Lesbian homoerotic transference in dialectic with developmental mourning: On the way to symbolism from the protosymbolic.

This clinical study illustrates the developmental nature of homoerotic transference, when the psychoanalyst is attuned to the evolving dynamics of the mourning process, in this case with a lesbian analysand. The analysand's psychic fantasies of the female analyst as a muse and a demon lover figure are seen to transform into discrete mother and father transferences, as split off feminine and aggressive parts of the self are reintegrated along with heterosexual desires and oedipal desires. Protosymbolic enactments in terms of romantic gift giving and other seductive overtures transform into symbolic expressions of love, concern, regret, and tenderness. A lesbian marriage is preserved, and the loss of intimacy with men is mourned so that desires for intimacy with men can be sublimated. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Connecting with the Viewer: Affectivity and Cathexis in Textile Artwork

This article explores how, following bereavement, textile artwork may be able to make a connection with the viewer and allow a progression of their work of mourning. It takes an interdisciplinary approach, drawing from the literature of psychoanalytical theory, affectivity, and textile thinking to understand the importance of cloth as artwork in the grieving process. The article draws on the practice-based textile research of the author which, together with responses to the artworks made, discusses the way viewers can make an emotional investment in textile artwork and considers the concept of exhibitionary affect to increase the emotional connection of the viewer to the work.     

Death and Memory: Clothing Bequests in English Wills 1650–1830

Specific clothing bequests form a distinct and often intimate feature in a range of English wills during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Carefully and symbolically allocated to new owners, garments were thus imbued with commemoration as well as financial worth. This paper suggests that gender differentials in this practice have been exaggerated as individual men could be as committed to the process as their female counterparts. Crucially, men and women without children or partners were most disposed to draw up detailed wills reallocating a range of possessions, especially clothing. In this creation of stewardship for chosen garments, individual personality and familial situation were more decisive than any general social or economic considerations.     

Wearing Memories: Clothing and the Global Lives of Mourning in Swaziland

Abstract

This article situates a cultural phenomenon of women’s memory work through clothing in Swaziland. It explores clothing as both action and object of everyday, personalized practice that constitutes psychosocial well-being and material proximities between the living and the dead, namely, in how clothing of the deceased is privately possessed and ritually manipulated by the bereaved. While human and spiritual self-other relations are produced through clothing and its material efficacy, current global ideologies of immaterial mortuary ritual associated with Pentecostalism have emerged as contraries to this local, intersubjective grief work. This article describes how such contrarian ideologies paper over existing global aspects of people’s entangled relations with the dead – in three biographies of women and their objects – thus showing that memory work is not limited to people, goods, or ideas that flow between nations and expanding notions of the global and gendered practices of personhood.     

Ending child psychotherapy: Continuing the cycle of life.

Focuses on the termination of psychoanalytic treatment with young children, taking into account the relationship to the parents and its impact on the conduct of treatment, especially at the sensitive ending phase. The author reflects on D. W. Winnicott's (1977) case, "The Piggle," from this perspective. The verbatim notes and comments offer a classic, detailed example of the complex factors impinging upon the conclusion of treating a young child and the wisdom of an outstanding therapist. A 2nd case of a 7-yr-old girl who came to treatment because of a reaction of delayed mourning is also reviewed. The case illustrates the issues involved in the early traumatic loss of a parent, how this loss is reflected within the transference relationship, and the subsequent unfolding of treatment. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Mourning the loss of a child who has not died.

This article presents material from the treatment of a woman who experienced her living son as dead. This fantasy is interpreted both as a response to and defense against the trauma of loss. Shattered expectations and insecure attachment immure her in a relationship in which hope leads repeatedly to affective dysregulation and crushing disappointment. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Grief—The mourning after.

Reviews the book, Grief—The mourning after by Catherine M. Sanders (see record 1989-97503-000). This book is a respectable addition to the grief and bereavement literature. Much of its contents are derived from an important two-year longitudinal study of 115 bereaved persons who incurred the death of a close family member. The author's appreciation of standardized and well-normed instruments (e.g., Grief Experience Inventory) and appropriate research methodology gives credence to the abundance of anecdotal material. Rather than simply being repetitive of earlier contributors such as Raphael, Parkes, Rando and others, the book, for the most part, reads as a fresh contribution. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Two sets of private theories in analysands and their analysts: Utopian versus attainable cures.

In a study of private theories of pathogenesis and cure, patients in psychoanalysis and their analysts were periodically interviewed. Two cases representing prematurely concluded psychoanalyses are investigated in detail. Double sets of private theories of cure were held by both parties. The wished-for and feared cure involved a profound transformation of the personality by ways of deep regression. An attainable and more limited cure included new ways of managing old problems in terms of coping and cognition, in particular new ways of thinking and reflecting upon interpersonal relationships and inner experiences. Both parties' mourning of the preferred but abandoned utopian theories of cure seems to be an important, even if not frequently observed, ingredient in the psychoanalytic process. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The changing nature of hope: Development, psychotherapy, and life-threatening illness.

During the course of our work we are sometimes invited to accompany patients on journeys that affect us very deeply. It may be because they invite us to help them develop, or because they persevere in the face of extreme suffering, or because they share extreme joys and accomplishments, or because they share profound disappointment, or because they show us the power of the human spirit and the changing nature of hope. This paper describes a psychotherapy case that touched me for all these reasons. It outlines the poignant ups and downs in the journey of a young woman facing life-threatening illness. It describes the interruption and resumption of her development during emerging adulthood. It relies upon theory and research in human development, family systems, and pediatric/health psychology, and the scholarship concerning grief. The paper discusses countertransference and ethical issues as they arose during psychotherapy. I conclude with reflections on the most significant lessons I learned that have impacted my work and life going forward. Many of the issues discussed pertain not only to working with the special population facing life-threatening illness, but to working with anyone facing uncertainty, disappointment, helplessness, or loss. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Grave Emotions: Textiles and Clothing from Nineteenth-Century London Cemeteries

Abstract

What is the last thing someone ever wears, who decides, and what emotions do those garments embody? Excavations by Museum of London Archaeology (MOLA) of two 1840s Non-Conformist and Baptist cemetery sites answer some of these questions for poorer mid-nineteenth century Londoners. The decayed textiles emerging from these graves are a new and emotionally rich source for exploring the distance of the recent past. The unexplained, chance-found scraps of clothing and shrouds read in their own context reveal unique information, breaking archival silence about burial rituals and death-related consumption practices in lower social levels than the middle classes. The choice of interred textiles and garments—such as a satin baby’s bonnet, pinned silk ribbons and a false waistcoat—their qualities and construction all bespeak emotions around pride, dignity, religious feeling, tenderness, and socially codified grief. Clothing fragments become a substitute fleshliness as the bodily tissue they cover wears away, the last traces of the invested, materialized emotions surrounding death. The article also moves between the technical and the interpretive to consider the emotions and affects these intimate, poignant and sometimes gruesome objects evoke in the researcher during analysis. How, or should, these feelings be considered as part of research after stripping my own emotional responses for the supposed objectivity required of an archaeological report?