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7 - Bereavement and the Meaning of Profound Feelings of Emptiness

An Existential-phenomenological Analysis

from Part II - Grief and Anxiety

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 October 2020

By
Allan Køster
Edited by
Christian Tewes  and
Giovanni Stanghellini
Christian Tewes
Affiliation:
Heidelberg University Hospital
Giovanni Stanghellini
Affiliation:
Chieti University
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Summary

In this chapter, I investigate the meaning of profound feelings of emptiness following the bereavement of an intimate other. Contrary to a standard Freudian account, stating that such feelings of emptiness are exclusively emanating from an experience of a vacancy or absence in the world, I argue that they equally express a particular kind of emptiness of the embodied self. Specifically, I propose that feelings of emptiness, following the loss of an intimate other, are the affective expression of a profound constriction in the existential texture of my self-familiarity as rooted in a being-with. After unpacking this idea, I illustrate it in detail through five modalities and point to the existential consequence that bereavement not only implies a need to relearn the world, but a need to the task of relearning myself.

Keywords

AnxietyBody-as-ObjectBody Dysmorphic DisorderEmbodimentFearJ-P. SartreOthernessSelf-ReflectionSocial Anxiety DisorderThird Ontological Dimension of the Body
Type
Chapter
Information
Time and Body
Phenomenological and Psychopathological Approaches
 , pp. 125 - 143
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

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