ABSTRACT
Some writers write what they think; others think what they write.The latter seem to do their thinking in the very act of writing, as if thoughts arise from the conjunction of pen and paper, the work unfolding by surprise as it goes. Freud in many of his most important books and articles, including “Mourning and melancholia” (1917b),was a writer of this latter sort. In these writings,Freud made no attempt to cover his tracks, for example,his false starts,his uncertainties, his reversals of thinking (often done mid-sentence), his shelving of compelling ideas for the time being because they seemed to him too speculative or lacking adequate clinical foundation.
