An Appeal for Mourning

ABSTRACT

This writing is a personal essay that attempts to describe the experience of a woman therapist in her work with women patients. The therapist’s struggle in her work, primarily of holding onto her own subjectivity, of keeping her mind alive, and her fear of losing her own subjectivity, among other feelings, are all understood as being representative of the continuous and often violent attacks on female subjectivity and desire in the patriarchal culture of a country like India. This essay makes an attempt to add another layer of meaning to the therapist’s struggle and to the dynamics that exist between her and her female patients. It is an appeal for mourning, for a personal and collective mourning of the losses that women carry, often unconsciously, of their minds, subjectivity, and desire, seen here to be as a result of the discrimination and violence against women present in the culture.

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Notes on contributors

Urvashi Agarwal

Urvashi Agarwal is a practicing psychoanalytic psychotherapist in Delhi, India. She has an interest in femininity, female subjectivity, and sexuality and is currently writing her doctoral dissertation.