Who Has the Right to Mourn?: Relational Deference and the Ranking of Grief

Abstract

Relational by definition, grief is influenced by others’ witness, acknowledgement and validation. Although such influence has drawn sociological interest to the disenfranchised grief of marginalized groups, differential grief within the family goes mostly unaddressed in relational psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. Many factors influence the ranking of grief, including “proprietary rights” conferred by traditional roles and the psychodynamics of the family. In such situations, the more highly-ranked mourners may appropriate another’s grief by claiming a stronger sense of entitlement, conferred by felt anguish, attachment or social standing. Preempting another’s claim may come without conscious intention or even with intent to protect the other from such anguish. The self is injured when one’s right to grieve is withheld, overlooked or otherwise curtailed by others, or waived by oneself. Where one’s grief is deferred to mourners deemed more needy, deserving or powerful, a diminished sense of personal ownership of grief may present itself as generosity, guilt or compliance.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Harvey Peskin

Harvey Peskin, Ph.D., dedicated his life to the practice and teaching of clinical psychology as well as the study of trauma and the Holocaust. He received his bachelor’s degree from City College of New York, his Ph.D. in Psychology from the University of California, Berkeley and served as Professor of Psychology at San Francisco State University for 36 years, retiring as professor emeritus in 1994. He also served as a Research Psychologist at the Institute of Human Development at the University of California, Berkeley, as an adjunct faculty member of the Wright Institute and continued to conduct longitudinal research throughout his career. In 2013, the International Psychoanalytical Association awarded him the Hayman Prize for Published Work Pertaining to Traumatized Children and Adults for his paper Man Is a Wolf to Man: Disorders of Dehumanization in Psychoanalysis. In 2015, he won the Elise M. Hayman Award for the Study of the Holocaust and Genocide for his paper Uses of Guilt in the Treatment of Dehumanization. He served two consecutive terms as President of the Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California, and worked as a clinical psychologist in private practice for 60 years, from 1958 until shortly before his death in April, 2018.