Mourning Alone Together: Suhrida Yadavalli’s Contribution to a New Mourning Theory

Abstract

This essay is primarily an appreciation of the wonderful paper by Suhrida Yadavalli, which is more than your regular academic or clinical paper. It is a literary work of aesethic brilliance and psychological intelligence. There is so much which I admired and enjoyed about the paper (its beauty, eloquence, and flow of ideas), and much to say about it. But I will be restricting my remarks principle to Suhrida’s contribution to the theory of mourning, a matter to which I also have given a good deal of thought. As I will discuss Suhrida’s paper builds on the recent revision of what I call the standard model of mourning through a very personal meditation on loss which addresses the central role of culture in what was once seen as essentially a biological process. As we will see Suhrida’s work adds to a larger critique of mourning theory carried out by myself and others (Hagman, 2001, 2016) over the past several decades. I will begin with a review of the paper, emphasizing its discussion of mourning. I will follow this with an examination of what I see as Suhrida’s specific contributions to the revision of mourning theory and suggest some clinical implications.