Selected Excerpts
From the Introduction
Our book’s title appears to imply that a concept of enigma somehow unites the psychological experience of grief and the aesthetic experience of the sublime. Indeed, that will be our claim. Our intentions are two. First is to illustrate what natural grief feels like, and for that we invoke the experience of artworks that convey their participation in the sublime. This purpose has an extension, which is to locate the feeling we mean within the larger context of mourning and to describe how doing so may contribute to the relief of the latter’s most distressing features. A second intention is to persuade that our claim is useful for conceptualizing why art is art and how and why the arts therefore inform life, including life as it’s reflected on within a session of psychotherapy. We are so ambitious, in other words, as to want to be useful both to philosophy and to psychology, to a theory of aesthetics and to a theory of grief.
From the Chapter I
Natural grief is sublime sadness. It is always about loss, whether absolute or relative. It draws us to the one bearing it; we want to witness and to help. Eyes are wet, perhaps—maybe tears trickle—but are not heavily lachrymose.
From the Chapter II
I have chosen Odetta’s recording because of the haunting sound in her voice and, too, a mournful quality I find to be exquisitely beautiful, combined with the musical moaning in the choral voices beneath hers. No defense against grief is called out—it goes directly to calm sadness, to the sublime experience of it, a form of surrender and from there, for me, a descent to the core of my being.
From the Chapter V
On occasion, I’ll be asked something to this effect: “What is the point of all this pain? Where does it lead? Does it come to anything good, or is pain the only point in life, really—if we’re honest about it?” And having been asked, I answer, “Well, as in everything else, people differ in the conclusion they reach for these questions. The task of your therapy is to help you to your own conclusion, and the fact that it’s your own is of considerable importance. About mine, I’ll say this much. The point of pain is to face reality.
Available September 2025
Published by Robert Arnold Johnson in affiliation with Fearless Literary
Paperback | 146 pages
Ebook edition available
ISBN: 979-8-218-67826-5