, in-depth, semi-structured interviews conducted in December 2021 with six adult participants in a UK program, 28 Days Joyful Death Writing with the Stoics, were analyzed using interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA). Analysis generated two primary themes: Contemplative Context and Death Contemplation Significance. Contemplative Context included the experiences of a temporary, unstable community (called communitas), otherness (called alterity), and the wider world. Death Contemplation Significance included death and other personal losses, and gains such as personal purpose, positive emotions/experiences, and beneficial behaviors/activities. Findings indicate daily death writing in communitas appears to have potential to provoke personal death awareness and undermine death taboos, accompanied by self-reported changes in emotional clarity, psychological flexibility, worry, and rumination. Furthermore, operationalizing open programs like 28 Days could contribute to idiographic approaches emerging in intervention science, including via augmenting practitioner training. Future studies could investigate practitioners, trainees, and more experienced Stoics as well as develop novel assessment means for evaluating death awareness.