On Grief, Guilt, Shame, and Nostalgia. Discussion of “Who Has the Right to Mourn?: Relational Deference and the Ranking of Grief”

Peskin, in his last paper (this issue), proposes a wide relational framework for understanding the roots and contexts of painful, unresolved mourning. In Freud, the work of the mourner takes place solely in the person’s inner world and reflects the mix of feelings the person had toward the loved one. Peskin describes a specific family dynamic which influences how a person is able to grieve, beyond the relationship with the lost loved one. Within the family, a “ranking of grief” emerges, which delineates who has priority in grieving, and who has to “defer” grief in accord with these implicit rules. Unearthing these dynamics, calls for an active form of therapeutic witnessing. In this discussion, a double meaning of deferring grief is explored. In Peskin’s examples, grief is held back when deferring to the demands of a dominant family member. As a result, the expression of the mourner’s grief is also deferred, postponed, to be possibly expressed at a later time. Another variety of deferred grief is described, using as an example the narrator in Proust’s In Search of Lost Time. Peskin asserts the right to mourn as a fundamental human right. This discussion ends with speculation about the societal conditions which may frustrate or encourage mourning. The assertion of the right to mourn ties this paper to Peskin’s earlier contributions on the effects of dehumanization following horrific trauma.