Loss as a lifelong regenerative learning process

The predisposition to internalize death and loss of crucial attachment objects, subjectively, as a physical attack on the body, is commonly acknowledged in the field of human psychological behaviour (Freud 1915; Parkes 1972). This view is held, essentially, according to psychoanalytic principles of the functioning of the mental processes, to advance the concept of mind and body sensations as psychical consequences, or affects , of loss trauma. It does not, nevertheless, preclude wider social and cultural factors from adding to our understanding of how and why we react to loss in deeply individual ways. In the affective domain of human experience, the relationship between emotional pain and learning may not strike an immediate connection, since emotions are assumed to be subjective psychological affects of the psyche, while learning involves cognitive processes associated with developed responses to external stimuli. From a psychoanalytic perspective, however, it is possible to conceptualize the interconnecting of mind and body ‘states’ associated with pain, through the channelling and regulation of psychic tension in the ego. Importantly, the channelling of impulses into mind and body ‘ideas’ suggests a dynamic process capable of activating the human potential for emotional development and learning through the ego's capacity for adaptation to external change. We can speak, therefore, of affective learning as an integrated regenerative counterpart to emotional devel When death and major life changes are followed by corresponding feelings of loss, the human propensity to search for, and the lost object is generally viewed by therapists to be a normal part of grieving, however paradoxical the demands for integrating thoughts and irrational actions might feel. This illustrates the of a grief process that ultimately demands a degree of emotional development in enabling us to tolerate high levels of anxiety, there is disparity between the inner world of feeling and external reality. In psychodynamic grief work, the therapeutic principle of through' the deeper, inner layers of loss and mourning creates one such model for developing emotional learning and insight. It within this framework that the client can begin to understand his irrational motives, and be freed from the related feelings of alienation in his inner world. The aim of this paper is to examine the concept of loss and learning in a wider context to include lifelong processes of and growth, which may be a cause for grief. It raises the significance of personal meaning(s) we attach to loss, links this theme to the aetiology of separation anxiety, loss and mourning from a psychoanalytic perspective.