Abstract
In this chapter, I investigate the meaning of profound feelings of emptiness following the bereavement of an intimate other. Contrary to a standard Freudian account, stating that such feelings of emptiness are exclusively emanating from an experience of a vacancy or absence in the world, I argue that they equally express a particular kind of emptiness of the embodied self. Specifically, I propose that feelings of emptiness, following the loss of an intimate other, are the affective expression of a profound constriction in the existential texture of my self-familiarity as rooted in a being-with. After unpacking this idea, I illustrate it in detail through five modalities and point to the existential consequence that bereavement not only implies a need to relearn the world, but a need to the task of relearning myself.
Original language | English |
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Title of host publication | Time and Body : Phenomenological and Psychopathogical Approaches |
Editors | Christian Tewes, Giovanni Stanghellini |
Publisher | Cambridge University Press |
Publication date | Oct 2020 |
Pages | 125-143 |
Chapter | 7 |
ISBN (Print) | 9781108489355 |
ISBN (Electronic) | 9781108776660 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - Oct 2020 |
Keywords
- Anxiety
- Body-as-Object
- Body Dysmorphic
- Embodiment
- Fear
- Jean-Paul Sartre
- Otherness
- Self-reflection
- Social anxiety disorder
- Third Anxiety Disorder
- Third Ontological Dimension of the Body