Luto antecipatório: as experiências familiares diante de uma morte anunciada

Abstract

The Anticipatory Mourning is an adaptative phenomenon that may be studied separately. It is a part of a higher systemic process called Normal Mourning. Anticipatory Mourning occurs before the real loss and may present the same characteristics and symptomatology of the Normal Mourning, wich occurs after death. It is influenced by three interconected factors: individual intrapsychic processes, interactional processes with the dying patient, familial and social processes. We may experiment several mourning patterns: the individual, the-familiar and the social and cultural one. The Anticipatory Mourning process experienced by a family and the diseased member includes phases such as: impact, denial, ambiguity, revolt, bargain, depression, acceptation and adaptation.

This paper describes and analyzes the Anticipatory Mourning during the processual and longitudinal psychotherapeutic home care treatment of a family which experienced an announced death~ starting from the diagnostic moment of an advanced cancer in one of members - the family husband and father - until the moment of his death This paper follows and analyzes, step by step, the individual mourning process of each family member and the family mourning process as an entity under a systemic approach. This research is a qualitative phenomenological study of a particular case and doens't intend to be understood as a general behavior. This paper also invites the readers to a wider reflexion about this particular human experience: the announced loss