Blackwell Reference Online

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Mourning is a psychological process, both conscious and unconscious, triggered off by the loss of an object of attachment (see attachment behaviour ). It is accompanied by a sense of affliction and is a kind of psychosomatic ‘healing of the wound’ connected to the process of detachment. It corresponds to the emotional working through which ocurs when one loses someone one loves (the breaking of the bond established by attachment behaviour). Depressive disorders most particularly necessitate the combination of apparently contradictory logics and polyaxial strategies (Widlöcher, 1983). Mania and melancholia correspond to disorders in the regulation of the thymus, far from the limits of the equilibrium state. Freud (1915) suggested that a relatively clear distinction should be drawn between mourning and melancholia. In mourning, reality testing shows that the object no longer exists; it is a conscious loss. However, whereas in mourning, it is the world which seems impoverished, in melancholia, it is the ego that is impoverished. There is a loss of the sense of self-esteem which is not usually found in normal mourning. In melancholia, too, the objects is lost as an unconscious love object. The wound is open, and the melancholic begins to treat him or herself as the lost object which is to be suppressed. On a metapsychologiacl plane, melancholia thus marks the unconscious loss of the ... log in or subscribe to read full text