Me: the Rest of Us.

An Experiential Review of Grief

Abstract

The quintessential mourning process is the mourning of the person loved. There is a central consideration of the mourning for the death of the partner, insolubly bound to love, the reason for its existence. The mourning process is unique, intimate —which excludes the need for the other(s) in order to deal with its painful transition—, personal and non-transferrable. But, at the same time, it is multiple because the death of the loved one displays the staging of reminiscences of successive periods of time lived with him, every one of which renew its consequent feelings of loss and mourning. The paper reviews different issues such as the work of mourning, the substituting object, the pathological mourning, the role of identifications and the breakdown of the narcissistic structure. It is very difficult, if not impossible, to establish a unique, all-embracing, inclusive theory of the mourning process: it is not univocal, it is not experienced in the same way by all survivors. Its end, if there is one, is exclusive and uncertain. Accepting that the loved one has died, learning to live with the pain caused by his death, safeguarding his existence in us, keeping him invested with our love, are milestones or perhaps the final destination reached by the path opened by the process of mourning, if we have enough strength to go through it.