Solace

Consolation, consolement, and solace are terms referring to psychological comfort given to someone who has suffered severe, upsetting loss, such as the death of a loved one. It is typically provided by expressing shared regret for that loss and highlighting the hope for positive events in the future. Consolation is an important topic arising in history, the arts, philosophy, and psychology.

In the field of medicine, consolation has been broadly described as follows:

Before and after fundamental medicine offers diagnoses, drugs, and surgery to those who suffer, it should offer consolation. Consolation is a gift. Consolation comforts when loss occurs or is inevitable. This comfort may be one person's render loss more bearable by inviting some shift in belief about the point of living a life that includes suffering. Thus consolation implies a period of transition: a preparation for a time when the present suffering will have turned. Consolation promises that turning.

In some contexts, particularly in religious terminology, consolation is described as the opposite or counterpart to the experience of "desolation", or complete loss.

The desire to console others is an expression of empathy, and appears to be instinctual in primates. Dutch primatologist Frans de Waal has observed acts of consolation occurring among non-human primates such as chimpanzees. The formal concept of consolation as a social practice has existed since ancient times. For example, as an examination of letters from ancient Rome indicates of that culture:

To console the bereaved was an important responsibility. The person offering consolation and the bereaved person were both expected to behave in certain ways and to say certain things, and the consoler to provide support of both an emotional and practical kind.

Although "[t]he most frequent occasion for consolation was death", ancient consolation literature addressed other causes for consolation, including "exile, poverty, political failure, illness, shipwreck, and old age". Papyrus letters from that era "often employ standard consolations, such as 'death is common to all' and frequently mention the dispatch of food stuffs". It is noted that food may have been offered as a further consolation to the bereaved, or may have had a religious purpose. It is reported that in the Fifth Century BCE, the Sophist, Antiphon, set up a booth in a public agora where he offered consolation to the bereaved. Furthermore, "[v]isits of consolation in antiquity extended to popular levels as well", including visits by philosophers intended to hearten villages that were facing invasion.

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