Mourning and Working Through

Mourning and Working Through

Saturday, 24th October 2009
10.00am - 4.00pm

Workshop

* What is involved in the work of mourning / doing loss?
* How does loss inhabit the counterintuitive perspective whereby it makes working through (psychic change) possible?
* How can a psychoanalytic understanding of mourning help us understand depression, mood swings, a sense of deadness, despair?
* How is mourning and working through folded into questions related to race, gender and sexuality?

Through an examination of the relationship between mourning as an emotional process and mourning in relation to symbolisation, we will attempt to understand the relationship between it and working through. By focussing on some theories of blocked mourning such as Green's (1986) theory of the Dead Mother and Abraham and Torok (1987) transgenerational mourning, we will seek to understand therapeutic impasses. Also Kristeva's (1989) theory of abjection will help us think about whether mourning is different for men and women.

"One of the best workshops I have ever attended. Brid presents complex, difficult theory in an understandable and engaging format. I found the day very stimulating and enriching."
- comment from a participant last year"