Duluth, Minnesota (OpEdNews) July 1, 2012: Why do some people experience complicated bereavement (also known as complicated grief and complicated mourning), when most people do not? Thus stated, this question sounds like a research question. The short answer is that nobody knows why this happens to certain people. As a result, based on my own experience, I'd suggest that complicated bereavement emerges in people when unresolved mourning of certain nondeath losses is reactivated in their psyches -- losses and unresolved mourning connected in certain ways with the deceased.
But if most people do not experience complicated bereavement, why should readers be interested enough in it to want to read about it? That's a good question. Complicated bereavement could probably happen to anybody. Probably nobody could rule out this possibility from his or her life. Besides, it is likely that many readers have known somebody who did experience complicated bereavement, or will know somebody in the future who experiences it.
But let's consider a different question: What happens to people whose bereavement is unresolved (i.e., uncompleted in a healthy way)? People who experience complicated bereavement are at risk of having it remain unresolved, or perhaps turn into clinical depression requiring hospitalization. However, not all unresolved bereavement necessarily turns into complicated bereavement, because unresolved bereavement can at times remain as unresolved bereavement. Puzzling, eh?
In his book BUSH ON THE COUCH: INSIDE THE MIND OF THE PRESIDENT (rev. ed. 2007), Justin A. Frank, M.D., a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, examines the life of President George W. Bush. His little sister Robin died. She died in New York, when young George was back in Texas. Her body was buried in a family plot in Connecticut. There was no funeral. Young George learned of his sister's illness (leukemia) only after her death. For reasons that Dr. Frank details, young George did not mourn his sister's death in a healthy way. As a result, his bereavement remains unresolved to this day. Perhaps it is impossible for us to say how his unresolved bereavement influenced his life and his decisions as president. However, it appears that unresolved bereavement does impact the person. Dr. Frank's discussion of Robin is the most poignant theme in his book (see pages 2-3, 14-16, 68, 84, 105, 187, 224-225, 246).
Freud's famous essay "Mourning and Melancholia" clearly describes how mourning somebody's death can at times turn into melancholia. But the term "melancholia" is no longer widely used. It has been replaced by the terms complicated bereavement, complicated grief, and complicated mourning. As Freud's term melancholia suggests, though, complicated bereavement resembles depression. But because complicated bereavement starts as bereavement over somebody's death, it seems preferable to refer to it as complicated bereavement, not depression. Indeed, it may be the case that depression occurs because unresolved mourning is somehow reactivated in the psyche.
Bereavement is an involuntary response to somebody's death, just as mourning nondeath losses in our lives is an involuntary response to our nondeath losses. Both kinds of mourning are great boons in life when they proceed in a healthy way. Blessed are those who can mourn losses in a healthy way. When we cannot mourn our losses in a healthy way, our mourning remains unresolved. It appears that people with a backlog of unresolved mourning may be at risk for experiencing flashback symptoms such as the symptoms of PTSD.
Losses in our lives are based on attachments that we have formed. No attachment, no loss. We form attachments with the loved ones in our lives. In addition to forming attachments with certain significant persons, we form a number of other kinds of attachments in our lives. So we form attachments with persons, places, and things, including things that are not necessarily material objects (e.g., our jobs, our prestige, our dreams). The involuntary response of mourning our losses involves letting go of our old attachments. To mourn our losses in a healthy way, we need to feel the feelings involved in the mourning process, and we need to work through the feelings involved. However, when the mourning process is not completed in a healthy way, then our mourning remain unresolved. Our unresolved mourning can resurface at a later time in our lives, so that it may then be completed in a healthy way and thus resolved.
Susan Anderson has written about both bereavement and mourning nondeath losses. She has written about bereavement in the essay "Suffering the Death of a Loved One" (2006), which is available at the website www.abandonment.net. She has written about mourning nondeath losses in her book THE JOURNEY FROM ABANDONMENT TO HEALING (2000).
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