Archaic and Infantile Aspects of Grief

One of the most significant and painful aspects of human experience throughout its history has been the experience of grief caused by loss. Issues of pain and suffering are relevant to philosophers, thinkers, representatives of creative professions, as well as doctors, psychologists, and psychoanalysts, because every person encounters with these feelings in their life. Questions such as, "Why does the grieving process cause significant suffering?", "What can lead to a pathological course of grief and how does it manifest?", "What psychological processes are triggered in a person who has experienced loss?", and most importantly, "How can one alleviate suffering in cases of normal and pathological grief?" have occupied psychoanalysts from the times of Sigmund Freud to the present day. A person's ability to work through grief and the formation of their personality structure depend on many factors established in early childhood. The study and analysis of childhood are particularly important for understanding subsequent periods of an adult's life. Previously, psychoanalysts, including Sigmund Freud, considered childhood up to six years old as a single pre-Oedipal period. Later, there arose an interest in the earliest age and the need to clearly divide childhood into two stages: archaic and infantile, taking into account the different issues characteristic of each stage. The division of childhood into archaic and infantile stages is relevant to the grieving process. To successfully work through grief, it is necessary to go through two key stages that structure the psyche: achieving the depressive position and passing through the Oedipus complex, corresponding to the archaic and infantile periods, respectively. This work examines various concepts of grieving presented by psychoanalysts of the French and British schools and their connection to issues in the archaic and infantile periods of a child's development.