The illness and loss of a child are situations not naturally expected from the perspective of life cycle, causing a disruption in the lives of parents, arousing intense feelings and lots of suffering. In the autobiographical novel Paula, author Isabel Allende writes to the daughter who was hospitalized in intensive care in a hospital, a few months ago, with a little favorable diagnosis. This article discusses a psychoanalytic reading about the loss of a young adult child, taking as object of study the story of this novel. From the methodology proposed by Iribarry (2003) of a psychoanalytic research, a construction of a metapsychological test is carried out. The story of this work points to the possibility of symbolic framing for the loss of a young child, through literary writing, considering that in Paula, the act of writing makes it possible to go back to the word, in an attempt to enlist the real loss of daughter in a symbolic order.
Motherhood; Mourning; Psychoanalysis; Literature