ABSTRACT
Just as contemporary psychoanalysis has become a refuge for patients whose emotional struggles lie beyond the psychic terrain of neurosis and the dynamic unconscious, likewise, states of grief and loss may lie beyond mourning and melancholia. This chapter makes a case for acknowledging a third category of loss: psychic devastation. This type of post-traumatic loss is experienced as a state of emptiness, absence, or void and encompasses the survivor’s internal fragmentation, dissociation, frightening loss of identity, and difficulties in thinking symbolically and reflecting on one’s experience. The state of devastation turns out to be an impediment to the process of mourning. Fragments from the author’s own experience with spousal loss are presented to illustrate the discovery of the psychic state of devastation. A case example of my clinical work while in a devastated state is included.
