Mourning and Psychosis-Finding Connections between Recovery Frameworks and Psychoanalytic Theory.

Abstract

The recovery movement for serious mental illness emphasizes holistic, person-centered care. Clinical innovation, policy, and research in recovery has focused on identity, empowerment, and meaning. Psychoanalytic theories, which emphasize identity formation, stress the developmental importance of mourning on separation, autonomy, and identity consolidation. These approaches can meaningfully complement each other. Therapeutic interventions based on a psychoanalytic conceptualization of mourning can help individuals with psychosis acknowledge and grieve their losses and disappointments, enhancing recovery-oriented treatment by fostering identity development, agency, and meaning.