Swallowing words: relational and symptomatic processes in a grieving family

Abstract

This clinical case retraces Matilde’s psychotherapy journey, centred on the loss of her young son Valerio, and on the following emotional, relational, and symptomatic rebounds. Through systemic and relational lenses, it was possible to investigate the unsuccessful processing of the loss by the family, the display of psychic suffering through an eating disorder and the conservation of the system’s homeostasis through silence. The reinterpretation of these processes, interconnected by means of the family specific relational dynamics, based on triangulation transactions and on low self-differentiation, will first lead to a redefinition of Matilde’s symptoms from a relational and communicative perspective. This change will trigger another one, namely in the transactional models among family members; the care mandate, transmitted upon Matilde by previous generations, will be challenged. This will allow to initiate an individuation-differentiation process in each member of the nuclear family. Family members’ differentiating pressures could then pave the way to possible clinical meetings with the whole family. The centrality of relational and family issues within this clinical case, such as self-differentiation, emotional shock wave, intergenerational transmission, among others, underline the importance of the systemic viewpoint even in individual psychotherapy, when this focuses on symptoms that are rooted in the family environment.