Broken heart
For most bereaved individuals, the journey through grief will ultimately culminate in an acceptable level of adjustment to a life without their loved one. The Kübler-Ross model postulates that there are five stages of grief after the loss of a loved-one: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. And while it is recognized that mourners go through initial period of numbness leading to depression and finally to reorganization and recovery, most modern grief specialists recognize the variations and fluidity of grief experiences differ considerably in intensity and length among cultural groups, individually from person to person as well as depending on the amount of investment put into the relationship.
Mourning and Melancholia
In this essay, Freud argues that mourning and melancholia are similar but different responses to . In mourning, a person deals with the grief of losing of a specific love object, and this process takes place in the conscious mind. In melancholia, a person grieves for a loss he is unable to fully comprehend or identify, and thus this process takes place in the unconscious mind. Mourning is considered a healthy and natural process of grieving a loss, while melancholia is considered pathological.