Hannah is an attractive artist in her early thirties. She’s been together with Vince for quite some time. Vince is a talented, dynamic musician who leads a richly varied life and travels a lot, often taking Hannah along. Their relationship has two sides: it’s full of love when the pair get along, but Vince has a short fuse and starts to yell whenever something doesn’t suit him. After a fight, he often won’t talk to Hannah for two days. Hannah responds to this silence with self-loathing and grief. 
When Vince finally comes around, he’s always quick to promise her everything under the sun. She isn’t able to have a calm discussion with him about this pattern.
He made a half-hearted attempt to address the issue with a therapist, but this ended without success. Hannah has now turned to me for help figuring out what to do. As we start to talk, it’s clear that she’s in despair about the relationship. A short while ago she’d been convinced that Vince was the man for her and that he’d change if only she loved him enough. She wants to give the love another chance, but she doesn’t really believe that anything will change. As our session continues, it highlights many elements of the grieving process:
  •  Hannah despairs that Vince hasn’t kept his promise and needs to give up the belief that he’ll change. The topic for the application of Logosynthesis is Hannah’s energy that’s bound up in this belief that he’ll change. 
  • Rage emerges once this cycle is complete. He has lied to her repeatedly and manipulated her. The rage is a reaction to the words of his promises and his faithful expression. The application of Logosynthesis is concerned with this new awareness that he has not kept his promises.
  • Now a fantasy appears – that Vince will soon have new girlfriends if she breaks up with him. This fantasy intensifies her grief. She says the sentences for the fantasy and her grief becomes even more intense. It seems as if she’s really facing the reality of the loss. 
  • Hannah realises that the loss isn’t just about her relationship with Vince, but also about the music scene that fills her shared life with him, a tie which will also be severed in a breakup. She processes the images of this scene with the sentences. 
  • We then move on to her fantasy of an ideal relationship with Vince. The energy that’s bound up in this fantasy is also taken back. Hannah cries for several minutes. The grieving process is really under way. 
  • The belief now emerges that a new boyfriend necessarily has to be a boring boyfriend. Hannah takes back her energy from this fantasy as well.
  • When our session comes to an end, Hannah reports that she feels better and more relaxed. She says soberly: “It’s not going to work with Vince.”