ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with mourning in the organisation. In melancholia, that loss is harder to compute and, rather than being worked through, is trapped inside and becomes a self-persecuting internal object. The chapter presents the data gathered and interprets the experience of closure and loss within the framework of mourning. It offers an interpretation of loss through examples of experiences told and observed during the eighteen-month-long project. The chapter provides a mourning organisation that works through the loss with recognition of an inevitable end. This is presented via an acknowledgement of loss, recognition of the value of work, the way in which the anxiety of loss is contained, and the way in which the behaviour of the senior management is reconciled, leading to reparation. The chapter shows how this acceptance of loss was worked through and the recognition of the value of work, no matter how limited, was significant.
