“I know I should move on, but I cannot let go of this loss...”

Many people are familiar with such experiences.

Yet why do some losses gradually become integrated into a person's life experience over time, while others continue for years to evoke pain, guilt, anger, a sense of inner emptiness, or an inability to form new relationships?

According to Otto Kernberg’s conceptual framework, the loss of a significant object is not merely an external event. It becomes a challenge to the individual’s entire system of internal object relations.

Kernberg emphasizes that mourning is not simply a process of gradually reducing emotional pain or adapting to new life circumstances. The loss of an important object activates the individual’s internal world—their internalized object relations, affective bonds, fantasies, and unconscious conflicts associated with the lost object.

For Otto Kernberg, the central task of mourning is not relinquishing the object but transforming one’s relationship to it. The individual gradually acknowledges the irreversibility of the loss in external reality while preserving an internal connection to the important object as part of their inner world.

Kernberg places particular importance on the capacity to tolerate ambivalence. We do not lose an ideal object but a real person whom we loved, needed, felt angry toward, were disappointed in, and depended upon. For this reason, loss often confronts the individual not only with sadness, but also with guilt, anger, regret, and unresolved internal conflicts.

From Kernberg’s perspective, successful mourning is directly related to the capacity to integrate love and aggression toward the object. When these feelings remain split, the individual may become trapped in either idealization or devaluation. In one case, the lost object is experienced as entirely perfect and irreplaceable; in the other, the object's significance is denied as a defense against the pain of loss.

Neither idealization nor devaluation, however, allows the loss to be fully worked through.

Kernberg regards the capacity for mourning as one of the most important indicators of mature personality organization. It is grounded in object constancy—the ability to maintain an internal connection to an important person despite their physical absence or loss.

For this reason, the outcome of mature mourning is neither forgetting nor “letting go” of the object. Rather, the individual develops a stable internal representation of the lost object that continues to exist as part of their personality, life history, and capacity to love.

For Otto Kernberg, the ability to endure loss without the collapse of one’s internal world is among the most important achievements of psychological maturity. It reflects the capacity to integrate love and aggression, tolerate ambivalence, preserve significant internal objects, and continue psychological development even in the face of the inevitable losses that are part of human life.

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(c) Yuliia Holopiorova,

Ukrainian Association of Transference-Focused Psychotherapy