New Psychoanalytic Models Of Mourning

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

Although Sigmund Freud's theory of the work of grief did not have a reliable empirical foundation, it formed the basis for most of the concepts of grief, both in psychoanalysis and in various paradigms of psychology and psychotherapy. The essence of the work of mourning according to Freud was previously characterized as a philosophy of oblivion, since the essence of mourning, from his point of view, is reduced to the withdrawal of libido from a lost object - decatexis and the further redirection of this energy to new objects. At the same time, already Abraham at the same time discovers in the normal experience of grief, in its "deep layers", the presence of manic-depressive mechanisms, which served as the basis for the theory of grief by Melanie Klein, who considered grief as a kind of hyperlink to an early relationship with a good object, loss which is renewed every time with new losses.

Speaking about modern theories of mourning, there are two main models of understanding this phenomenon - the model of oblivion and the model based on mindfulness, or continuation. George Hegman compares the two models, says that old mourning patterns characterized by the following:

1. emphasis on the restorative function of grief;

2. negativity of affect (negative feelings and experiences);

3. attention to intrapsychic aspects;

4. division into stages of grief, which are supposedly universal;

5. the model of grief as oblivion;

6. division into normal and pathological grief.

New patterns of grief on the contrary, they take into account:

1. emphasis on the transformative function of grief;

2. the difference between affect (negative and positive feelings and experiences);

3. attention to intersubjective aspects;

4. highlighting functions instead of stages;

5. the model of grief as remembrance;

6. subjectivity of the dynamics of grief.

Hegman also talks about s adachach of mourning:

1) Acknowledging and understanding the reality of loss;

2) Transformation of the relationship with the lost object;

3) Transformation of identity.

Hegman's model is intersubjective, this model considers grieving broader than the intrapsychic process, grieving is the loss of relationships in which various kinds of needs could be realized, for example: providing basic needs, manifesting love, empathy and understanding, acceptance and / or sharing of affect. therefore during grief, the grieving person again needs the Other, who will be able to perform 8 functions:

1) providing information to enable the bereaved to accept the loss;

2) working out the shock - help in recognizing the ambivalence of feelings;

3) provision of the holding (care, attentiveness);

4) offering oneself as an object for the liberated stream of libido - as an object for new object relations to replace the lost ones;

5) providing a narcissistic resource that the departed previously gave;

6) facilitation of containment and modeling in the expression of affect;

7) putting the affect into a word;

8) assistance in transforming internal relationships with the lost object.

Keeping more of the classical language of psychoanalysis, Otto Kernberg writes about rethinking the work of grief in his article "Some observations of the process of grief." The main point of this article is that grief in the generally accepted concept does not end after six months (and up to a year or two), as suggested in the earlier literature, but can lead to permanent changes in psychological structures that affect various aspects of people's lives. who are in sorrow. These structural consequences of grief are the formation of a permanent internal connection between the object and the lost object, which affects the functions of the ego and superego. The constant internalized relation of the object develops in parallel with identification with the lost object, and the modification of the Superego includes the internalization of value systems and the existence of the lost object. A new dimension of spiritual orientation, the search for a transcendental value system is one of the consequences of this Superego modification.

The article was compiled on the basis of:

1. Freud Z. Grief and melancholy
2. Hagman G., The role of the other in mourning
3. Hagman G., Death of a selfobject: Towards a self psychology of the mourning process
4. Hagman G., Mourning: A review and reconsideration
5. Kernberg O., Some observations of the mourning process