Abstract
This paper explores the dynamics between a woman dying of cancer, the man she lived with for 37 years, and the clinician who worked with them during the final months of the woman's life. Psychoanalytic perspectives on transformational and transitional object-seeking as natural processes which aid the internalization of attachment to the one who is approaching death, the creation of a ‘primary maternal preoccupation’ in the caretaker, the hospice as a holding environment, and the search for destiny as a metaphor for the work of anticipatory grief are integrated with the case-material.
Reference
Auerbach, C. (1991). “Development of the true self: A semiotic analysis.”Psychoanalysis and Contemporary Thought, 14, (1), 109–142.
Bollas, C. (1982). “On the relation to the self as an object.”International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 63, 347.
Bollas, C. (1987).The shadow of the object: Psychoanalysis of the unthought known. New York: Columbia University Press.
Bollas, C. (1989).Forces of destiny: Psychoanalysis and human idiom. London: Free Association Books.
Bowlby, J. (1980).Loss. New York: Basic Books, Inc.
Levine, S. (1982).Meetings at the edge. New York: Doubleday.
Levine, S. (1984).Who dies? New York: Doubleday.
Levine, S. (1987).Healing into life and death. New York: Doubleday.
Merleau-Ponty, M. (1969).The visible and the invisible. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.
Rando, T. (1986).Loss and anticipatory grief. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books.
Volkan, V. (1981).Linking objects and linking phenomena. New York: International Universities Press, Inc.
Winnicott, D. W. (1945). “Primitive emotional development.” In: D. W. Winnicott,Through paediatrics to psychoanalysis (pp. 129–144). London, The Hogarth Press, 1958.
Winnicott, D. W. (1956). “Primary maternal preoccupation.” In D. W. Winnicott,Through paediatrics to psychoanalysis (p. 304). London: The Hogarth Press, 1958.
Winnicott, D. W. (1960). “The theory of the parent-infant relationship.” In D. W. Winnicott,The maturational process and the facilitating environment (pp. 37–55). New York: International University Press, 1965.
Winnicott, D. W. (1971).Playing and reality. London: Routledge.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Black, M. Anticipatory grief: The search for destiny. Pastoral Psychol 42, 241–252 (1994). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01789511
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01789511