Transcription Health criteria in the grieving process
Healthy grief is not just a phase that “passes with time,” but an active psychic work that transforms loss into a new way of being in the world.
For this process not to lead to pathologies such as melancholy, certain structural conditions must be met that allow the subject to accept the loss, relocate their emotional energy, and regain the ability to live with meaning.
Acceptance of loss and symbolic elaboration
One of the main signs of health in the grieving process is the subject's ability to recognize that what has been lost is no longer in external reality.
This acceptance is not only intellectual; it also involves an internal process of re-signifying what has been experienced and symbolically closing the relationship with the object. In this phase, the initial impact of the void gives way to a deeper understanding of the place the object occupied in the psychic life.
When the person can talk about what has been lost, remember it without getting caught up in endless pain, the symbolic apparatus is activated. Words begin to take the place of absence, allowing the experience to be narrated and opening the way for new identifications.
Differentiation of the object and reintegration of affective energy
The work of mourning also requires separating what one was with the other from what one can continue to be. This differentiation allows the affective energy (libido), previously directed at the lost object, to be withdrawn without the subject collapsing or identifying in an unhealthy way with what is no longer there.
Reintegrating this energy does not mean denying the love or value of the lost bond, but rather being able to recover that emotional flow and direct it towards new people, interests, or projects. It is a necessary shift so that life continues to be a source of desire and does not become a sterile repetition of absence.
The recovery of the “colors of reality” after replacement
During grief, it is common for our perception of the world to become dull: things that once had meaning seem empty
health criteria grief process
