Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: When children are raised in environments that lack important elements of supportive care needed for developing a healthy identity, it results in a kind of “loss” of what is archetypally expected but never received. This category of loss, which I call estranged sorrow, is not accounted for in the current literature of loss related to grief related to known losses. Most approaches to trauma are similar in emphasizing what happens based on events and neglecting on the trauma that results from developing in an environment without emotionally available caregivers. In this article, a theoretical essay, I work within the framework of depth psychology to trace how estranged sorrows might originate in our culture. I then use the method of amplification to provide three different ways that the productive imagination can be harnessed as a vital resource: narrative amplification, imaginal amplification, and mythic amplification. I explore how the imagination enables a grieving process that connects sorrow with words and images that can then be processed as a conscious experience, and ultimately allowed to become part of the biographical past rather than an unvoiced present.
Source: Psychology International
Author: Daniel Boscaljon
Language: English
Subfield: Social Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $1,448
OpenAlex ID: W4410599758