Mourning and the symbolic process.
This paper describes the analysis of a patient whose difficulty symbolizing absence had prevented her from being able to mourn the loss of her father in her adolescence. Through a series of symbolic enactments and synchronistic events, she was eventually able to carry out a mourning ritual that enabled her to lay her father to rest. Some implications for symbolization are discussed, developing Segal's view of symbol formation as reparation: symbols are embedded in a context of communication and can only develop in the context of a relationship; they represent relationships as well as objects; and they are emergent in the sense that they exist within a complex web of interactive, multiple meaning and cannot be reduced back to any one object that they represent.
Colman
Warren
W
D000184:Acting Out; D000293:Adolescent; D005260:Female; D006117:Grief; D006801:Humans; D009769:Object Attachment; D011573:Psychoanalytic Interpretation; D011575:Psychoanalytic Therapy; D013561:Symbolism; D055815:Young Adult