Grief, psychological structure, and prevention of depression

When a person experiences a significant loss, the grieving process can lead to healthy processing or, conversely, become a pathological experience.

From a psychoanalytic perspective, this transition depends largely on the subject's psychic structure, that is, the particular way in which their psychic apparatus has learned to organize loss, desire, and reality.

This point seeks to analyze the factors that facilitate or hinder this elaboration, and how preventing the transition to depression requires understanding these internal mechanisms.

Factors that predispose the transition from grief to depression

The transformation of grief into depression does not occur because of the objective magnitude of the loss, but because of the way in which the loss is processed unconsciously.

Certain factors predispose individuals to this transition: a fragile ego structure, difficulties in symbolizing pain, the presence of ambivalent ties to the lost object, or a subjective history marked by previous unprocessed losses. When the libido—the psychic energy invested in the object—cannot be withdrawn or redistributed, a kind of affective stagnation occurs.

Instead of accepting the absence, the subject remains fixated on the lost object, unable to reconnect with desire for other bonds or activities. This psychic immobility generates symptoms such as despondency, excessive self-criticism, guilt without apparent cause, or emotional withdrawal.

Mourning and melancholic structure: the impossibility of replacing the object

In some cases, the impossibility of replacing the lost object is due to a particular structural modality: melancholy. In this type of psychic organization, the subject does not accept the loss and, instead of detaching themselves from the object, identifies with it.

This identification is neither conscious nor voluntary; it occurs on a deep level, where what is lost is incorporated into the self. But this identification is fraught with ambivalence. What appears to be love for the object may also hide reproaches, resentments, or hostile desires which, when internalized, turn against the subject themselves.

Thus, the criticism originally directed at the object becomes self-criticism: the self punishes, devalues, and accuses itself. This is one of the most direct ways in which grief turns into severe depression.

From this perspective, melancholy does not necessarily respond to a real, visible, or recent loss, but can be triggered by a symbolic, unconscious loss, or even by a simple mismatch between the ideal that the subject had of the other or of themselves. It is a structure in which psychological pain deepens until it becomes paralyzing.

Signs of healthy grief vs. pathological grief

Distinguishing between expected grief and grief that has deviated into pathology is essential for the prevention of m