Abstract

Mourning is a psychological prerequisite for psychic maturity. Objects of mourning can be persons one has lost, the past, life situations and circumstances. Mourning makes it possible to accept the loss of what has actually already been lost. It is a process of parting with, rejecting and freeing oneself from unrealistic fantasies and illusions about oneself, others and life, in order to accept reality. Mourning is necessary if an individual wants to move on after experiencing loss, and it has adaptive value since it allows the body to compensate for the imbalance that the loss carries along. Regression and destabilization of psychic functioning arise as part of the process of mourning, and if the experience of loss shakes the very foundations of the personality, the previous perception of reality gets disrupted as well. Regression in mourning can sometimes affect all ego functions, and can lead to psychic and psychotic decompensation. The psychodynamic solution to mourning is reached by working through it. There are several psychodynamic explanations of mourning, and most of them refer to or complement Melanie Klein’s contributions to the object relations theory. Her explanation of the functioning of the paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions, their lifelong dynamic and dialectical balance, helps us understand both the process of mourning and working through mourning. This paper presents the case report of a patient who reached out to us in order to get psychotherapy treatment, whereby it was established that she experienced mourning that was never completed or, rather, that she never started the process of mourning due to her inability to reach a depressive position. One of the reasons for the above is the patient’s personality structure and the fact that she predominantly functions in the paranoid-schizoid position, which over time gave rise to further destabilization, eventually leading to psychoticism.