Psychoanalytic Approaches to Loss

Restoration of the Object: Mourning and Melancholia in Couples is an important and significant new reference text for clinicians, trainees and all of those involved in assisting couples with the common, yet challenging presentation of prolonged and unremitting grief. Providing an international perspective, the book gives an overview of the nature of prolonged grief through a psychoanalytic lens and includes a focus on couples who are experiencing the seemingly unbearable loss of a child, those dealing with the often unacknowledged experience of unresolved grief about the loss of a parent and those suffering complex grief following the loss of a partner. Other special therapeutic challenges, such as those associated with the issue of adjustment difficulties related to a miscarriage, are also considered. The text outlines an assessment and intervention model based on Object Relations Theory, as well as detailing the history of psychoanalytical theories of loss and its relevance to couples. The book concludes with some ideas about the importance of mourning the lost object, in all psychotherapeutic endeavours.