Being without the other: terminable and interminable processes in couple separation

Journal title INTERAZIONI
Author/s Cristina Bonucci, Rosetta Castellano
Publishing Year 2024 Issue 2024/2
Language Italian Pages 18 P. 13-30 File size 218 KB
DOI 10.3280/INT2024-002002
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Although separation and divorce are common events in our society and in our day, as cli-nicians, we often face with their devastating effects on adulthood. In this paper, we will focus our attention on what occurs when a person, who had based his/her existence on the couple’s bond, has to drastically reorganize himself/herself in order to gain a functioning “without the other”. Starting from Freud’s reflections on what is terminable and what is interminable in the process of conclusion of the analysis, two clinical vignettes will be presented in the attempt to illustrate the multiple meanings of separation. The interminable aspects of adjustment to the breaking of the bond will be linked to the inevitable interminability of those processes by which the mind constantly moves between “schemas of being with” and “schemas of being without the other”. Furthermore, we will reflect on the terminable processes which lead to-wards a relational reorganization. Fragile self-cohesion, failed process of individuation, lack of integration, and problematic attachment will be considered as elements of vulnerability in the process of separation. We will suggest that the difficulty that many individuals we meet in the consulting room encounter in their internal work of “drastic representational revision” is also linked to the activation of disorganized attachments following the trauma perceived by the threat of separation. Finally, a focus on the clinical work and on the now moments as a tool improving the ongoing movements between self-other, with-without, throughout life will be addressed.

Keywords: separation, couple, terminable, interminable, trauma.

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Cristina Bonucci, Rosetta Castellano, Essere senza l’altro: processi terminabili e interminabili nella separazione della coppia in "INTERAZIONI" 2/2024, pp 13-30, DOI: 10.3280/INT2024-002002