Paper Announcement by Johanna Dobdrich (USA)

An Elegy For Motherless Daughters: Dissociation, Multiplicity, and Mourning

Interweaving autobiographical narrative with clinical material, this essay examines the generative impact of an enactment initiated by an analyst who shares a history of early maternal loss with a group she led for motherless daughters. It invites readers to conceive of mourning from an intersubjective and multiple self-state perspective, where the boundaries of our inner object world meet the loss of an actual other, in a shared ‘third’ space. Dissociative process is examined as both a protector and inhibitor of mourning, both then and there and here and now, as it unfolds in the group process.

www.tandfonline.com/toc/uppe20/current

Johanna Dobrich, MA, LCSW
330 West 58th Street, Suite 411
New York, NY 10019
Email Johanna Dobrich
www.johannadobrich.com