ABSTRACT
In the spring of 1929 Freud wrote to the Swiss psychiatrist Ludwig Binswanger on the occasion of the death of the latter’s favorite son:
Although we know that after such a loss the acute state of mourning will subside, we also know we shall remain inconsolable and will never find a substitute. No matter what may fill the gap, even if it be filled completely, it nevertheless remains something else. And actually this is how it should be. It is the only way of perpetuating that love which we do not want to relinquish (Frankiel 1993, 70).
Loss, Freud is clearly telling us, is inherently paradoxical, setting in motion a psychological effort to resolve that which is inherently unresolvable. It is an experience that creates an emptiness that remains an emptiness despite our efforts to fill it in. Perhaps the most important insight that Freud offers us, however, is that these irresolvable gaps become, again paradoxically, the very means through which we perpetuate our attachment to those whom we have lost. In its own way, mourning negates loss. The lost attachment remains emotionally alive so long as it is mourned.