Resentment, memory and grief

Abstract

In this article, the author examines the relationship between resentment, time-perception and the mourning process. The rancunous subject (who experiences rancor and remorse) is described as a pitiless mnemonist. He cannot forgive others nor forgive himself. Overtaken by his vindictive recollections, he is unable to forget and he remains overwhelmed by the memory of a past which he cannot hold at bay and from which he cannot disentangle himself. Following the author, there are two types of memory: the one of rancor and the one of pain. The memory of rancor feeds on the hope of a forthcoming time for revenge, while the memory of pain prolonges itself through the time of resignation. It accepts the past, not to be considered as ballast, but as experience, without requiring to delete the pain concerning past events nor the corresponding awareness. It operates as a force
which structures non-forgetfulness and it organizes –via the life pulsion– an alarm signal which operates as a protecting factor, preventing the repetition of bad experiences and giving way to new ones. Through repetition instead, the memory of rancor reinstalls –via the death pulsion– the repetitive and unquenchable compulsion of a revengeful power.
The author underlines the crucial relevance of resentment –to be distinguished from hate– in the process of normal or pathological mourning. An intense ambivalence between love and hatred may disturb the mourning process, but when hate is replaced
by rancor, what follows is the paralysis of the mourning process. Finally, a clinical case illustrates the distinction between mourning about origins and mourning caused by origins in an adopted child.