The duel It is an interesting topic that we address very frequently in psychoanalytic consultations, and for this reason I am interested in explaining some issues in this regard.
Let’s see how we work to help people who suffer greatly when experiencing this phenomenon linked to loss.
The renowned Sigmund Freud exposes in Grief and melancholy (1915) that mourning is, as a general rule, the reaction of the psyche in the face of the loss of a loved person or of an abstraction that takes its place like the country, freedom, an ideal.
It is a complex job that requires time and is not done in any way. It is a process that can happen at all stages of life. It is a normal, expected affect, it is not considered a pathological state and it is considered inappropriate to interrupt it.
In the office we often see people who consult because they are distressed, it is common to hear about the breakup of an emotional relationship, the death of a loved one, a migration, the change of job that involves assuming a new role, the birth of a son or a little brother, who requires new movements in the family configuration.
These are all examples of occasions that they call for the elaboration of that which is no longer there and require a time that, for psychoanalysis, is logical and not chronological, it depends on the symbolic resources that the person in question has.
How long does grief last and how does it affect us?
Grief is painstaking work done piece by piece, and it is futile to try to stop or interrupt it. We also tend to observe that The loved ones of the person who is going through this grief try to speed up the process, they cannot tolerate seeing that person sad or distressed; There is an imperative to recover quickly, to think about something else, to do tasks to get better, as if overcoming a loss were a purely and exclusively question of will. However, for those who are 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 their 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 willingly abandoned, not even when its substitute already appears. It can and is expected that the person will tell us over and over again about what he or she has lost, and the important thing is not to underestimate this form of suffering, but to give it space to process the loss.
How do you work with grief during therapy?
There is no single way to go through grief nor an exact chronological development to do it each case is carried out in a unique way.
When in the psychological consultation we are presented with a person going through this process, we invite them to historicize, we give them room to speak in order to analyze the causes of their suffering, with the aim of achieving, a posteriori, the relief of 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 time necessary to process this loss, the subject loses interest in the outside world, withdrawing the libido from everything.” object that does not refer to the lost object.
Thus, the lost object is invested with all the libidinal capacity that the subject can use for this purpose, preventing any new connection.” 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 his life.
How do we approach a patient who is experiencing grief in a psychoanalytic consultation? What we do is offer you a place where you can meet to talk about your symptoms, about what is making you suffer more, we analyze if what ails you has to do with what you have recently lost, or perhaps with previous losses. which is now being redefined, although our objective is not to eliminate suffering, we do aim to alleviate it, and respecting the time of the patient in question, we try to make a new way of relating to what is vital possible.
