The State of Disbelief by Juliet Rosenfeld (Short Books, £12.99)
When Judith Rosenfeld’s husband Andrew died, aged 52, after only seven months of marriage, she was devastated. It was a second marriage for both of them and there was very little warning of his terminal illness.
Although she was an experienced psychoanalytic psychotherapist, she found that her long training did not prepare her for the overwhelming feelings of loss that engulfed her.
The couple had flown to Connecticut in a last-minute attempt to cure his Stage 4 lung cancer and she started writing her book on a hospital chair by his bedside.
With the shock of this sudden bereavement, Rosenfeld found herself increasingly at odds with the currently accepted “models of grief” and turned instead to Freud’s essay, Mourning and Melancholia, which offers a less prescriptive approach.
Freud makes a clear distinction between grief — the immediate and traumatic experience of loss and mourning — and the longer and more unpredictable journey that follows.
Rosenfeld is brutally honest about her experiences and the book is often painful to read.
She describes coming across two of Andrew’s unwashed shirts in his wardrobe and becoming obsessed with them, taking in the lingering smell of his after-shave and sometimes putting a shirt on and sitting inside the wardrobe to retain this tentative link with her husband for as long as possible.
Three years later, when she started to experience her feelings more rationally, she compared her earlier fixation with that of a small child trying to come to terms with being separated from its mother by clinging on to a “transitional object” like a teddy bear or comfort rag.
She realised she wanted to be in charge of when she thinks about Andrew rather than being overwhelmed by his memory.
She found that, although she would never be free of the frustration and sadness that, “he is there but no longer there,” she could, nevertheless move on with her life.
This brave and generous book will be a useful resource for professionals working in the area of grief and mourning, as well as a precious companion to those going through their own personal experiences of loss.
Some basic knowledge of Freud’s theory would be useful; otherwise Mourning and Melancholia could be somewhat intellectually demanding. But, as Judith Rosenfeld found out, there really is no time-scale for grief and mourning: everyone must find her, or his, own path.
