Family Scenes of Loss: Ghosts, Demons, Strangers and Companions

Abstract

This essay explores the ways in which “ghosts”—unmourned losses—can haunt, punish, enliven, or insist that attention be paid. Grief and loss are ubiquitous, although the experience of loss is highly idiosyncratic and its effects differently felt, both individually and in the analytic dyad.

Keywords:

• development
• loss
• memory
• mourning
• trauma.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jane G. Tillman

Jane G. Tillman, PhD, ABPP, is the Evelyn Stefansson Nef Director of the Erikson Institute for Education and Research at the Austen Riggs Center in Stockbridge, MA. A clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst, she has a research interest in the area of suicide.