Cultural Mourning, Immigration, and Engagement: Vignettes from the Mexican Experience

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).