the-five-stages

A five-panel SMBC comic titled "The Five Stages of Learning About the Kubler-Ross Model," using the grief model's own stages as labels for one man's reaction to it. DENIAL: he says "What? No. Nobody would seriously propose that grief comes in distinct stages." ANGER: leaning in angrily, "It's just something they made up, and they even say in the original book that it's arbitrary and incomplete!" BARGAINING: thoughtfully, "Okay, but if we say it's literature, and not science, then it's an interesting perspective." DEPRESSION: slumped and gloomy, "People are treating this model like it's a biological fact..." ACCEPTANCE: he walks out a door thinking, "Ech, it's not even in the top 100 worst psych theories of the sixties." The joke is that his learning process itself unfolds through the five Kubler-Ross stages. Votey: captioned "How I imagine psych in the 1960s:" a sketchy face declares, "If we can out-reductionist the physics people, we win."