COLUMNISTS In a column last year, I described the evolution of the credit crunch in terms of the stages of grief identified by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross. The Swiss-born psychiatrist’s work was based on studies of terminal illness. But her account of how people react to the news that they would lose their lives has also been used to describe responses to the loss of a partner or a job. It seems equally relevant to the loss of capital or reputation in business and politics.
The Kübler-Ross thesis describes successive stages of denial, anger, negotiation, depression and acceptance. From banks, we have seen the phases of denial and anger. Denial that things were really serious. Anger that the authorities had not acted promptly enough to bail the industry out.
