ABSTRACT
The operation of the mechanisms of denial and the repression of affect and even of memory surrounding the death of a person with whom one has been closely tied emotionally has been noted and described before. The purpose of this report of the losses of a 20-year-old psychiatric patient is not to go through the superfluous activity of seeking to demonstrate that such repression can happen, but to portray a rather unique combination of such repressions that had the effect of producing an almost total amnesia for the details of a relationship which had existed since the patient’s birth. A second purpose is to introduce in the context of this case a methodology for the facilitation of grief work which can be utilized not only in severe cases such as this, but which is adaptable to the counseling procedures in dealing with “normal” grief, beginning at the time of the loss, and therefore hopefully preventive of “morbid” grief reactions.
