What is it about?
In this essay, I explore the relationship between solace and lament, noting a paradox regarding which comes first. I suggest that solace is a prerequisite for a capacity to lament. I develop a conceptualization of the solacing function of the analyst as an active, yet gentle, approach toward a patient that can locate unrepresented experiences of loss in order to stimulate lament and a process of mourning. Grievance, as a protracted state, is described as a pseudo lament that, as a static stance, forms an impenetrable barrier to lament. Clinical material illustrates challenges of foreclosed mourning.
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Why is it important?
Solace opens to sadness: frightening territory. Grievance, whether toward self or other, works to defend against grief. Grievance is a pain- killer, but one that agitates, like an alcohol-induced rumination. The analyst, in offering solace and acknowledging a true loss, is introducing emotional pain that is acute and that requires a patient to slow down into being emotionally present with discomfort.
Perspectives
A human being has much to lament. Certainly, lament is a cry for solace, a wailing, a song of grief. Yet a capacity to lament relies on a relationship, to another, to an experience of solacing that is then deeply internalized. The experience of psychoanalysis readily offers solace to a patient who can narrate their losses, which are then heard, acknowledged, witnessed by the analyst. Lamentation, as an expression of loss, sadness, grief, is an essential part of grieving as a psychological process—mourning—in a progression that leads to healing.
Dr. Dianne Elise
Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Solace, The Psychoanalytic Quarterly, April 2026, Taylor & Francis,
DOI: 10.1080/00332828.2026.2643166.
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