Vacío mental emocional: Una perspectiva desde el psicoanálisis contemporáneo

Abstract

This article explores the concept of emotional mental emptiness from the perspective of contemporary psychoanalysis. Through a theoretical-clinical analysis grounded in the work of authors such as Jaime Lutenberg, André Green, Wilfred Bion, Donald Winnicott, and Thomas Ogden, the paper examines the structural causes, clinical manifestations, and subjective impact of this form of psychic suffering. Emotional emptiness is understood not as a mere lack of affect, but as an inability to symbolize experience—often the result of early non-mentalized experiences, dysfunctional relational patterns, or unprocessed traumas such as sexual abuse. The article includes case studies that illustrate the clinical experience of emptiness, as well as a reflection on its expression in contemporary culture and the therapeutic possibilities for its treatment. It concludes that emotional mental emptiness represents a specific mode of contemporary subjective distress that demands an ethical and sensitive clinical practice attuned to the subject’s silence.