Mourning

(1989).
Contemporary Psychoanalysis, 25:608-623

Mourning and Failure to Mourn—An Object-Relations View
Beverly Burch, Ph.D.
EARLY DEVELOPMENT IS NOT SIMPLY a succession of gains; it is
also a succession of losses. The child's ability to master these losses is a
fundamental determinant of future development. British psychoanalytic theory
is rooted in the primacy of relationships for early development, and the
process by which the child's ego copes with loss plays a significant part in. In
this body of work we find a foundation for understanding the capacity to
mourn. Klein (1940) predicates the achievement of whole object relationships
on the capacity to mourn and to recover from loss. In Winnicott's (1969)
thinking, the child's gradual transition from illusions of omnipotence to secure
reality orientation is framed by this experience. One's ability to cope with
loss as an adult is dependent on these early processes. In this paper I explore
the British theorists' ideas, especially those of Klein, as an explanation of the
intrapsychic grief process. I also consider how loss may fail to be resolved:
under what circumstances is mourning impossible and what does this failure
look like in adult development?
Freud's work in "Mourning and Melancholia" (1917) gives a brief account
of the usual course of mourning. There is first a period of shock and denial,
then there is the long period of working-through. One never relinquishes one's
attachment to important objects willingly. When confronted initially with loss,
one abandons reality instead of abandoning the object ["a turning away from
reality ensues, the object being clung to through the medium of hallucinatory
wish fulfillment" (p. 154)]. The mourner reacts as if somehow the information
is wrong; the loved one is not really dead or has not really left.
Eventually, Freud argued, one's narcissism rescues the ego. The ego begins
to be weakened by the turn away from reality until a
—————————————
0010-7530/89 $2.00 + .05
Copyright © 1989 W. A. W. Institute
20 W. 74th Street, New York, NY 10023
All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.
Contemporary Psychoanalysis, Vol. 25, No. 4 (1989)
- 608 -
Copyright © 2017, Psychoanalytic Electronic Publishing. All Rights Reserved. This download is only for the personal use of PEPWEB GENERIC.
kind of narcissistic protest occurs, and love for the self finally wins out over
love for the object. In Freud's discussion, "normal" mourning is a simple and
direct two-step process. Denial comes to an end, and the "inner travail" of
mourning begins. Mourning is obsessively absorbing as the reality of the loss
is slowly acknowledged and worked through. The grieving person has little
interest in other people or activities; the inner labor is too preoccupying.
Freud wrote: "Each single one of the memories and hopes which bound the
libido to the object is brought up and hyper-cathected, and the detachment of
the libido from it accomplished" (p. 154).
Freud did not consider loss and mourning to be issues for treatment. Unless
grief developed into pathological depression or "melancholia, " he thought of
it as simply an inevitable part of life, not a neurosis and therefore not
amenable to analysis. Intervention in the normal grieving process, he stated,
was "inadvisable or even harmful" (1917). Nevertheless, Freud was puzzled
by the pain of mourning: "Why this process of carrying out the behest of
reality bit by bit, which is in the nature of a compromise, should be so
extraordinarily painful is not at all easy to explain in terms of mental
economics" (p. 154). (Klein later addressed this question through her own
theory.). Freud had little further to say about normal grief. In clinical practice,
however, we know that loss is often the precipitating event for entering
treatment. Even "normal mourning" is often helped by psychotherapy. We also
find unacknowledged and unmourned losses as underlying dilemmas in work
with many patients.
Freud, Klein, and Kubler-Ross
In the 1970's a more or less behavioral focus on the stages of grief was
ushered in through the work of Kubler-Ross (1969). She was not concerned
with intrapsychic dynamics; her work describes an external process, a series
of stages which many clinicians have also observed. Denial, anger,
bargaining, and depression are defensive strategies which follow the
knowledge of loss or impending loss. These strategies both delay the final
working-through and acceptance of loss as well as enable it ultimately to
occur. The stages of grief do not necessarily follow each other in that order
and are not universally experienced. Although Kubler-Ross' model has been
disputed, for many psychotherapists it is accepted as a somewhat definitive
model of the grief process. Her work did
- 609 -
not probe internal dynamics; nevertheless, its influence on clinicians of
varying theoretical perspectives invites interest in the dynamics of the internal
world that would account for the behavioral picture she describes.
Denial and depression, Kubler-Ross' (1969) first and fourth stages, are
equivalent to Freud's view of normal mourning, in which the mourner first
rejects reality. She describes the typical patient's response as "No, not me, it
cannot be true." Denial functions, she says, as a buffer which "allows the
patient to collect himself, and with time, mobilize other, less radical
defenses" (p. 39). The "numbness or stoicism … will soon be replaced with a
sense of great loss" (p. 85). She distinguishes between reactive depression
which is the more familiar kind and may be based on guilt or shame and
"preparatory depression" which enables the individual finally to let go of the
many attachments of his or her life. "The patient is in the process of losing
everything and everybody he loves. … This second type of depression is
usually a silent one" (p. 87). She conveys a sense of deep inner work, a
largely private experience, much like the self-absorbed working-through
which Freud described as the individual gradually lets go of attachment to the
object.
Freud's two-stage conception of mourning seems now to be overly simple.
We are left to question the intermediate steps towards resolution, the steps
Kubler-Ross identifies as anger and bargaining. Does psychodynamic theory
also propose intermediate stages? I suggest that Klein's theory offered the
original exploration of these defensive maneuvers. The intermediate stages in
Kubler-Ross' model are an external manifestation of the complex internal
dynamics of mourning which Klein conceptualized.
Klein and other object-relations theorists explored mourning in great
detail, showing how convoluted the path to resolution of grief can be. In their
work the distinction between "normal" mourning and prolonged or unresolved
mourning becomes blurred; losses never seem to be so definitively resolved
as they are in Freud's brief description. Nevertheless, Freud's analysis of
"melancholia, " the pathological failure to overcome mourning, provides the
beginnings of object-relations theory and needs to be considered here as well.
Freud noted that low self-esteem differentiated melancholia from simple
mourning. "[I]n this condition one part of the ego sets
- 610 -
itself over against the other, judges it critically, and, as it were, looks upon it
as an object" (p. 157). Under analysis, the self-accusations of the melancholic
turn out to be reproaches against the object with whom the ego has become
identified. The cathexis to the external object is abandoned, but only because
it has been replace by identification: "So by taking flight into the ego love
escapes annihilation" (p. 168).
Loss stimulates the negative aspect of ambivalence which is a part of all
love relationships. The ego may evade this conflict between loving and hating
by identifying with the object, then cathecting the ego-identified-with-object.
The negative feelings are now turned on the self ["the shadow of the object
fell upon the ego, so that the latter could henceforth be criticized by a special
mental faculty like an object, the forsaken object" (p. 159)]. This split within
the ego and the installation of the object through identification anticipates the
world of inner objects conceptualized in object-relations theory. It suggests
that underlying the low self-esteem of melancholia or unresolved depression
is the interlock of bad-self/bad-object, as the schizoid state is later described
by Fairbairn (1944).
Klein picked up the theory of mourning developed by Freud (and later
Abraham) and took it into farther reaches of primitive development. A great
deal of her work deals with the early role of mourning: "In my view there is a
close connection between the testing of reality in normal mourning and early
processes of the mind" (1940p. 344). For her, mourning is an essential
process in growth of the ego and characteristically leads to what she called
the depressive position in early development. The young child's arduous
psychological work in this position is as central to her developmental theory
as the child's task during the Oedipal period is to Freud's work (Klein,
1935)(& 1940). In addition, Klein thought that experiences of loss and
mourning in adult years restimulate this early developmental position,
exposing deficits that still remain from that period.
In Kleinian theory the infant ego is built up through incorporation of
external objects, especially the breast. The child feels these to be "live
people inside his body in the concrete way in which deep unconscious
phantasies are experienced—they are, in his mind, 'inner objects'" (1940p.
345). This early state, which she called the paranoid-schizoid position, is
characterized by splitting,
- 611 -
projection, and introjection. As the primitive ego is not yet capable of
tolerating ambivalence, the internal world is split into good and bad objects.
To some extent, objects are good or bad according to the nature of the infant's
experience with them, but their goodness or badness is finally determined by
whether they carry the projections of the infant's innate aggressive or libidinal
drives. Typically, Klein emphasizes here the influence of internal dynamics
over external experience.
In an effort to rid itself of difficult aggressive impulses, the child's ego
projects them onto its objects (or, more accurately, part-objects). The ego is
then caught in a paranoid state, fearing the objects on which it is dependent.
Libidinal impulses are also projected and an idealized good object is created
as a defense against the threat of the bad one. Powerful and primitive
emotional experiences reign in this position: rage and fear in relation to the
bad objects, envy and ardent love of the idealized good object.
Klein's conception of internal objects is somewhat unclear. An internal
object is not a split-off part of the ego which has become identified with the
external object, as Freud suggested and Fairbairn maintained. She frequently
refers to internal objects as phantasies of incorporation in which aspects of
external objects are brought into the ego almost as if they were building
blocks. As Ogden (1986) has pointed out, phantasies themselves are simply
thoughts. They may be highly charged and affectively imbued, but they are not
dynamic structures. Nevertheless, we can still find much value in Klein's
theory even if parts of it are not clearly conceptualized (Burch, 1988).
As development proceeds, the ego becomes stronger, and reality testing
increases until the good and bad object are perceived to be one and the same.
With this new capacity for uniting part-objects into whole ones comes
ambivalence. The child sees that the mother who attends to its needs is the
same being who also ignores them. Likewise the child grasps that the object
of its aggressive and destructive phantasies is the same object of its loving
ones. Now the child is grieved over the damage to the object as well as afraid
for it. This state of affairs constitutes the depressive position.
At about the same time the child also experiences real loss through
weaning.
- 612 -
The object which is being mourned [in the depressive period] is the
mother's breast and all that has come to stand for in the infant's
mind: namely, love, goodness and security. All these are felt by the
baby to be lost, and lost as a result of his own greedy and
destructive phantasies and impulses (1940p. 345).
Feelings of loss and distress are also stirred by aggressive impulses in the
Oedipal situation and from ambivalent relationships with siblings. There is no
clean transition for the paranoid-schizoid position to the depressive position;
instead the ego retreats and advances, going over and over this psychic
territory. The persecutory fears of the earlier paranoid position become
mingled with the longing for the good object of the depressive position. The
oscillation between the paranoid-schizoid position, in which the object world
is experienced in terms of good/bad dichotomies, and the depressive position,
in which objects are whole, but ambivalently experienced, continues to some
degree throughout a person's life.
Whenever persecutory fears return, defensive aggression again increases.
As the depressive position reemerges, the child attempts to atone for the
aggression with reparations carried out both in fantasy and reality. As I will
discuss later, Klein believed that losses in adult years commonly produce a
regression to this period of development, and paranoid-schizoid states again
predominate over depressive ones. According to Klein: "The mourner is in
fact ill, but because this state of mind is common and seems so natural to us,
we do not call mourning an illness" (1940p. 354). She answers Freud's
(1917) query in this way: it is because the internal world is thrown into this
state of temporary disintegration that mourning is so painful. Each time the
ego retreats, the internal world is again split, but "as the adaptation to the
external world increases, this splitting is carried out on planes which
gradually become increasingly nearer and nearer to reality" (Klein, 1935p.
288). A gradual re-integration of internal objects occurs, as both good and
bad memories of the lost one can be tolerated, and grief can then run its
course.
Klein's theory of these early psychic states elucidates the middle stages
which Kubler-Ross observed. These states offer a parallel way of thinking
about what goes on internally during the period Kubler-Ross labelled "anger"
and "bargaining." Her work also explains why these periods would precede
or alternate with depression. Increased
- 613 -
negativity and aggression in the period of anger reflect a reversion to the
paranoid-schizoid state. Klein says the mourner in this state feels persecuted
and asks, "'Why is this happening to me?" He or she feels rage toward the
world, toward God, or toward the lost object, as if death were an act of
willful abandonment. Kubler-Ross similarly says: "When the first stage of
denial cannot be maintained any longer, it is replaced by feelings of anger,
rage, envy, and resentment. The logical next question becomes: 'Why me?'…
[T]his anger is displaced in all directions and projected onto the environment
at times almost at random" (1969, p.50).
In Klein's conception, anxiety is aroused by these negative projections, and
one's sense of safety is precarious. The negativity which has been expressed
or harbored internally has to be atoned for. As one moves closer to facing the
situation as tragic rather than dangerous or evil, one looks for a way to make
some kind of reparation. Now instead of accusatory thoughts, the mourner
feels, for example, "Perhaps this loss is my fault. If I make up for my bad
thoughts, it will be okay." This is an effort at an unconscious bargain with the
good object (or perhaps with God, as the idealized good object). The
bargaining phase is like a last-chance retreat to illusions of omnipotence. The
ego cannot yet accept its powerlessness vis à vis the loss of a loved and
needed object.
Kubler-Ross's description of the patient's behavior corresponds to this
internal reality. Patients attempt bargains: "God … may be more favorable if I
ask nicely" (p. 82). The bargaining rests upon reward "for good behavior."
She ventures into intrapsychic territory here, sounding not unlike Klein.
"Psychologically, promises may be associated with quiet guilt … or …
deeper, unconscious hostile wishes which precipitated such guilt" (p. 84).
The cycle of irrational fears or wish for punishment followed by further
bargaining and "more unkept promises" will continue until the patient's
excessive guilt is relieved.
These stages prolong the denial in a moderated form, post-poning the
period of depression in which the loss is faced and finally worked through.
But they are nevertheless part of the process, gradually allowing the internal
world to rebuild itself until the depressive position is again possible. These
feelings of anger and omnipotent resistance to grief are perhaps the point
where therapeutic interpretation helps. They are often the feelings that
- 614 -
trouble the individual most and bring her or him to therapy. Once true grief
has set in, there is less need for intervention by the therapist, as both Freud
and Kubler-Ross point out. Normally these feelings do give way to the reality
of loss; depression ensues until a kind of acceptance and resolution is finally
possible. In Freud's words: "when the work of mourning is completed the ego
becomes free and uninhibited again (1917p. 154)." In Kubler-Ross' stage of
acceptance, the patients's emotional pain is gone and the struggle is over.
A major problem with Kubler-Ross' theory, however, is that she does not
take up the problem of unresolved loss or grief in a way which addresses its
real depth. What does it mean when denial, anger or bargaining prevail
indefinitely? What kind of help is needed? Her theory takes no account of
differing levels of developmental achievement. Sometimes we see
pathological depression of the kind Freud struggled to elucidate. At other
times, we see quite a different picture in which even depression is foreclosed.
Unresolved mourning: the manic defense
Klein was just as concerned with the failure to integrate loss as she was
with a successful resolution. The manic defense especially interested her. A
sort of compromise may emerge between the paranoid-schizoid and
depressive positions in the form of the manic defense. Freud (1917) had
briefly described the manic defense as a retreat from depression, but it was
Klein who detailed the underpinnings of this defense. (At one point Klein
referred to this as the manic position, but she did not grant this defense the
status of a third position in her later writings.)
The manic attitude relies on feelings of omnipotence, a basic denial of
dependency. The ego escapes the pain inherent in both the paranoid-schizoid
position and the depressive position "by denying the importance of its good
objects and also of the dangers with which it is menaced from its bad objects
and the id. At the same time, however, it endeavors ceaselessly to master and
control all its objects, and the evidence of this effort is its hyper-activity"
(1935p. 277). One escapes dependency and potential loss by saying, in effect,
"I don't need you, and you can't really hurt me anyway."
The illusion of omnipotence which makes the manic defense effective
derives from omnipotent phantasies which are an essential aspect of the
infant's inner world. For example, in the paranoid-schizoid
- 615 -
state the destruction of the object in phantasy provides the infant with a
mechanism for handling negative experiences and tolerating aggressive
impulses. These phantasies serve their defensive purpose only because the
child can experience himself or herself as omnipotent. The child's feelings of
omnipotence also make magical reparation possible in phantasy after
aggressiveness has run its course.
Winnicott (1969) writes extensively of the nature and function of the
child's illusions of omnipotence. The mother's close attunement to the child
creates a state of fusion between the two, allowing the child to claim the
mother's seemingly-limitless power for itself. As the mother is gradually
perceived to have a life of her own, outside the child's control, the illusion
fades. The child's aggressiveness toward the mother becomes more disturbing
at this point: the aggression might truly destroy her, the now-separate object.
Paradoxically, however, aggressive phantasies themselves effect the
transition to reality orientation. The mother's survival of the child's aggressive
maneuvers confirms her separateness, also confirming external reality.
Winnicott modifies Freud's understanding of the relationship between
aggression, the reality principle, and ego development:
It is generally understood that the reality principle involves the
individual in anger and reactive destruction, but my thesis is that the
destruction plays its part in making the reality, placing the object
outside the self. For this to happen, favorable conditions are
necessary (1969p. 91).
These favorable conditions include parents who tolerate a child's
aggressive impulses without either retaliating or withdrawing. The parents'
ability to do this diminishes the child's illusion of omnipotence—the
aggressiveness turns out not to be as powerful in the real world as the child
hoped or feared. The parents' tolerance also makes it safe for the child to let
go of its omnipotent feelings. The child begins to wish not to injure the
parents in reality with all her or his rage, and destructive impulses are
moderated, allowing them to be integrated with loving feelings. This process
reflects the foundation of a capacity for concern for others (Winnicott,
1958a)(& 1963). Favorable conditions help to secure the good object
internally, as a whole object, leaving the child a relative degree of
independence from the external object (Winnicott, 1958b). The new ability to
tolerate being alone helps to take the sting out of continuing dependency
needs. Loss
- 616 -
of omnipotence is somewhat more acceptable under these conditions.
Before relationships with objects are internally secured, continual reality
testing is necessary; the child's ego survives the phantasied struggles with the
object, and the objects are also not really lost, only lost in phantasy. In Klein's
description of this process, she too acknowledges the influence of the real
relationship between parent and child (an acknowledgement somewhat
uncharacteristic of Klein):
The increase of love and trust, and the diminishing of fears through
happy experiences, help the baby step by step to overcome his
depression and feeling of loss (mourning). … Unpleasant
experiences and the lack of enjoyable ones … especially lack of
happy and close contact with loved people, increase ambivalence,
diminish trust and hope and confirm anxieties about inner
annihilation and external persecution; moreover they slow down
and perhaps permanently check the beneficial processes through
which in the long run inner security is achieved (Klein, 1940p.
347).
A predominance of negative experiences at the parents' hands leaves the
child's developing ego a much more difficult task of resolving the depressive
position. The conflict between loving and aggressive feelings and anxiety
about the permanence of its objects may be overwhelming. Some alternate
solution must be devised. The ego may retreat to the paranoid-schizoid
position, or it may rely on the manic defense.
In situations of abusive or neglectful parenting, the exigencies of childhood
dependency may be too great for the child's ego to tolerate. The gradual
merging of good and bad object images into a whole object which allows for
ambivalent feelings assumes some internal security and trust in the object.
When "bad-enough" parenting prevails, this outcome is foreclosed. "Bad-
enough" parenting may involve acute traumatic situations: sexual, physical,
and/or psychological abuse, or it may be on-going neglect, physical or
psychological in nature. Khan's (1963) concept of "cumulative trauma" is
relevant here:
… cumulative trauma is the result of the breaches in the mother's
role as a protective shield over the whole course of the child's
development, from infancy to adolescence—that is to say, in all
those areas of experience where the child continues to need the
mother as an auxiliary ego to support his immature and unstable ego
functions (Khan, 1963p. 46).
Khan refers only to psychological protection, the "shield" of the
- 617 -
mother-child relationship which is like Winnicott's holding environment
created by maternal care. Parental failure may involve either parent, of
course, and extends to lack of physical protection as well. Khan's notion of
cumulative trauma has been used in a somewhat broader sense by Nachmani
(1987), who notes that in families where sexual abuse occurred (he is writing
specifically of father-daughter incest), "it emerged from a type of family
configuration which in its own long historical pattern would constitute what
Khan has called cumulative trauma" (p. 622). Abuse and neglect are
frequently intermingled, and it is the continuous nature of cumulative trauma
which shapes development perhaps more profoundly than acute trauma.
Where bad experiences with the object have predominated, the schizoid
state is extraordinarily difficult to overcome. The split is protective of the
psyche; it preserves the much weaker good object from the stronger bad one.
The problem is that the bad object was indeed bad, regardless of the child's
own aggressive phantasies. A realistic integration of the two would still be
negatively weighted. Coping with loss under these conditions continues to
require defenses, in some cases a prolonged version of the manic defense.
Here, the ego's solution is to attempt to detach itself from the object without
completely giving it up. Klein writes:
I would suggest that in mania the ego seeks refuge not only from
melancholia but also from a paranoiac condition which it is unable
to master. … [It] is unwilling and unable to renounce its good
internal objects and yet endeavors to escape from the perils of
dependence on them as well as from its bad objects (1935p. 277).
And further:
This disparagement of the object's importance and the contempt
for it … enables the ego to effect that partial detachment which we
observe side by side with its hunger for objects (1935pp. 278–9).
In adult years the process continues. Again, Klein argues that normal
mourning in adults reactivates early anxieties (i.e., paranoid-schizoid and
depressive). When conflicted ambivalent feelings in the depressive position
overwhelm the ego, it calls upon paranoid-schizoid defenses. Objects are
again sharply split into good and bad ones, and aggressive feelings are again
projected onto the bad object, then introjected. Ideas of persecution prevail
once more, and more aggressive feelings are aroused by the sense
- 618 -
of persecution. At the same time the mourner blames herself or himself for the
loss and is beset with guilt. In other words the early work of development is
temporarily undone, and the internal world must be rebuilt. When the
relationship with an object has been overwhelmingly negative, the
internalized objects remain split and therefore unstable. Even in adulthood the
pain of loss may be too much for the shaky internal structure to tolerate. One
can mourn and finally let go only when the person can be reliably internalized
as a whole object.
This conflict between the pain of dependence and the need for objects is
always present to some degree, and manic defenses occur as a normal part of
development. Ogden describes the manic defense as "an in-between
phenomenon, incorporating elements of the psychic organization of both the
paranoid-schizoid and the depressive positions" (1986p. 84). He stresses that
everyone relies on this defense to varying degrees in times of difficulty. When
dependency needs are an unacceptable part of reality, this defense is
mobilized. It returns to the ego the illusion of omnipotence or self-sufficiency.
Intensely negative interpersonal experiences that have precluded trust render
dependency both excruciatingly painful and ultimately unsafe.
This impossible situation may be tolerated only through ongoing reliance
on manic defenses, in which dependency is abruptly denied. For example, a
woman in her late thirties described a series of affairs, each lasting only a
year or so, which comprised the whole of her adult relationships. She
interpreted this history as an indication of her ego-strength: "I'm just not the
dependent kind, and I can't stand for anyone to be dependent on me. It's a
weakness of character." Omnipotent phantasies counteract dependency on the
bad object and cover the bad self's sense of inadequacy. The schizoid aspect
of this psychic state is one in which the rejecting object is forever united to
the rejected self and then walled off [Cf. Fairbairn, 1944—as suggested
earlier, this dynamic structure can be compared to Freud's description of
the object with whom the ego comes to identify and then to criticize.].
The rejected bad self sometimes emerges in non-human images. One
woman in treatment described how she saw herself in her family: "I was like
the dog who had to be provided for." Another spoke of herself in
metaphorical terms as an insect. This negative self-object union may be too
painful to be experienced consciously
- 619 -
or revealed directly, but clinically it can be deduced from the defensive
feelings which cover it. Strong contempt for the object may be expressed.
This contempt diminishes the sense of loss and helps to reinforce the ego's
denial of dependency. The abusive parents are remembered as entirely
negative and positive attributes are dismissed.
In describing the effects of cumulative trauma, Khan (1963) suggests that a
"collusive bond" of identification is formed between the traumatizing parent
and traumatized child. At adolescence the child becomes aware of the
"distorting and disruptive effects" of the bond.
Then the reaction is dramatically rejective of the mother and all the
past cathexes of her. … This, of course, makes the adolescent
process of integration at once tortuous and impossible. At this point
attempts at integration which willfully negate past libidinal
investments, ego-interests, and object ties are instituted. This leads
either to collapse of personality development into inertia and
futility, or a short, magical recovery into omnipotent isolation, or a
passionate craving for new ideals, new objects, and new ego-
interests (p. 57).
His description is much like Klein's description of the manic defense. To
abandon this defense would be to feel humiliation and defeat. Yet the ego
must finally relinquish such defenses if it is to have relatively unconflicted
relationships with its objects. Continued reliance on manic defenses is an on-
going stalemate in something like the bargaining position of Kubler-Ross'
scheme: "If I give up the pleasures of attachment, I'll be spared the pain and
humiliation of rejection and loss." Once the pangs of dependency are felt, the
relationship becomes contaminated. The object is absorbed into the previous
bad object configuration and is now itself bad and undesirable. There is again
a sense of triumph over the object which brings almost palpable relief. A new
uncontaminated object must then be found.
If the manic defense can finally be given up, the underlying depression
emerges and may be worked through. The clinical work involved here is very
difficult as it involves the patient's relinquishing that which he or she holds
most precious, the sense of self-sufficiency, in exchange for awareness of
vulnerability and dependency. It is enormously difficult for the patient to
grasp that such a move is something other than the defeat it seems so clearly to
be, that it is in fact an achievement. The slow accretion of positive
- 620 -
experiences within the therapeutic framework may gradually establish a good
internalized object relationship that finally permits dependency, and
ultimately, mourning. In this situation depression is therapeutic, not
pathological.
Some parameters of recovery
It is a fair criticism to say that psychoanalytic theory has avoided
addressing the consequences of child abuse or neglect in sufficient depth. Its
focus on intrapsychic phenomena has maintained a degree of ignorance about
the impact which real parents with their own pathology have on their children.
Object relations theory brings the actual relationship between parent and
child into the theory, yet it too has tended to be interested in "good-enough"
parenting, or at most, parents who lack sensitive attunement. What has been
neglected is abusive parent-child relationships or "bad-enough" parenting.
When we think of the terrible burden which a child of abuse or rejection
must carry in life, the language of metapsychology seems cumbersome, too
metaphoric, detached and academic. Good and bad objects, internal splits,
projection and introjection, phases of development and stages of grief are
concepts by which we try to make the almost-unbearable process of recovery
somehow take a meaningful form, or if we are therapists, somehow
manageable. It is necessary perhaps to understand these things in ordinary
terms as well. We have all suffered betrayal in one form or another and know
that along with mourning, ultimate recovery can be helped by that which we
most resist: a way of seeing the tragedy with some kind of forgiveness.
In the most favorable circumstances forgiveness is enabled by
participation from the betrayer. Hillman writes: "… the wrong, if not
remembered by both parties—and remembered as a wrong—falls all on the
betrayed. The wider context within which the tragedy occurred would seem to
call for parallel feelings from both parties. If only the betrayed senses a
wrong, while the other passes it over with rationalizations, then the betrayal
is still going on—even increased. … Forgiveness comes harder" (1975p. 79).
This kind of reciprocity is difficult to come by. The parent who can
undertake this accountability is rarely the parent who would have inflicted
such wounds. Yet it is precisely this longed-for parent whom the betrayed is
forever seeking. We often see this
- 621 -
search in patients' apparently self-destructive choices of intimate partners.
The wounded person may not be seeking a replay of the abuse so much as
seeking a partner who will acknowledge wrongdoing. In therapy there is some
relief granted to this search when the therapist admits errors. Yet another way
for degrees of forgiveness to be reached is through the capacity for intuition
and imagination. Some patients have been able to intuit the existence,
however tenuous, of a better part of a now-dead parent, a part which would
have led the parent to say, "I am sorry for what I did to you." For example, a
woman whose father raped her when she was ten came to feel his subsequent
abandonment of her was a way of guaranteeing it would never happen again.
She experienced this as acknowledgement of guilt by him and a wish to
protect her from his violence, a belief which gave her some faith that he cared
for her. Sometimes patients have achieved forgiveness at a distance, e.g., "I
can forgive him as long as I never have to see him again." In clinical
language, this is an effort at transforming the bad object into a more
ambivalent one.
Clinically one sees evidence of this transformation occurring when some
grasp of the subjective experience of the parents who failed so greatly is
reached by the patient. The incest families which Nachmani (1987) describes
are ones in which all three—father, mother, and child—are seeking the
"maternal experience" which has been denied them. Abuse and neglect are a
legacy passed from generation to generation. Patients are often able to
understand that they have suffered as a consequence of some corresponding
treatment which the parent endured as a child. This awareness is the
beginning of seeing the failure as more tragic than willful and of relinquishing
the sharp good-bad distinctions which characterize paranoid-schizoid
thinking.
Mourning is a kind of final act of love. When love has been choked off by
the nature of the loss, however, attachment remains but is denied. In its place
is a negatively balanced equilibrium of connection between self and other that
time or psychotherapy, or perhaps nothing, may change. What is required for
recovery is not retribution and triumph, not just the relief of rage, not even
simply forgiveness, but a rediscovery of the original attachment, genuinely
experienced, however betrayed it was. This means acceptance of one's
perpetual vulnerability to betrayal. And we can feel that there are some
injuries which may be unforgiveable and
- 622 -
some degrees of vulnerability that cannot be risked again. It is important that
we not comfort ourselves too much with believing all wounds can be healed
through mourning.
REFERENCES
Burch, B. 1988 Melanie Klein's work: An adaptation in practice Clinical
Social Work Journal. 16 125-142
Fairbairn, W. R. D. 1944 Endopsychic structure considered in terms of
object-relationships In:Psychoanalytic Studies of the Personality London:
Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986 [→]
Freud, S. 1917 Mourning and melancholia Collected Papers 4 152-170
Trans. by Joan Riviere. London: Hogarth Press, 1953 [→]
Hillman, J. 1975 Loose Ends London: Sign Press.
Khan, M. 1963 The concept of cumulative trauma In: The Privacy of the Self
New York: International Universities Press, 1974 [→]
Klein, M. 1935 A contribution to the psychogenesis of manic-depressive
states In: Love, Guilt and Reparation and Other Works, 1921-1945 New
York: The Free Press, 1975 [→]
Klein, M. 1940 Mourning and its relation to manic-depressive states In: Love,
Guilt and Reparation and Other Works, 1921-1945 New York: The Free
Press, 1975 [→]
Klein, M. 1946 Notes on some schizoid mechanisms In:Envy and Gratitude
and Other Works, 1946-1963 New York: The Free Press, 1975 [→]
Kubler-Ross, E. 1969 On Death and Dying New York: Macmillan.
Nachmani, G. 1987 Fathers who mistake their daughters for their mothers
Contemp. Psychoanal. 24:621-630 [→]
Ogden, T. 1986 The Matrix of the Mind New York: Jason Aronson, Inc.
Winnicott, D. W. 1958a Psychoanalysis and the sense of guilt In:The
Maturational Processes and the Facilitating Environment New York:
International Universities Press, 1986 [→]
Winnicott, D. W. 1958b The capacity to be alone In: The Maturational
Process and the Facilitating Environment New York: International
Universities Press, 1986 [→]
Winnicott, D. W. 1963 The development of the capacity for concern In:The
Maturational Processes and the Facilitating Environment New York:
International Universities Press, 1986 [→]
Winnicott, D. W. 1969 The use of an object and relating through
identifications Playing and Reality New York: Tavistock, 1971 [→]
- 623 -
Article Citation [Who Cited This?]
Burch, B. (1989). Mourning and Failure to Mourn—An Object-Relations
View. Contemp. Psychoanal., 25:608-623

Mourning

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Mourning

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

(1989).

Contemporary Psychoanalysis, 25:608-623

You might also like