Introduction: On the Anchor of Life

Chapter 1: Be in pain, but don't blame yourself.
Efforts to escape from my own faults - psychological re-experiencing
'It's still not enough.
I have to work harder' - Ego Ideal
Fear of the 'me I don't know' _ Projection
Freedom at the Price of Sorrow _ The Meaning of Mourning

Deep Reading 1: Breaking Free from Memories Imprinted on the Body

Chapter 2: Be angry enough and grieve completely
Breaking Down the Dam of Emotions _ The Timelessness of the Mind
Things I Swallowed Thought They Were Love _Ambivalence
The natural fear that holds me back _ A return to familiar pain
Understanding the extent of the problem - our internal defense mechanisms

Deep Reading 2 What Have We Lost?

Chapter 3: Cry Only for Me
How to Fill the Void Within _ Internalization
The more you hide, the worse it gets - Psychological Boundaries
How to break out of this repetitive cycle _Repetition Obsession
Listen to all the stories your body and mind tell you - Dream Interpretation

Deep Reading 3 Is it possible to save someone?

Chapter 4: Finally Free
To find the lost me _Daria
Letting Down the Guard in Your Mind _ A Sense of Control
Finding a place to catch your breath _Connection and Disconnection
Facing a Life of Repair, Not Reset

Deep Reading 4 What Comes After Grief

“Farewell to the countless emotions that torment me.”
The Four Stages of Grief for You Who Now Want to Love Me

People who want a new life but can't escape the same problems every time, people who can't sleep at night because of minor mistakes, people who really want to know what they want.
A common problem that people who are struggling for completely different reasons have is 'mourning and loss'.
Dr. Eunho Kang, a former psychiatrist at Samsung Seoul Hospital and author who studied Freud and psychoanalysis in depth in New York, the home of ego psychology, says that 'mourning' is necessary to truly love oneself.
Mourning is not only necessary for those who have lost someone.
The author argues that the passage of time, our aging, disappointments with those we cherish, and even unfulfilled hopes are all loss.
In other words, our life is a series of losses.
If life is a continuous loss, then mourning is also an unstoppable task as long as we live.
The author helps us say goodbye to the negative emotions that plague us and reexamine the wounds within us through the four stages of grief (denial, anger, sadness, and acceptance).
The four stages of grief discussed in this book are not in any particular order; they are simply places where people who have faced loss go.
You can use it to understand what kind of mind you are in right now without being tied down by the stage.

This book guides me through psychoanalytic methods, allowing me to experience pain without being crushed by guilt and self-reproach and without denying the reality I face.
As we follow the stories of people like us, grieve deeply and feel fully angry, we will gain the strength to look at the source of our hurt.
You will also learn how to cry for the person you were never accepted by anyone, and how to become free little by little by realizing what it means to accept yourself as you are.


Stage 1 of Grief (Denial): Feel the pain, but don't blame yourself.

Peter Pan, a novel that conveys dreams and hope to children around the world, transcending generations and regions.
Unlike the bright and cheerful protagonist, Peter Pan, James Barrie, the author who created Peter Pan, had to endure a nightmarish childhood.
James Barry, the ninth of ten children, was seven years old when his older brother David died in a skating accident.
His mother stayed in her bedroom, missing her dead son.
James, who needed his mother's love, often visited her, and one day, his mother mistook him for her dead brother.

Afterwards, James Barry is said to have dressed in his dead brother's clothes and even imitated his voice and gait for his mother.
He competes with a disembodied ghost to win his mother's love, and as an adult, he eventually suffers from alcoholism and takes his own life.
James, who lived in place of his older brother who abandoned him and died when he was young.
The trauma of his unloved past remained with James as an adult and tormented him.
Dr. Eunho Kang, author of “Mourning Classes for the Wounded Me,” says that unmourned loss is dangerous and emphasizes that mourning for loss is necessary for all of us, not just James Barrie.

When we are in pain because of a wound, we think, 'I should have done this' or 'I shouldn't have done that' in that situation.
Freud called this 'psychological re-experiencing'.
Many people try to escape their suffering through this process, but in reality, it leads to intense guilt and self-blame for not making the right choices at the time.
A little guilt and remorse are necessary in our lives.
When we use those emotions appropriately, they lead to self-reflection, and they become the driving force for the next step.
However, when guilt and self-reproach become excessive, we end up being harsh on ourselves and causing more harm.

No one can easily free themselves from these emotions.
That is why the process of mourning cannot end in a short period of time.
The author recommends beginning mourning by respecting the pace of each person's heart through psychoanalysis.

Stage 2 of Grief (Anger): Become fully angry and grieve fully.

A woman who had no problems during her childhood, a harmonious family, and excellent grades and interpersonal relationships, suddenly visited the hospital one day due to a sudden feeling of lethargy.
She seemed to have no problems, but as she began psychoanalytic counseling, she began to discover wounds she had never felt before.
The reason she didn't know about the existence of the wound was because she lived ignoring the anger and anxiety inside her.
Our emotions sometimes honestly convey our state of mind, but we rarely have the experience of feeling and expressing them properly.
So most of us go through life without even knowing we have wounds.

In this chapter, the author explains the problems that arise from people who do not feel what they should feel, such as a man who talks to himself as if his wife is still alive after she dies without organizing her belongings.
For most people, the past and present are disconnected.
You may experience recurring difficulties in interpersonal relationships, persistent depression, anxiety, or various physical symptoms, but you don't know where these symptoms are coming from.
There is a psychological disconnect.

Freud's fundamental idea was that we are largely psychologically blind to our own problems.
According to him, as we grow up, we develop defense mechanisms that push problems that seem too difficult to handle to the back of our consciousness.
However, things that are repressed beyond consciousness have the property of returning.
If you press hard on a balloon, it will go down, but in the end, you have to continuously expend energy to maintain that state.
In the process, certain personality types are formed and various symptoms are induced.
Mourning is the process of breaking free from problematic personality patterns.
Unconscious guilt, anxiety about change, etc. are some of the main reasons why this mourning process is not easy.
The grieving process is not always seen as a smooth road.
If you go deeper into yourself, step by step, you will surely be able to live a more fulfilling life at some point.

Stage 3 of Grief (Sadness): Cry only for me

Unfortunately, we have a hard time parting with what we have lost.
No, there are many times when I can't even accept the fact that I've lost something.
So we need a place where we can accept loss and let it go.
Time spent meeting what has been lost and what remains after loss is not wasted.
When we reflect on the pain of loss, we can certainly grow into greater and deeper beings.
Although we think of grief as something helpless and weak, it plays a vital role in mourning.
Melanie Klein, founder of the Kleinian School, one of the major branches in the history of psychoanalysis, divides adaptation to loss into two major stages.
In the first stage, people are completely unable to accept the reality, trauma, and loss that has befallen them.
For them, the world is a place of paranoid fear, anger, hostility, and a struggle of all against all.
As the mourning progresses, it moves to the next stage, 'depression'.
Depression is a stage in which we mourn our limitations and losses, and begin to distinguish and accept what is possible and what is not possible in reality.
The important thing in this state of depression is to grieve deeply enough.
The author shows the changes in those who shed tears for him through various cases, such as a man who lost his brother in an accident and feels no emotions, and a woman who has trouble sleeping and dreaming.
Lost time and people are not fragments of the past.
They are so precious to me, because if I hadn't been with them, I wouldn't be where I am today.
When loss passes through us, we need to cry and grieve freely so as not to break or crumble.

Stage 4 of Grief (Acceptance): Only Then Will You Be Free

The foundation of our lives may be suffering.
I meet parents I didn't choose, in a world I didn't choose, and begin life in a way and under conditions I didn't choose.
How can we find ‘freedom’ in such a world?
What is that freedom?
When you feel angry, do you take it out on anyone and live like a 'stage cannon'?
The freedom this book talks about is closest to ‘acceptance.’
This acceptance is not only about accepting external constraints or conditions as they are, but more importantly, about accepting yourself.
No one can be perfect.
We all know this very well.
At least in my head.
Yet, many people cannot accept themselves as they are.

The grieving process takes longer than you might think.
We easily say, 'Forget it all and shake it off,' but this comfort is not the solution.
Rather, another training must be repeated in my daily life to break free from the wounds that have become ingrained in me like a habit.

We are all like dormant volcanoes.
Even though it may appear calm and not erupting, somewhere far below the crater, a huge magma is stirring.
As long as the magma does not cool naturally to a certain extent, there is always a possibility that it will explode or erupt at any time.
A dormant volcano does not become extinct simply because one has gone through a sufficient journey of exploration into one's unconscious through mourning.
An extinct volcano would literally be in a state of death.
We all live with a certain degree of desire, conflict, and lack.
Instead, it is important to be fully aware of how such issues exist within us and how they affect our conscious thoughts, feelings, behaviors, interpersonal relationships, and life patterns.
Depending on the circumstances, a volcano may have no choice but to erupt.
However, an unexpected violent volcanic eruption can cause enormous damage to the surrounding area.
The process of psychoanalysis can be seen as a process of learning how to express or regulate our desires, emotions, and thoughts in an appropriate way at an appropriate time through this inner exploration.

* * *
One of the goals of psychoanalysis is to learn to 'express' this inner self in an appropriate linguistic manner according to the situation and time.
By telling others what thoughts and feelings we have, we can help them learn what we want, how much we can give, and what to keep in mind along the way.
But if that process is omitted, your desires and thoughts will be suppressed deep in your heart.
I don't know how to put into words the desires and thoughts that have never been verbalized, because I have never expressed them.
Desire is wanting.
What we want is also a recognition of a kind of lack.
Our hearts think of the love we should have received and the desires we could not fulfill as debt.
Those who return because they have a debt to repay become creditors.
The final stage of mourning is acceptance.
Acceptance means accepting myself as I am.
If there is a creditor in my heart now, I should be able to see it now.
We have grown up now.
I had no choice but to suppress it when I was a helpless child, but I can't send it back this time either.
As Freud said, repressed things do not disappear with the passage of time.
Suppressing your emotions and pretending not to know won't make them go away.
Just as skipping the mourning process doesn't make the loss go away.
Now, we need to gradually figure out what is being pressed, through what process, and why it is being pressed.
Why did we abandon our pure and innocent hearts and start wearing masks?
What happens if you don't wear a mask?
Why is it so difficult to take off the mask and show my true self?
Maybe the mask is stuck to you like skin and you can't take it off no matter how hard you try.
What exactly is my true self?
How can I 'be myself'?
Mourning is about answering these very questions.