Souviens-toi. Processus de deuil, processus de création

Abstract

ObjectivesThe authors set out to cast light on certain psychic mechanisms that help to give meaning to death, in particular via objects of great symbolic value, as links between the dead and the survivors. MethodsIn this clinical article using a heuristic methodology, we combine the analysis of a clinical situation of antenatal death, a paradigm of loss with a pathological risk, and that of the artistic creation of Michel Nadjar, linked to the genocide of the Jews. ResultsThe psychic processing of the loss of a loved one is accompanied by considerable psychopathological risk. While funeral rites, whether religious or lay, and the support of the family and the community often provide mourners with a framework that favours the achievement of the period of mourning, so as to continue living with the loss (rather than living with the deceased person), there are certain traumatic situations that make access to a non-pathological mourning process impossible. DiscussionThe authors reappraise the exclusiveness of Freud's mourning and melancholia model, and consider Winnicott's theoretical model of transitional phenomena to cast light on the psychic processes at work. ConclusionsThe creativity operating in the two situations maintains a certain distinction: sublimation for the artist, resurgence of transitional phenomena for the bereaved individual.