ABSTRACT

Sigmund Freud emphasises a stark contrast between a capacity for relinquishment in normal mourning and the relentless and punitive hold of melancholia. Melanie Klein suggests that in normal mourning there is a phase of mania that protects the mourner from awareness of destructive feelings, followed by a period of despair and depression leading eventually to acceptance of loss. The paradox entailed in Klein's view of mourning is that just when the individual most urgently needs his internal objects to help him deal with an external loss, these internal objects too are felt to be destroyed and therefore unavailable for containment or support. The chapter shows a brief example of a similar kind of dream and development in the analysis of a rather different kind of patient. It suggests that qualities in the internal object can develop, can be enhanced or strengthened.