Content analysis of ethnographic materials was used to study means of coping with anger and aggression by bereaved persons. It appears that anger and aggression by bereaved persons is reduced in societies where ritual specialists are used in the period up to and including initial body disposal. In societies where there are institutionalized patterns of anger and aggression, the problem of keeping the anger and aggression channeled seems to be dealt with by the use of customary isolation or marking of the bereaved. Implications of these data for bereavement processes of Americans are discussed.
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