Laufer, Laurie <br/><br/>
Losing and Destroying: Violence in the Face of “Death’s Work” 

 -  2005.<br/>							 
<br/><br/> 14 
<br/><br/> Mourning is a matter of great interest in regard to the notion of the primitive, in that it sends the individual back to the primal fears of suffering, of abandonment, of non-being. I argue that it is essential to understand and to listen to “the archaic regressive,” according to Freud’s expression, of certain grieving patients in order to grasp what can be symbolized by the violence of mourning. Losing the Other brings a psychological or psychic awareness of destruction. The violence experienced by the mourner is related to the resurgence of one’s fantasy concerning murder, one’s death wish. In order to avoid contact with this violence, the mourner’s psychological life has become neutralized, or crystallized. A look at the headhunters from Melanesia and Papua New Guinea may possibly clarify the mechanisms of this “archaic regression.” The clinical issue here is to allow mourning patients to manifest the impulses of psychological regression, in order to avoid a melancholic collapse.