THE SORROW AND THE FURY: Overcoming Hurt and Loss from Childhood to Old Age

Another mournful tribute to the satisfactions of overcoming loss--whether through death, deprivation of love, or damage to self-esteem. Freeman bases her insights on both traditional and recent psychoanalytic theories, and identifies a three-stage ""mourning"" process that is composed of protest, despair, and detachment. The process is seen as an adaptive one that ""starts in childhood and develops over the years."" Unresolved loss in childhood radically affects lifelong patterns of coping with deprivation; guilt arising from feelings of hatred and rage is frequently turned inward against the self. According to Freud, this results in depression rather than in ""normal"" mourning leading to detachment. Creativity and laughter are hailed as boons to the healing process, the former as a particularly ""rewarding way of gaining restitution for a loss."" The losses characteristic of different life stages are described in relation to losses from the past. But Freeman's urgent message is to acknowledge and master the love-hate ambivalence at the core of the mourning process--""the sorrow and the fury""--so that we can release pent-up feelings and free ourselves to trust again. Acceptable as a summary of theoretical insights, oversimplified as a course of treatment.