From compromise to sacrifice, the history of mourning today celebrates its centenary. Looking back on the first, notably Freudian, theories reveals the nuances added by successive later approaches. From the deceased to the bereaved, the focus of the expert, like a pendulum, while successively highlighting the main protagonists, overlooks the main actor, situated in between, where the link lies. Jean Allouch calls this a “little bit of self”, in a metaphor of a pound of flesh linking the bereaved subject to the object of love, and which is to be left to the deceased by way of a freely conceded sacrifice. Where Sigmund Freud, a century ago, described mourning as a work of substitution, the author now sees it as an act of sheer loss. We are witnessing a change of paradigm: the bereaved lose their status, slipping from the position of (desired) possessor to that of a kidnap victim, suddenly “desiring”, experiencing lack. Mourning then comes to look like a scenario in which clients of some mysterious laboratory entrust it with a precious possession that comes back to them as a specimen – and, at this price, the bereaved can let it go… Level of evidence Not applicable. © 2016 Elsevier Masson SAS

Act Mourning Sacrifice Taxidermy Specimen

psychoanalytic theory victim literature human mourning human experiment