Elderly

When the Body Disappears for Too Long: Mourning Without Ritual and the Search for Symbolization

When the Body Disappears for Too Long: Mourning Without Ritual and the Search for Symbolization

There are forms of mourning that open in a particular kind of silence. Mourning in which the body of the deceased disappears for months, sometimes years, because it has been donated to science. Mourning in which the relatives remain in a strange suspension, caught between gratitude for the gesture and the pain of being deprived of what has always helped humans say goodbye: a body, a place, a ritual, a name carved somewhere. In my consultation, I have met adult children who lived through this. Two years of waiting to recover the body of a parent. Two years without a ceremony, without a grave, without a date, without a collective gesture. Two years in which mourning could neither begin nor continue. Two years in which absence remained raw, without form, without contour. Two years in which pain had no place to go. Freud wrote that the work of mourning consists in gradually withdrawing the psychic investment from the deceased in order to redirect it toward life. But how can this work unfold when the body is not there? When there is no place to go? When there is no moment to gather? When time itself seems suspended? Winnicott spoke of the importance of transitional objects and gestures that allow the child — and the adult — to symbolize what is missing. The funeral ritual is one of these objects. It creates a passage. It transforms death into a psychic event. It allows one to say, “It happened.” It allows one to begin thinking what, without this, remains unthinkable. When the body is donated to science, this passage is interrupted. The parent’s gesture, often generous, sometimes militant, can be experienced by the children as a kind of dispossession. Not because they oppose the donation, but because they no longer have access to what, for them, would have allowed the separation to begin. Dolto reminded us that the body of the deceased is not only a biological body: it is a symbolic support, a last link, a final message. In some cases, the donation of the body leaves the relatives in a form of white mourning, as Racamier described it. A mourning without an object. A mourning without a scene. A mourning without proof. A mourning that cannot be spoken or represented. A mourning that remains suspended, like a book left open with its last pages missing. Clinical psychology and psychoanalysis can accompany these rare but deeply painful situations. They help restore meaning where reality has been too abrupt. They help rebuild an inner ritual when the outer ritual could not take place. They create a space where words can partially replace what could not be lived. For adult children, it is often a work of reappropriation. Reappropriation of the parent’s gesture, which can be understood as an act of transmission, an act of trust in science, an act of generosity. Reappropriation of their own pain, which can finally be recognized, named, heard. Reappropriation of the bond, which can be rebuilt differently, without a body but not without memory. Kaës wrote that rituals are not merely traditions: they are collective psychic devices that transform the unbearable into something thinkable. When they are missing, new ones must be invented. A letter written to the deceased. A walk. A piece of music. A chosen object. A symbolic place. A date. A gesture. Something that allows one to say: “I let you go, but I keep you with me in another way.” For those who are considering donating their body to science, it is possible to help their loved ones by informing them of their intention. By explaining what this gesture means to them. By giving them the possibility to imagine an alternative ritual. By telling them that they will have the right to create a moment, a place, a word. By giving them permission to say goodbye even without a body. By offering, before leaving, a space in which the symbolic can begin to take shape. The donation of the body to science is a noble gesture. But it sometimes leaves those who remain with an enigma. An enigma that psychoanalysis can help unfold. An enigma that requires time, gentleness, creativity. An enigma that, one day, can become a story. And in that story, the deceased finds a place again. A living place. A symbolic place. A place that finally allows those who remain to continue living. ​ REFERENCES  Dolto, F. (1985). When the Child Appears. Paris: Gallimard. Freud, S. (1917). Mourning and Melancholia. In Metapsychology. Paris: Gallimard. Kaës, R. (2009). Unconscious Alliances. Paris: Dunod. Lebovici, S. (1983). The Infant, the Mother and the Psychoanalyst. Paris: Bayard. Racamier, P.-C. (1992). The Genius of Origins. Paris: Payot. Winnicott, D. W. (1971). Playing and Reality. London: Tavistock.

Growing Old Together: When Bodies Fall Out of Sync and the Bond Must Be Rewritten

Growing Old Together: When Bodies Fall Out of Sync and the Bond Must Be Rewritten

Growing old together is not a simple continuation of what came before. In some couples who have shared a lifetime side by side, something begins to shift almost imperceptibly. The years have settled like thin layers of sediment, the children have grown, grandchildren bring their joyful turbulence, and retirement has become a familiar landscape. One might imagine that everything is stable, that the bond has crystallized into a quiet certainty. Yet around seventy for her, a little later for him, a subtle disturbance sometimes appears, like a change in the internal weather. She notices a new irritability, a tension that does not belong to their shared history. He perceives in her a heightened sensitivity, a different way of inhabiting the everyday. Nothing dramatic. Rather a delicate displacement, a silent rearrangement of psychic positions. As if, after so many seasons lived together, the couple still had to learn how to readjust. Menopause, for her, is long behind, yet its symbolic effects continue to unfold. Simone de Beauvoir showed how women often enter old age earlier, not only through the body but through the social gaze, which anticipates and imposes transformation before biology does. She has already encountered the question of aging, of loss, of reinvention. Andropause, for him, arrives later, more slowly, almost clandestinely. It sometimes manifests as diffuse irritability, reduced tolerance, a heightened sensitivity to frustration. As if the male body, long supported by a fiction of continuity, were suddenly reminded of its finitude. George Vaillant’s work on male aging highlights how this period can unsettle self-esteem, awaken old anxieties, or reactivate defenses that once served well. In this temporal gap, something is replayed. She has already crossed her hormonal storms, already renegotiated her symbolic place. He is only beginning to face his. And in this slight desynchronization, the couple must compose a new scene, one in which each must relinquish a part of who they believed themselves to be. Irvin Yalom wrote that long-term couples are “laboratories of existence,” where the great human questions—freedom, solitude, death, meaning—are continually revisited. At this age, these questions cease to be abstract. They become tangible. They slip into daily gestures, silences, irritations. From a psychoanalytic perspective, the real of the body returns. Lacan emphasized that the body is never merely an organism: it is a site of jouissance, loss, and lack—an unpredictable partner that resists mastery. At eighty, this real asserts itself. And this partner cannot be seduced, convinced, or controlled. One must negotiate with it. Freud, in On Transience, reminded us that the fragility of what we love—its perishability—can intensify attachment as much as it threatens it. Growing old together means feeling time become palpable, giving the bond a new gravity. The irritability of the aging partner is not only biological. It can be a defense against the terror of vulnerability, a way to keep at bay the fear of falling, of dependence, of disappearance. Erik Erikson described the final stage of life as a fragile balance between integrity and despair—an inner work where irritability may mask deeper unease. She, for her part, oscillates between patience and fatigue. She may have gained inner freedom as physical strength diminished. She can welcome, but she can also tire. What unfolds here is not only hormonal or physiological: it is a redistribution of roles, a rewriting of the conjugal pact. Some couples find in this period a new tenderness, a complicity freed from performance. Others see old wounds resurface, long-muted frustrations reappear. Time, as it advances, reveals the fault lines. Laura Carstensen’s socioemotional selectivity theory shows that older adults tend to prioritize essential bonds and authentic emotions, which can intensify both gentleness and tension. And yet, there is in these aging couples a singular strength: that of those who have weathered storms together—births, losses, departures, returns. A strength that is not spoken, but visible in the way they sometimes still look at each other, as if despite everything, despite irritations, despite bodies that resist, something holds. Winnicott spoke of the capacity to be alone in the presence of another. Perhaps this is what mature love becomes: a peaceful coexistence, where each can be themselves without the other becoming a threat. A way of inhabiting time together, without seeking to correct, convince, or transform. At seventy, at eighty, the couple is no longer a project. It is a work. A living, fragile, sometimes rough work, but profoundly human. And within this humanity, there is still movement, desire, conflict, care. There is still life. ​ References  Baltes, P. B., & Baltes, M. M. (1990). Successful aging. Cambridge University Press. Beauvoir, S. de. (1970). Old age. Gallimard. Carstensen, L. L. (2011). A long bright future. PublicAffairs. Cohen, G. D. (2005). The mature mind: The positive power of the aging brain. Basic Books. Erikson, E. H. (1997). The life cycle completed. W. W. Norton. Freud, S. (1915). On transience. In Standard Edition (Vol. 14). Lacan, J. (1975). The seminar, Book XX: Encore. Seuil. Vaillant, G. (2002). Aging well. Little, Brown and Company. Winnicott, D. W. (1958). The capacity to be alone. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 39, 416–420. Yalom, I. D. (2008). Staring at the sun: Overcoming the terror of death. Jossey-Bass.