Separation work

Separation is a source of suffering, as it implies the recognition of the distance, the loss and the absence of the object. The primary anguish of losing love and being abandoned is present in the separation process and can sometimes endanger the subject's narcissism. The other is not only a sexual object, an object of desire and fantasies, but is an object to which the satisfaction of needs is linked. In order for the process of separation to be realized, the distinction between subject and object must be sufficiently marked, not to be confused with that thing or person. The psychic labor of separation simultaneously involves several dimensions: the ability to bear the reality of separation; maintaining more or less the link with the object; and its internal representation - the object is not lost because it is present inside, as a possible promise of return.

Separation is interpreted through the patient's life history, taking into account the particular contexts and situations he faced when he was a child and adolescent; through the experience of a state imposed by a loss, a rejection, an abandonment, of one or the other of the parents. It presupposes a state of complete helplessness (detresse, heplessnes), an experience of helplessness, total passivity, a nostalgia for an archaic object relationship; in need of containment, "holding, handling", to be accompanied to overcome this initial distress, trauma. Because, mourning and being able to bear the separation, differentiating yourself from the other is a step towards self-transformation, inner redefinition