The Pandemic TRAUMA as a Catabasis: the Process of Grief and the Socio-political dimension of Clinical suffering. COVID-19 and the Case of Bergamo

At the intersection of individual grief and collective trauma, this study conceptualises pandemic trauma as a catabasis: a descent into personal and shared suffering that may, under certain conditions, become a pathway toward meaning reconstruction. The COVID-19 pandemic profoundly disrupted experiences of death, bereavement and social connection, challenging the psychological, relational and cultural processes through which loss is recognised, ritualised and integrated. Focusing on Bergamo, Italy—the symbolic epicentre of the first European wave of COVID-19—this empirical research explores how pandemic bereavement unfolded within a landscape of loss in which personal suffering became intertwined with shared traumatic experiences, suspended mourning practices and emotionally consuming struggles for recognition. The study aims to understand how relatives of individuals who died from COVID-19 lived, interpreted and reconstructed their bereavement within the unprecedented conditions created by the pandemic itself. Adopting a clinical and social psychological perspective, the thesis highlights the interplay between traumatic loss, ambiguous loss, meaning reconstruction, collective memory and the relational and cultural contexts in which grief unfolds. The study is positioned within a contextualist epistemological framework and adopts a qualitative research design based on Reflexive Thematic Analysis following Braun and Clarke’s approach. The analysis integrates semantic and latent levels of meaning and follows an abductive, iterative process, moving between empirical narratives and theoretical perspectives to develop an interpretative understanding of pandemic bereavement. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 21 relatives of individuals who died from COVID-19 in the Bergamo area. The emerging analysis highlights how pandemic bereavement was shaped by the impossibility of physical farewell, the alteration of mourning rituals and the struggle to reconstruct the meaning and identity of the deceased within a context of collective uncertainty and disrupted recognition. Narratives such as “Who is in that coffin?” illuminate the profound fracture created by the interruption of opportunities to witness death, accompany the dying and validate the transition from life to loss. These experiences reveal how pandemic grief involved not only the absence of the deceased, but also the collapse of the symbolic transitions through which death becomes socially and psychologically integrated. By framing pandemic trauma as a catabasis, this thesis contributes to contemporary debates on grief, trauma and the social dimensions of clinical suffering. It highlights how traumatic loss emerges through the interaction between psychological experiences and broader relational, cultural and institutional conditions, showing that large-scale crises may activate recurring psychosocial patterns of disruption, loss and meaning-making. This suffering may remain enduring; nevertheless these experiences may also create possibilities for symbolic transformation, recognition and renewed meaning. The findings offer implications for clinical practice and future responses to collective bereavement events, emphasising the need to address both individual distress and the wider contexts in which grief is experienced.