Listening to Loss: On Primary Preoccupations and Inconsolability

Abstract

This essay is an individual reflection on the analyst’s personal history of loss and trauma, as well as part of a theoretical exploration of the unconscious forces always at play in analytic work. Mourning the death of a beloved husband enables a shift from “primary preoccupation” with loss to self-growth.

Keywords:

• development
• loss
• memory
• mourning
• trauma.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Margery Kalb

Margery Kalb, PsyD, is a psychologist, psychoanalyst, and supervisor in private practice in New York City. She is faculty and clinical consultant/supervisor for the NYU Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis, where she also serves as Chair of the Contemporary Freudian Track. Dr. Kalb is coeditor, along with Adrienne Harris and Susan Klebanoff, of two books: Ghosts in the Consulting Room and Demons in the Consulting Room (Routledge, 2016). She is the author of several papers on ghosts, encompassing themes such as development and internalization, transference–countertransference, somatization, anxiety, values/morality, loss, and mourning.