Elaboration and hindrance of the mourning in childhood: study of psychoanalytic textual productions between 2020 and 2024

Abstract

The mourning is an experienced process from the loss, which can occur at any stage of a lifetime including childhood. However, topics related to death can be seen even nowadays as a taboo for many people. For this cultural construction, the conception of death, on the part of adults, can become a hindrance to the elaboration of children’s mourning, once they put them in a position of refusal and privation of this moment, using fictitious elements to justify the loss. Thus, this research aimed to understand the particularities of the experience of loss during childhood, considering the lack of information provided to children as an obstacle to their work of mourning. Through a bibliographic review of articles and books that addressed the theme of mourning in childhood, especially those from a psychoanalytic perspective, it was possible to highlight the need to make possible to children the participation in rituals and discussion about the death and the mourning, face of the importance for the elaboration. The survey highlights even essential the realization of more studies related to this thematic as a way to disseminate the reality of mourning also experienced by children rather than a valid experience in all its particularities discussed.

Keywords: Childhood mourning. Mourning in childhood. Psychoanalysis.