Freud’s Understanding of Mourning (Essay Sample)

Freud’s Understanding of Mourning Student’s First Name, Middle Initial(s), Last Name Institutional Affiliation Course Number and Name Instructor’s Name and Title Assignment Due Date Freud’s Understanding of Mourning Life is generally characterized by enduring significant, concrete upheavals. Adverse and profoundly impacting events, such as unexpectedly losing a loved one, relationships or marriage breakups, and loss of job, are typical in everyday life. A defining characteristic of such events is a deep pain that takes longer to heal. The majority of such events are unanticipated and change someone’s life significantly. As a result, people grieve and mourn immensely. However, mourning is a more complex concept than is generally depicted. Some of the feelings and expressions described as mourning represent a different concept. A close analysis of Freud’s explanation of mourning can illustrate the idea explicitly. To explain what mourning entails, Sigmund Freud published ‘Mourning and Melancholia’ contemplating people’s psychological responses to losses. According to Oliver (2020), Freud posits that loss can be felt and expressed through mourning or melancholia. As a direct response to loss, mourning and melancholia usually look similar in terms of mood or expression. Both concepts may be misunderstood since they involve grief. Despite the closeness, mourning represents a finite and transforming process, implying that the desolate person will recover someday (Schiesari, 2018). Conversely, melancholia is usually persistent, taking root outside a person’s conscious comprehension of events. As a result, mourning is a limited event leading to another event, while melancholy is persistent. Freud described mourning as a feeling that can be transformed depending on the events surrounding a person’s life. In this case, a person’s feelings can change depending on the coping skills. From Freud’s perspective, a person feels the pain of a loss externally when mourning (Larsson, 2021). Although the world around people might feel bleak, people can reform their feelings of loss as they allow themselves to feel and process the change associated with loss or other negative events. In some instances, the pain gradually fades and becomes a positive motivation (Oliver, 2020). From the transformation of events, it is evident that mourning is a process ending in some acceptance. The mourner learns to participate in the external world, and the loss triggers change and acceptance. Freud explained that mourning occurs in the conscious mind while melancholia occurs in the unconscious. Schiesari (2018) explained that from Freud’s viewpoint, people have conscious minds with specific experiences, feelings, and thoughts. Different from the unconscious minds, people are aware of the incidents in their conscious minds. As a result, they are able to understand loss, feel and express it through mourning, and later transform it into positive energy. On the other hand, the unconscious comprises generalized and repressed thoughts outside of people’s awareness. The pain in the unconscious is felt internal...