Exploration of the symbolic content of creative family images produced by college students who had experienced death in the family shows that the experience of death in the family can vary from welcomed release to painful paralysis of total family functioning. Seven paradigmatic imaginal patterns are presented and related to larger patterns of individual and family growth. Normative developmental patterns interacted with the crisis, and greater expression of problems was associated with either loss of a person central to the network or with dysfunctional aspects in the family prior to the loss.
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