Grief and its Transcendence: Memory, Identity, Creativity is a landmark contribution that provides fresh insights into the experience and process of mourning. It includes fourteen original essays by pre-eminent psychoanalysts, historians, classicists, theologians, architects, art-historians and artists, that take on the subject of normal, rather than pathological mourning. In particular, it considers the diversity of the mourning process; the bereavement of ordinary vs. extraordinary loss; the contribution of mourning to personal and creative growth; and individual, social, and cultural means of transcending grief.
Key Features
- Divided into three parts, each including two to four essays followed by one or two critical discussions.
- Co-editor Adele Tutter’s Prologue outlines the salient themes and tensions that emerge from the volume.
- Part I juxtaposes the consideration of grief in antiquity with an examination of the contemporary use of memorials to facilitate communal remembrance.
- Part II offers intimate first-person accounts of mourning from four renowned psychoanalysts that challenge long-held psychoanalytic formulations of mourning.
- Part III contains deeply personal essays that explore the use of sculpture, photography, and music to withstand, mourn, and transcend loss on individual, cultural and political levels.
- Co-editor Léon Wurmser’s Epilogue closes the volume, drawing on the humanistic wisdom that underlies psychoanalytic thought.
Additional Information
Grief and its Transcendence will be a must for psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, psychiatrists, and scholars within other disciplines who are interested in the topics of grief, bereavement and creativity.
