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But why it is that this detachment of libido from its objects should be such a painful process is a mystery to us and we have not hitherto been able to frame any hypothesis to account for it. (Freud, 1917e).
I have a hunch that the author of this wonderful book, the London-based literature Professor-turned-Psychoanalyst, Rael Meyerowitz, might not argue with me if I asserted that the quotation about mourning from Freud (above) was the diving board he used to launch himself into the pool of psychoanalytic writing which concerns itself with how we manage loss, or more pertinently, for those of us who spend our days listening to unhappy people, how some spectacularly fail to manage it.
Another way of putting his theme is this: by what metapsychological means do we mourn and work through our losses, and, indeed, how do we glean or gain something internally valuable from that assimilatory process? And when this goes awry, what forms of psychic indigestion do we commonly find amongst our suffering patients in the consulting room?
Meyerowitz describes this book as a ‘textual tussle’ with the psychoanalytic thinkers who have offered us the best opportunities, in his opinion, to metabolise mourning. Their works are ‘tussled’ with, in the sense of being poked and prodded, described and disordered, in seven fascinating chapters, featuring in order of appearance: Freud, Ferenczi, Abraham, Klein, Loewald, Abraham and Torok and André Green. Hans Loewald is the only American influence, while some helpful French, Lacan-influenced ideas are brought to the party by André Green and his influencers, Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok.
In addition to psychoanalysts, there are some other important people invited to this feast. They are Meyerowitz’s chosen writers, William Wordsworth, Sylvia Plath, Wallace Stevens and most importantly, William Faulkner. It is for this reason that before you settle down to read his book, you must first whet your appetite with Faulkner’s hors d’oeuvre, A Rose for