Death’s Chair: Sitting with Loss

ABSTRACT

In this paper I offer personal encounters with illness and death in an attempt to actualize what I am imploring analysts to pursue: a close examination of their relationship with mortality. I lament the problematic absence of attention to mortality in psychoanalytic theory and therapy and argue that we must undertake preparatory work in this realm to avoid harming those we endeavor to support and to promote generative opportunities for growth and healing for our patients and ourselves.

Acknowledgments

With deepest appreciation, admiration, and love for my analyst, M, and immense love and gratitude for my mom, Linda, whose death has miraculously brought me great life.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Rachel Kozlowski

Rachel Kozlowski, Psy.D., is a clinical psychologist in private practice in Brooklyn and a psychoanalytic candidate at NYU’s Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis.