The work of mourning (without interrupting it)

The duel It is an interesting topic that we approach very frequently in psychoanalytic consultations, and for this reason I am interested in reporting on some issues in this regard.

Let's see how we work to help people who suffer a lot when experiencing this phenomenon linked to loss.

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What is mourning and how is it expressed?

The recognized Sigmund Freud exposes in mourning and melancholy (1915) that mourning is, as a general rule, the reaction of the psyche before the loss of a loved person or of an abstraction that takes its place, like the homeland, freedom, an ideal.

It is a complex job that requires time and that is not done in any way. It is a process that can happen at all stages of life. It is a normal affect, expected, it is not considered a pathological state and it is considered inopportune to interrupt it.

In the doctor's office we often see people who consult because they are distressed, it is common to hear about the breakdown of an affective relationship, the death of a loved one, a migration, the change of work that implies the assumption of a new role, the birth of a child or a little brother, which requires new movements in the configuration familiar.

These are all examples of occasions that they call for the elaboration of what is no longer there, and require a time that, for psychoanalysis, is logical and not chronological, it depends on the symbolic resources available to the person in question.

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How long does grief last and how does it affect us?

Mourning is painstaking work done piece by piece, and trying to stop or interrupt it is in vain. We also often observe that the loved ones of the person who is going through that duel try to speed up the processThey do not tolerate seeing that person sad or distressed; there is an imperative to recover quickly, to think about something else, to do tasks to be better, as if overcoming a loss were a matter purely and exclusively of will. However, for the one who is grieving, the world has become poor and empty.

The person in question has lost interest in the outside world, and will be able to do something different and new in his life, once this process is finished.

We also observe that the patient does not deign to lose just like that; Freud realizes that a libidinal position is not abandoned willingly, not even when its substitute is already looming. It can and is expected that the person will tell us over and over again about what he has lost, and what important is not to underestimate this form of suffering, but to give it room so that he can elaborate the loss.

• Related article: "Grief: coping with the loss of a loved one"

How do you work with grief during therapy?

There is no single way to go through a duel or an exact chronological development to be able to do it, each case is performed individually.

When in the psychological consultation we are presented with a person going through this process, we invite him to historicize, we give him space to the word to be able to analyze the causes of his suffering, with the aim of achieving, a posteriori, the relief of the suffering.

Freud teaches us that "in mourning the subject has experienced a real loss of the loved object and in the process, which lasts for a necessary time. For the elaboration of this loss, the subject loses interest in the outside world, subtracting the libido from any object that does not refer to the object. lost.

Thus, the lost object is invested with all the libidinal capacity that the subject can use for this purpose, preventing any new link.” An example of this is when a person dies, and session by session, the patient brings, through historicization, memories of what that person was like, what he did when he was with her, what he liked, what songs he sang, what words he said, what that person meant in her life.

How do we approach a patient who is going through a duel in a psychoanalytic consultation? What we do is offer him a place where he can meet to talk about his symptoms, about what is making him suffer more, we analyze whether that ailment, it has to do with what you have recently lost, or perhaps with previous losses that you are now giving new meaning to, although we do not aim to eliminate suffering, we do have as our goal to alleviate it, and respecting the time of the patient in question, we try to create a new way of relating to what is vital possible.