Posttraumatic Growth, Superheroes, and the Bereaved

Many superhero fans consider Batman the greatest example of Posttraumatic Growth (PTG) in the comic book literature. Superheroes are powerful characters not just because of their strength, skills, smarts, and the service they provide, but because of their continued wrestling with a roller coaster of painful, often conflicting, emotions and their own frailty in order to do it. Posttraumatic Growth has been investigated in broad range of traumatically bereaved survivors, including suicide-bereaved parents and in families of military service members who have experienced a variety of sudden and violent deaths. While the stories are everywhere, even in superhero tales and comic books, and have been around for thousands of years, the creation and scientific investigation of the concept, called PTG, has only been around since the mid-1990s. The creators symbolized the physical conversion from civilian Bruce Wayne to superhero Batman, as he accesses the Batcave by a secret passageway behind a grandfather clock.