How does the analyst help the patient to be in touch with pain and mourning? And, what is the analyst's role in the mourning process? Should the analyst struggle to help patients relinquish defenses against pain and mourning, which they may experience as vital to their precarious psychic survival? Or should he or she accompany patients on their way to self-discovery, which may not result in the patients letting go of their defenses? The utilization of various defenses and the resulting unresolved mourning reflect the magnitude of the anxiety and pain found on the road to mourning. The ability to mourn and the capacity to bear some helplessness while still finding life meaningful are the objectives of the analytic work in this book.
About the Author: Ilany Kogan serves as training analyst of the Israel Psychoanalytic Society and chief supervisor of the Psychotherapy Center for the Treatment of the Child and Adolescent in Bucharest
Ilany Kogan serves as training analyst of the Israel Psychoanalytic Society and chief supervisor of The Center of Psychotherapy for the Child and Adolescent in Bucharest, Romania. She is a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Fritz Bauer Institute for Holocaust Studies in Frankfurt, Germany. Additionally, she is a teacher and supervisor of members and candidates of the Münchner Arbeitsgemeinschaft für Psychoanalyse in Munich, as well as of the staff of Eppendorf University Hospital's Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry in Hamburg.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments vii Introduction 1 Revisiting Defenses against Pain and Mourning 9 Obstacles to Individual Mourning 21 Forever Young 23 Lust for Love 47 Unresolved Mourning and Its Bearing on Society 69 Introduction 71 Romania and Its Unresolved Mourning 73 From Enactment to Mental Representation 89 Trauma, Resilience, and Creative Activity 107 On Being a Dead, Beloved Child 123 Obstacles to Mourning in an Age of Terror 157 Introduction 159 Who Am I? Trauma and Identity 161 The Role of the Analyst in the Analytic Cure during Times of Chronic Crises 177 Working with Sons and Daughters of Holocaust Survivors in the Shadow of Terror 199 Epilogue 211 References 219 Index 251 About the Author 263
With admirable acumen and insight, Ilany Kogan writes of the enormous challenge mourning poses not only to the patient who has experienced trauma, but also to the psychoanalyst working with such a patient. Kogan's candor and courage to look at her own work as analyst and human being are admirable. She also goes a step further to apply what she has learned in the clinical analytic situation to the societal settings of her native traumatized Romania and her long-embattled home, Israel. Trauma abounds; torment and pain are enormous; they transport themselves from burdened victims and perpetrators to their descendents who then struggle with their parents' unfinished, interminable work of mourning. Kogan shows that in our efforts to help, even though there is much we can do, we must accept our and our profession's inevitable limitations. There is much to learn from this deeply feeling human being, thinker, and clinician.
