The Struggle Against Mourning

The main questions raised in this book are: How does the analyst help the patient to be in touch with pain and mourning? Is the relinquishment of defenses always desirable? And what is the analyst's role in the mourning process-should the analyst struggle to help patients relinquish defenses against pain and mourning, which they may experience as vital to their precarious psychic survival? Or should he or she accompany patients on their way to self-discovery, which may or may not result in the patients letting go of their defenses when faced with the pain and mourning inherent in trauma? the utilization of various defenses and the resulting unresolved mourning reflect the magnitude of the anxiety and pain that is found on the road to mourning. The ability to mourn and the capacity to bear some helplessness while still finding life meaningful are the objectives of the analytic work in this book.

About the Author

Ilany Kogan serves as training analyst of the Israel Psychoanalytic Society and chief supervisor of The Center of Psychotherapy for the Child and Adolescent in Bucharest, Romania. She is a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Fritz Bauer Institute for Holocaust Studies in Frankfurt, Germany. Additionally, she is a teacher and supervisor of members and candidates of the MYnchner Arbeitsgemeinschaft fYr Psychoanalyse in Munich, as well as of the staff of Eppendorf University Hospital's Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry in Hamburg.