In preparing for this review, I recalled once hearing the statement that “when the student is ready, the teacher will appear.” With that thought, I would start out by saying that this book would probably not be the first book I would recommend, but definitely one to read later in the process of dealing with grief – a helpful teacher for someone who is ready for it after the anger and tears have subsided sufficiently for them to want to dig deeper to find the whole story of grief. Anyone who has experienced a significant loss should get something meaningful out of this book because it offers interesting ways of understanding the experience of mourning and the value of allowing it to run its course to full completion.

The authors suggest that a significant purpose of grief is to focus our attention on understanding and integrating into our lives the values or characteristics of the person we lost – there was something important in the relationship that needs to be acknowledged and held onto. According to the authors, we will continue to be in mourning until we succeed in defining and acknowledging our own personal need for (identification with) the traits that we so admired in them. In fact, they suggest that in the process of mourning we create a “psychic double” of the lost one; and we can begin to imitate some of their movements and behavior, thus keeping a close association with them. “We create psychic doubles the way an artist paints a model, filtering reality through our own vision, needs, fantasies, limitations and experiences … psychic doubles represent the psychological truth of the relationship as we experienced it.” From this perspective, the authors emphasized that understanding “the concept of psychic doubles is essential to understanding the work of mourning. … When [a person] leaves our world … the double remains hot … The work of mourning involves taking the heat out of the loss and cooling down the psychic double.”

Through the process of mourning we are supposed to be letting go of an unconscious preoccupation with the lost person, while we do the integrating work. But the loss/separation makes our emotional connection heat up and become prominent at an unconscious level of our mind. For “perennial mourners” in fact there is an inability to separate from the lost one, so the psychic pressure becomes intrusive and becomes an influential presence in the mourner’s life. The reference is made to this as a “spiritual wound” which, like a physical wound, will be affected by differences in the conditions which created the wound. The complexity of issues affecting grief and mourning are then explored in a comprehensive way.

Formation of the psychic double is an attempt to hold onto the external source of the missing element in our life – thinking that it’s really missing. Over time, it becomes obvious that the psychic double no longer really acts as the source – we do – so we begin to internalize their gifts and that achieves the growth that the relationship was intended to accomplish, but interrupted by the loss of the other person. When we awaken to this realization, the “unfinished business” of the relationship is finished and the grief can be resolved – the heat (emotional energy of anxiety/loss) is no longer needed. You can move on.

As you will find in reading this book, the authors offer a thorough exploration of the factors involved in the process of mourning, drawing out aspects that we would miss when burdened by the emotional weight of mourning our loss. With time, an opening occurs in which to see deeper and the authors help us to explore that deeper perspective.

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 28th, 2007 at 3:52 pm and is filed under Book Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.