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January 30, 1979. A CASE OF BEREAVEMENT. Erna Furman.
Mrs. Furman's presentation marked the occasion of her receipt of the Heinz Hartmann Award of The New York Psychoanalytic Institute for her book, A Child's Parent Dies. She described three years of a boy's development, from the time of his father's death just before the boy's third birthday to the beginning of his latency period. The impact of his father's illness and death was mitigated by his mother, whom Mrs. Furman saw in weekly treatment, and by the efforts of the teaching staff of the therapeutic nursery school and kindergarten he attended from the time he was three-and-a-half years old. The therapeutic work was based on the mother's and teacher's observations, as well as on Mrs. Furman's own weekly visits at the school.
The mother had originally consulted Mrs. Furman with a prophylactic aim after the father's death. The boy, bright and very verbal, an only child of young parents, was already symptomatic. As the father became increasingly incapacitated by a depressive illness, the mother reached a decision to divorce. Upon hearing this, the father had a fit of fury and attacked the mother in front of the boy. The next day the mother found him dead, a suicide. The initial therapeutic work centered on clarifying with the child the concept of death and the events surrounding his father's death, and on helping him differentiate his own life from his father's fate. His withholding of bowel movements and