Remembering and Working Through the Trauma of Paternal Loss and Maternal Postpartum Depression

Abstract

This article examines the death of a parent as a traumatic event and shows working through process in the analytic work with a very young boy. His experience of paternal loss, owing to a prolonged illness makes him more vulnerable and at a higher risk for many traumatic sequala such as depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress symptoms. His father’s death limited his mother’s capacity for maintaining a holding environment for her son who was at a very immature developmental phase of his life. Furthermore, maternal postpartum Depression added further trauma to the child’s developing mind. The child must rely on his grandparents’ ego strength and emotional resources. The mourning process can become complicated, and a future sense of well consolidated self-identity and self-containment will be potentially at risk if the child does not receive psychoanalytic treatment. The death of a parent is one of the most traumatic events that can occur in childhood. An estimated 3.5% of children—an approximate l2.5 million in the United States—have experienced the death of one of their parents. The death of a parent is a highly traumatic event at all stages of development of children lives, especially when the child is at a pre-oedipal age, and the remaining parent is grieving the loss of the partner.