Daydreams and Nightmares: Paradoxical Melancholy and Sally Bowles in Christopher Isherwood’s Goodbye to Berlin

In the preface of the “brutal... cynical... heartless drama” (Strindberg 57), Miss Julie, August Strindberg gives an in depth analysis of his play and himself. Fashioning his characters as “souls” (Strindberg 91), Strindberg permits mobility in personal development and reflects the complexity of the self. Through his drawing of the characters to be “swift and vacillating” (Strindberg 82), Strindberg reflects the temperament during the late 1800s, incorporating an “urgently hysterical” (Strindberg 91) atmosphere. During this time period, hysteria was respective to females, and

Sigmund Freud was an influential psychoanalyst in the late 18th century to the early 19th century. He made many advances in the field of psychology which have impacted other academic areas such as sociology and social work. In his 1915 paper “Mourning and Melancholia” he connected the normal realm with the pathological. In which he “compared mourning – a normal if painful event from which hardly anyone is spared – with a pathological although very common one: melancholia” (Fiorini et al. 2007). The natural human process is to mourn the loved subject or object when it is lost. Freud explains that grief is the feeling of losing love and once it is fully lost desolation and fear takes its place

Ursula Hegi’s “Floating in my Mother’s Palm”, tells a story of a young girl growing up in a small German town in the 1950s. Hanna, who is the lead character, has a painter mother and a dentist father, both of whom try to shield her from the harsh realities of their small town. The novel tells a story of a young girl’s experience right from birth and the many things that shaped her childhood. This essay will pay special focus on the second story of the novel, “Trudi Montag’s Romantic Episode”. This part tells a story about Trudi Montag, who is the town’s librarian and Hanna’s friend, though she is older. Trudi tells Hanna of stories of her childhood and any gossip that goes around town. The story sets precedence for major themes like love, broken love and superstition evident in the community. The author also uses the story to expound on issues of tradition and diversity that is evident in every community.

To fully understand the causes and particularly the effects that bereavement can have on someone’s life, especially if you have been fortunate to not have been touched with the experience, will help with understanding what someone is going through and how it can alter their behavior. The intensity in which someone experiences their loss of a person is dependent on the closeness of the relationship and the suddenness of the passing, even religion amongst many other factors. “The way a person

Later, Prigerson et al. (1999) researched disordered grief and found a number of differences as related to anxiety and depression. Both Horowitz and Prigerson’s studies found similarities in that participants had prolonged longing for the deceased, extreme impairing thoughts about the deceased, extreme denial of the death and avoidance ( Boelen & Prigerson, 2007).

As important as it is for Gary to experience and work through the emotions associated with Chris’s death, I do not believe that this alone will be enough to help him work through his grief. Matthews and Marwit (2004) suggest that complicated grief is a pattern of non-normative behavior triggered by the loss of a loved one. The authors argue that complicated grief may resemble depression while often also including symptoms relating to separation distress and traumatic distress, illustrated by Gary’s feelings of loneliness and rumination over his relationship with Chris in addition to his anger, guilt, and social isolation. This article describes how, traditionally, it was thought that a bereaved person needed to go through “grief work” by confronting and processing emotions associated with the loss of a loved one. However, this confrontation of emotion may not be enough and recovery may also require addressing the cognitions of the bereaved person. In addition, the authors of this study suggest a dual-process model in which the bereaved person oscillates between confronting various types of stressors, then taking a break from those stressors. By utilizing EFT, Gary will essentially be doing grief work by experiencing the emotions associated with loss. Experiencing his feeling of guilt may trigger cognitions such

* Yearning – a common and normal response of bereavement, it may feature until the survivor reaches acceptance.

In this essay I will discuss what grief is and the kind of grief a client could experience. We will move onto attachment theory and its link as to why we grieve. I will then look at what tools are available for counsellors to support their clients through a normal or abnormal grieving process.

The Victorian society in which this novel takes place sets us idealized versions of the woman that Edna Pontellier should be. (Madame Ratignolle, Ms. Reisz, the lovers, the woman in black.)

Reflections From My Own Grieving 1 Reflections From My Own Grieving Loren Harssar TATI: Art Therapy, Spirituality, Grief and Loss Friday, April 21, 2017 Claudia McKnight Reflections From My Own Grieving 2 The study of grief and bereavement has existed since the 1900’s when Freud came out with his idea of “Mourning and Melancholia”. Since then, there has been much more research done as well as theories created to make sense of the notion of losing someone. Within the current literature I have been reading on the topic, the use of stage theories of grieving are considered too rigid and are inaccurate representations of grief.

INTRO: “ Grief is NOT a disorder, a disease or sign of weakness. It is an emotional, physical and spiritual necessity, the price you pay for love. The only cure for grief is to grieve” (Earl Grollman)

I would like to explore the two grief theories, Dual Process Model and Meaning Reconstruction as they pertain to losing my father to suicide. I will try to uncover some ways these theories related to my experience, and I will also attempt to address the language surrounding suicide to distinguish it as a “unique grief”. And lastly, I will discuss how my personal grief experience may affect my work as an art therapist through artistic exploration.

Cheryl Black’s “TRIFLES/THE OUTSIDE/SUPPRESSED DESIRES/CHAINS OF DEW” posted in the “Theatre Journal”, analyzes “Trifles” and two other Glaspell’s pieces of literature. She pointed out that in the play “Trifles”, the scene was of a cheerless, dark, desolate place and time for a woman. She tells of how to women come together

Their romance began with “The Train Journey”, that beautiful wartime film about the consequences of forbidden love. The cinema was a tad unclean; some of the seats were soiled and the screen curtain was torn in places. These faded red and ripped curtains parted before Sebastian K. Day’s eyes, as if he were Moses, and they were the Red Sea. When the screen was fully exposed, the film began. The screen flickered the way old films of this time tend to do so, but when one is watching a first-rate film – so-called “reality” hastily retracts its claws and retreats. One’s self is focused upon the unfolding cinematic experience. The radio tower on top of the world spoke to us in Morse-code. The action of the film cuts between the slow, repressed amble of a suave, sophisticated gentleman, around a railway station, with one those refined and genteel accents that appears in films of this time, and a woman frantically running through the foggy streets in pursuit of an unattainable goal – her, societally forbidden lover, the gentleman in the restroom. He drains his cup of tea, as the voice of the Noël Cowardesque announcer called out down the platform “The train for -, - and – is now arriving at Platform 3.” He, the gentleman, hearing this announcement, which after all was intended for his ears, and his alone, drains his cup again (an obvious, but, due to the high emotive tension of the film, often overlooked continuity error), grabs his mackintosh and fedora and

Sorrow is a painful emotion that runs deep into our souls. Often times in life, things happen unexpectedly and we tend to question why us? These unexpected events then force us to undergo periods of distress and sadness. Regardless of how tedious the process might be, some people reach the stage of recovery faster while others stagger hoping for a breakthrough. For many people, the loss of someone can dramatically affect them psychologically, physically and in ways that we interact with others. And while other tends to distance themselves from their loss to run from the pain, others do not have the ability to try and forget or deny that it ever happened.