This week we are acknowledging the 40th anniversary of the death of Enrico Berlinguer, Secretary of what was then the “Communist Party” in Italy, a figure larger than life in our recent political history and above all a man of universally recognized moral integrity.
An interview with his daughter Maria was published on “The Friday” edition of Repubblica of May 31st with the title ”Ho visto sorridere mio padre” (“I saw my father smile”). It was the first time, in 40 years, that Maria, a journalist, could bring herself to talk about the father she lost when she was a little more than an adolescent, at the beginning of her career. The interview is intimate, full of delicate memories that cut the silhouette of an “old school”, reserved man, who, to get close to his daughter at critical times, would only go so far as to take her hand.
Maria is not alone in her inability to put into words for such a prolonged stretch of time what is considered to be the most traumatic experience in a person’s development: the loss of a parent. When you are young and lose your father, as in Maria Berlinguer’s case, entire parts of yourself may get lost with it. Trying to survive that experience becomes a lengthy and painful mourning process passing through shame and guilt: hence the difficulty of sharing it with others, privately or much less, in the public arena. It may lead to full-blown, clinical depression even after many years in one’s adult life.
Freud, in his classic psychoanalytical paper, ”Mourning and Melancholia”, was the first to shed some light on the connection between loss and depression; his work remains so far the best ever written for an in-depth understanding of depression. Today we know a lot more about the biological and genetic features of it, which integrate the psychodynamic aspect and certainly do not negate it. The role of psychotherapy in helping the mourning process following such a major loss is to this day, irreplaceable.
The good news is that there may be a positive resolution. If you decide to undertake that adventurous trip into your psyche, you may find out that your lost father is very much alive …. within yourself. That traumatic loss in your past may become the springboard for the formation of your future self. It may make you bloom into who you are in so many aspects of your personality, in your professional choices, in your leanings and beliefs. You may strive harder to become who your father had dreamed for you to be, those parts of him will stay with you forever. It’s an “internalized” father that never disappoints you, that does not grow old on you.
And finally allows you the freedom to talk about him without shame.
