MOURNING THE LOSS OF SELF: A UNIVERSAL CHANGE PROCESS AND CLASS OF THERAPEUTIC EVENT by DALE THEODORE BROOKS B.A., SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY, 1985 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS in FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES (Department of Counselling Psychology) We accept this thesis as conforming to the required standard THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA December,1990 (cT) Dale Theodore Brooks, 1990 In presenting this thesis in partial fulfilment of the requirements for an advanced degree at the University of British Columbia, I agree that the Library shall make it freely available for reference and study. I further agree that permission for extensive copying of this thesis for scholarly purposes may be granted by the head of my department or by his or her representatives. It is understood that copying or publication of this thesis for financial gain shall not be allowed without my written permission. Department of The University of British Columbia Vancouver, Canada DE-6 (2/88) ii ABSTRACT This study asserts that loss has been primarily focused on in terms of a set of reactions whose goals and content tend to be externally orientated. The thesis presented here states that the consideration of reaction to loss is incomplete without a detailed understanding of how the phenomenological self, on the intrapsychic level, is effected by loss. Consequently, this study takes a comprehensive look at how loss can effect this level of the phenomenological self, as well as the types of losses it can experience. An attempt is made to demonstrate that these losses to the phenomenological self can be identified and defined as a generic set of experiences, or, class of psychological events, which when taken together, this study considers as the loss of self. Given this class of psychological events, it is further claimed that mourning the loss of self, in different forms, is a universal change process. When dealt with in therapy this change process of mourning the loss of self is considered as a class of therapeutic event. An extensive literature review examines the basis for these claims, and provides the foundations for the presentation of a clinical model for mourning the loss of self. In this model, self, types of loss of self, and the process of mourning the loss of self, as relevant to this study, are defined. Utilization of this model for therapeutic purposes is demonstrated in case studies, and implications for research, as well as areas of application, are suggested. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ABSTRACT ii TABLE OF CONTENTS iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS V EPIGRAM vi CHAPTER I Introduction 1 Origins of the Study : 1 Objective of the Study 5 Significance of the Study 7 CHAPTER II Review of the Related Literature 15 An Overview 15 The Psychoanalytic Approach 17 Sigmund Freud 18 The Psychic Triad of Loss 24 Heinz Hartmann 28 Margaret Mahler 36 Edith Jacobson 53 Heinz Kohut 63 Other Relevant Psychoanalytic Approaches .... 83 Psychodynamic Approaches 85 Carl Jung 85 Eric Berne 87 Mardi Horowitz 89 Vamik Vol can 95 Other Relevant Psychodynamic Approaches 98 Cognitive and Developmental Approaches 99 Vittorio Guidano 102 Robert Kegan Ill Other Relevant Cognitive and Developmental Approaches 118 Experiential Approaches 124 Carl Rogers 124 Alvin Mahrer 128 Jacob Moreno 133 Approaches Focusing on the Transcendence of Loss . 137 George Pollock 137 Patricia Weenolsen •••• 140 Conclusion 144 CHAPTER 111 A Clinical Model for Mourning the Loss of Self 146 Underlying Principles 147 A Classification of Losses 150 Assumptions about Self-structures, Functions, iv and Processes 155 A Definition of Mourning Relevant to this Study .. 158 Types of Loss of Self 165 Indications,Markers,and Intervention Sequencing .. 171 The Basic Process and Facilitating Technique ..... 182 Case Studies 194 Case One: 'Friends Forever' 194 Case Two: 'The Little Deer Who Could Grow Horns' 206 CHAPTER IV Future Research Directions and Applications 214 References 220 V ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to express my appreciation to my thesis committee, with special thanks going to Dr. Westwood for his support, suggestions, and his sensitivity to the many different kinds of losses in life; including the presence of absences in the self related to father loss. I would like to thank my wife Angela, and family, for encouragement and tolerance, and acknowledge to my three year old son that I owe him a dad-filled summer. I would like to thank all of my psychological fathers, witting and unwitting, for the healing of my many losses of self that their presence made possible. And finally, I would like to genuinely thank my own father for the short time I did have with him, as well as the paradoxical legacies he left me with his sudden passing. vi That which is created between things holds them together. DTB 1 CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION Origins of the Study The subject of this study is called mourning for the loss of self. Interest in this focus arises out of many personal, theoretical, and clinical encounters with what appears to be different forms of this phenomenon. In lieu of definition at this point I offer the following instance as an initial way of identifying what I am referring to. During an intensive period of therapy as an adult, dealing with the death of my father when I was twelve, I became aware of a whole unit of experience and meaning that I was minimally guided through by my therapist. This was not the set of cognitive-affective images related to my father, it was the set of cognitive-affective images related to myself around that early age. In fact a critical moment occurred for me when I realized that it was not so much mourning for the loss of my father as object, that I needed to do, as it was mourning for states of self related to my father, that I was still subjectively fused with, that I needed to do. However, how best to do this, and what it meant theoretically for mourning and psychological development generally, remained ambiguous to myself and my therapist. With these questions in mind I turned to both the literature and my own clients. The literature tantalized without satisfying. As will be shown in the literature review to follow, a few authors 2 state directly and many more indirectly, that something like mourning for the loss of self is an important therapeutic task, perhaps different in its own right from mourning object loss. However, this is done in different terminologies with no consensus as to the processes or techniques specific to mourning for the loss of self. For example, Ego State therapies such as those of Watkin's (1979), Edelstien (1981), and Horowitz (1988), most closely parallel the therapeutic process experimented with in mourning for the loss of self. Their focus however, is not specifically on mourning particular states, although it is implied in places. The work of Mahrer (1986) is similar, in terms of the experiential approach and quality of the language he uses to describe process instructions, as those given to clients during the course of mourning the loss of self; but again,^.Mahrer' s therapy does not focus exclusively on this task. Theories addressing the visualization and use of mental imagery for therapeutic purposes (Ahsen, 1977; Morrison, 1978) support the significance of identifying, amplifying and transforming concrete self-images which is an important aspect of mourning for the loss of self as dealt with in this study. However, none of these writers develop the implications of this change process, or relate it to a theory of mourning for the loss of self as a distinct class of therapeutic event. Various schools of psychoanalytic thought (Freud, 1917; Hartmann, 1954; Jacobson, 1971; Pollock, 1960; Kernberg, 1976; 3 Mahler, 1979; Bowlby, 1985; Kohut, 1977; Stolorow & Atwood, 1982; Sandler & Rosenblatt, 1962) provide integrative frameworks for supporting functional distinctions between self and object representations as related to loss, mourning and development. However, despite the richness of these theories there is no distinct statement, or consensus on a specific therapy dealing with mourning for the loss of self. Cognitive-developmental theories (Guidano, 1987; Kegan, 1982) also support the existence of functionally discrete 'self-schemata1 and imply that the necessity of transforming these throughout development involves experiences of loss and mourning that is as much 'self' related, as object related. Again, however, these theories have not focused on the process of mourning for the loss of self in and of itself. Finally, there is a growing body of literature which takes as its concern the relationship between loss and transcendence (Weenolsen, 1988). Here, the case is put forward for the process of integrating losses on many different levels; physical, cultural, symbolic, etc., as a continual and distinct identity theme across the lifespan. This supports the notion of mourning for the loss of self as a distinct change process and class of therapeutic event, across different situations and issues, at a metapsychological level. This literature implies a therapy specific to mourning the loss of self, based on the integration of existing knowledge about individual and social development and intrapsychic structures and processes, but has not produced one. 4 While none of these theories and approaches by themselves provided me with a satisfactory conceptual sense or clinical grasp of my experience of what I was understanding as mourning for the logs of self, I saw them taken together as convergent evidence and support for pursuing the idea more fully. At the same time, in working with my own clients, and having become increasingly sensitive to this dimension of experience, I found repeated instances across clients where, what I call mourning for the loss of self could be seen not only as a relevant therapeutic task, but the critical one.