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As the pandemic has deepened and the pervasive mood of uncertainty in the country has taken hold, we turned to a reconsideration of the problem of mourning and its vicissitudes, to what allows mourning to take place and what can impede it, both psychically and in society. This panel was held virtually in September 2021, in the wake of the twentieth anniversary of 9/11. It was meant in part to be a revisiting of Freud's 1917 foundational text, “Mourning and Melancholia.” We aimed to situate that text within the historical and social time we now inhabit as citizens and psychoanalysts. Mourning is crucial to psychic development and yet within psychoanalytic training the study of mourning often gets short shrift. Mourning is an intricate psychic process: If too threatened by the pain of loss and sorrow or the guilt to which it gives rise, it can give way to melancholia on the one hand or manic solutions on the other. If navigated and tolerated, it can lead to reparation and psychic growth.
This panel was conceived in the wake of the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol. In the coverage that followed, a phrase we all likely know was back in circulation. Insidious and rageful expressions of whitesupremacist rhetoric were met with the claim, “This is not who we are.” But “This is not who we are” is a stance that refuses mourning. It is a
Lynne Zeavin, Training and Supervising Analyst, New York Psychoanalytic Society and Institute; board member, the Psychosocial Foundation. Mary Margaret McClure, faculty, San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis and Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California. Forrest Hamer, faculty, San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis. M. Fakhry Davids, Training and Supervising Analyst, British Psychoanalytical Society; Honorary Associate Professor, Psychoanalysis Unit, University College London; Visiting Professor of Psychoanalysis, Department of Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies, Essex University; Visiting Lecturer, Tavistock Clinic.
Invited
Lynne Zeavin, Training and Supervising Analyst, New York Psychoanalytic Society and Institute; board member, the Psychosocial Foundation. Mary Margaret McClure, faculty, San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis and Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California. Forrest Hamer, faculty, San Francisco Center for Psychoanalysis. M. Fakhry Davids, Training and Supervising Analyst, British Psychoanalytical Society; Honorary Associate Professor, Psychoanalysis Unit, University College London; Visiting Professor of Psychoanalysis, Department of Psychosocial and Psychoanalytic Studies, Essex University; Visiting Lecturer, Tavistock Clinic.
Invited