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Mourning and the symbolic process
Author(s) -
Colman Warren
Publication year - 2010
Publication title -
journal of analytical psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.285
H-Index - 23
eISSN - 1468-5922
pISSN - 0021-8774
DOI - 10.1111/j.1468-5922.2010.01840.x
Subject(s) - symbol (formal) , context (archaeology) , the symbolic , meaning (existential) , object (grammar) , rest (music) , symbolic communication , process (computing) , psychology , communication , epistemology , psychoanalysis , cognitive science , computer science , linguistics , philosophy , history , artificial intelligence , psychotherapist , medicine , programming language , archaeology , cardiology
: This paper describes the analysis of a patient whose difficulty symbolizing absence had prevented her from being able to mourn the loss of her father in her adolescence. Through a series of symbolic enactments and synchronistic events, she was eventually able to carry out a mourning ritual that enabled her to lay her father to rest. Some implications for symbolization are discussed, developing Segal's view of symbol formation as reparation: symbols are embedded in a context of communication and can only develop in the context of a relationship; they represent relationships as well as objects; and they are emergent in the sense that they exist within a complex web of interactive, multiple meaning and cannot be reduced back to any one object that they represent.