Grief, mourning, and coping with loss in general, is just a piece of the human experience.  However, its impact can be long lasting!  In fact, our individual mourning and grief process can change the way in which we express our emotions and experience life. 

There is no right way to grieve a loss or cope with trauma!  It’s a personal journey that changes the individual. While it can be hard to see in the moment, the way in which we react to mourning can teach us a lot about our own emotional capacity, and even change us for the better–if we let it. 

Susan Kavaler-Adler is a psychologist by profession, but her experience dealing with emotional responses to grief, heartache, and mourning, both professionally and personally, makes her an expert on the ways in which we cope with certain traumas in our life. 

“I dealt with loss at the young age of 10 with my father who passed away due to cancer. Unfortunately losing a parent at a young age is something that many of us can relate to, and it shapes the way in which we grow and develop, and thus, react in certain situations and relationships. 

“I was in my 20s when I really started to understand that I was going through a grieving process., which followed from the early loss of my father.  I was a young adult trying to grow and develop on my own. It was also around this time that I got my doctorate in clinical psychology, while also engaging in Dance Therapy,” Dr. Kavaler-Adler explained. 

At age 24 she earned a Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) in clinical psychology from the Gordon F. Derner School of Psychology at Adelphi University in 1974, followed by a clinical psychologist certification.  Dr. Kavaler-Adler then went on to training and experience as a psychoanalytic psychotherapist, psychoanalyst, and as a supervisor and teacher of all those developing as psychotherapists and psychoanalysts. She published 7 books and over 70 articles, and won 16 awards for her writing, including the Gradiva Award (2004) from the National Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis.

“Being a psychologist or psychotherapist, it’s our job to give meaning and a greater sense of understanding to the emotional responses in our patients. Giving meaning to why a certain individual may be repeating the same self-destructive patterns can provide the links that they need to make a change in their behavior, and in the way in which they process their emotions.”

Dr. Kavaler-Adler started in the field of psychology and psychotherapy after exploring literature throughout her initial academic career.  She later published some books that combined literature and psychology in her psycho-biographic writings on outstanding women authors and artists. 

She studied at Syracuse University for her undergraduate degree, and during her time there she traveled to Italy for half a year to live and study in Florence.  She studied Italian art, Renaissance History, Italian opera, and the Italian language, while living with Italian families.   

While she was there, she became friendly with another female student in her program, a Barnard student who was studying with those in the Syracuse program abroad.  She and her friend would meet to drink cappuccinos and discuss their lives and experiences. This individual was, at the time, involved in her own psychotherapy at home, with a Clinical Psychologist.  She told Susan (Dr. Kavaler-Adler) that she was an amazing listener.  She suggested that she consider going into Clinical Psychology as a profession.   

When she returned to America, Susan decided to do a double honors major in literature and psychology. As she started her academic journey in psychology, she realized the “work” came very naturally to her, and beyond that, she was enjoying learning about the intricacies of the human mind and experience. Once she graduated, she went directly into a doctoral program at the Gordon F. Derner School of Psychology at Adelphi University, where she would earn her Doctor of Philosophy degree in clinical psychology. 

“I got into this field through the academic end, going through psychology classes and the work on my doctorate, which is around the same time I got into dance therapy. This was the beginning of getting into working on myself as well, leading to meeting with psychotherapists and psychoanalysts regarding my own journey. 

As I went along with this journey, I began to understand my own mourning and grief process as it played out in relation to my early and traumatic loss of my father. I had an awakening over how important the mourning process was, not only for my own healing, but also as a critical clinical and developmental process. Influencing my engagement with the field of psychotherapy and psychoanalysis as well,” Dr. Kavaler-Adler stated. 

“Through my own experiences of mourning my own losses, particularly with my father, who I still can say I’m grieving over, I was able to make theoretical contributions in my field pertaining to my concept of ‘developmental mourning.’ I wrote books and journal articles about how critical it is to consciously feel and process grief and loss, and to also face the fears and aggression that emerge from within us as we face the pain, longing, memory, and renewed love, which comes with such mourning.  It was a fundamental part of my own growth and transformation as an individual, and therefore became one of the most important focuses of my career.”

She completed her dissertation within the four years of her graduate studies. After three years of studying, she spent her fourth year doing an internship at the Postgraduate Center for Mental Health, known today as the Postgraduate Psychoanalytic Society and Institute (where she would also study to be a Supervisor of Psychotherapists later on, and where she would also teach). 

While Dr. Kavaler-Adler (Dr. Susan) was studying dance therapy, she was also working once a week at an institute for mentally challenged children. During her time there, she began to think about dance therapy in for children, as well as for adult. 

This led to her Ph.D. dissertation: “I had six dance therapists working with my control groups of patients and six dance therapists who worked with the mentally challenged kids. Although I didn’t continue working with children, I would continue to think about clinical work in terms of nonverbal self expression, as in the emotional expression in dance, along with verbal self expression, and verbal communication.   

When I later went on to psychotherapy and psychoanalysis training, I began intensive studies in British Object Relations theory, which helped me conceptualize all that I had been experiencing in my own psychotherapeutic work.  I learned about the early life origins of psychological losses, trauma, conflicts, and the nonverbal and verbal expression of all this.  I was then inspired to create a new psychotherapeutic training institute (now 32 years old).  I simply sat down on one July 4th holiday, which became my independence day and created a new curriculum that integrated the teachings of both the British and American Object Relations theorists”   

Dr. Kavaler-Adler founded the Object Relations Institute for Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis in 1991, along with Dr. Robert Weinstein, who is now retired. She has been the Executive Director for 32 years, as well as serving as active faculty, and as a senior supervisor, and Training Analyst. 

“The Object Relations Institute’s curriculum remains an in-depth course of education in the contributions of the British Object Relations Theorists to the practice of psychoanalytic psychotherapy and object relations psychoanalysis. Along with studying Freud, we study each of the major British theorists: Melanie Klein, D. Winnicott, Ronald Fairbairn, Sandor Ferenczi, Wilfred Bion, Michael Balint, and Hanna Segal and Betty Joseph of the neo-Kleinians. Full courses are devoted to studying the writings and clinical theory of each of these theorists, and in sharing how it applies to our current clinical work.”

In addition, the Object Relations Institute teaches the work of Dr. Kavaler-Adler, integrating British and American theory for clinical work, which also relates to her unique theories of psychic change through ‘Developmental Mourning’ and the contrasting obstacle to mourning that she formulated as the psychic arrest in the form of the ‘Demon Lover Complex,’ and its underlying pathological mourning state. Dr. Kavaler-Adler draws on the psychoanalytic foundations of Sigmund Freud,,Melanie Klein, D. W. Winnicott, Ronald Fairbairn, Margaret Mahler, James Masterson, Candace Orcutt, etc., in her understanding of how mourning is a fundamental process of psychic development and psychic change.

“After I received my own training, I had continued to teach and supervise those in my field, through other institutes, before working primarily with the institute I had founded, the Object Relations Institute.  Established in 1991, the Object Relations Institute for Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis  evolved from that July 4th day when I was deeply inspired to write out a curriculum that integrated both British and American psychoanalytic relations and theories. , 

Today, the Object Relations Institute (ORI) continues to educate psychotherapists and psychoanalysts in the teachings of past experts, as well as in my own personal findings and theories that have developed as I grew within the field.”