Within the depth-psychology corpus, grief counseling emerges as a rigorously delimited practice distinguished from the more specialized domain of grief therapy. J. William Worden, whose handbook stands as the field’s foundational reference, establishes the cardinal distinction: grief counseling addresses uncomplicated, normal grief, facilitating the mourner’s navigation of the four tasks of mourning within a reasonable time frame, while grief therapy is reserved for those presenting with pathological complications requiring specialized clinical technique. The corpus resists the notion that a wholly new profession of grief counselors is required, insisting instead that existing practitioners — clergy, social workers, nurses, physicians — develop grief-competent skills as a core professional responsibility. Worden’s task-based model provides the theoretical scaffolding for intervention, with mourning conceived not as a passive series of stages but as active psychological work. Bowlby’s attachment theory underlies much of the etiological reasoning, linking the quality of pre-loss bonding to post-loss outcome and the efficacy of counseling. A persistent tension runs through the corpus between the claim that most bereaved persons adapt without formal intervention and the empirical finding that high initial distress predicts poor bereavement outcome, thus identifying a meaningful at-risk population for whom counseling demonstrably improves adaptation. The role of the counselor’s own grief history, the management of countertransference, and the dangers of burnout are treated as non-trivial clinical concerns throughout.