Mourning and Metabolization

Close Readings in the Psychoanalytic Literature of Loss

Rael Meyerowitz

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781032210780
• eBook ISBN: 9781000776331
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Mental Health in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

By bringing together perspectives from psychoanalysis and literary studies and considering the reciprocal relation between ideas about mourning and our internal worlds, this book provides a guide to thinking theoretically about loss and how we deal with it.

Rael Meyerowitz conceptualizes the work of psychic internalization required by loss in terms of bodily digestion and metabolization. In this way, successful mourning can be likened to the proper processing of physical sustenance, while failed mourning is akin to indigestion, as expressed in various forms of melancholia, mania, depression, and anxiety. Borrowing from the methodology of literary criticism, the book conducts a detailed treatment of these themes by drawing on a series of psychoanalytic works, including those of Freud, Ferenczi, Karl Abraham, Klein, Loewald, Torok, Nicolas Abraham, and Green, while paying close critical attention to a selection of literary works such as those by William Faulkner, Wallace Stevens, and Sylvia Plath.

Aimed at clinicians as well as readers with a more academic interest in psychoanalytic theory and language, the close-reading format offered by this book will also enable students in psychoanalytic and psychotherapy courses to engage deeply with some central texts and key concepts in psychoanalysis.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Endorsements
• Half Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Series Editors’ Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: mourning and the internal world in psychoanalysis and literature
• 1 Sigmund Freud: early explorations—mapping the territory of the mind
• 2 Sigmund Freud: later models—identification, internal structure, and the ubiquity of loss
• 3 Sándor Ferenczi: inventing introjection; Karl Abraham: phenomenologist of depression
• 4 Melanie Klein: positioning the object and rebuilding the internal world
• 5 Hans Loewald: turning ghosts into ancestors—internalization and emancipation
• 6 Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok: rescuing introjection from the crypts of incorporation
• 7 André Green: fading and framing—the metaphorical mother lost and restored
• Conclusion: meaning, mourning, and mortality in Freud and Auden
• References
• Index