Loss, Mourning, and Healing

Abstract

Human beings constantly face the pain of loss through their lives. According to Freud’s concept of ‘repetition compulsion’, this is also because people constantly repeat what that they have not been able to mourn. Healing from the experience of loss should hence be discussed by tackling the question of mourning, which become a stable structure in life through the experiences of loss and hurt. Loss leads to a state of remorse by subduing humans into the sorrow of depression. Accepting the loss is hence an uneasy task. This paper will examine the problems of loss and depression in Humanities therapy through the thought of Donald Winnicott. According to Winnicott, what is important in the process of maturation is a gradual construction of trust and faith, as illustrated by the way a child plays with his toy in the absence of his mother, with the belief that she will not run away. What matters in the overcoming of the child’s depression from the loss is the partial acceptance of this latter with the discovery of an object replacing the lost one.