ABSTRACT
The chapter determines the Sigmund Freud's distinction between mourning and melancholia can be useful to organisational death and contemporary organisations facing closure. Where there are signs of a melancholic response to loss, this can be acknowledged and examined, communicating to employees an awareness of the different possibilities in dealing with loss and the strong ties and identification to work that recognises organisational death as a painful bereavement. Employees struggled to absorb the reality of closure and ending, as melancholics fail to connect with the lost objects and work through their loss. Employees joined an organisation full of hope and with the certainty of a bright future. They invested great aspirations into the organisation and its failure led to a consequential lowering of self-regard. A melancholic organisation carries features of depressive illness and psychosis, its low spirits and self-reproach bear witness to an organisation that has become stuck in its loss and is unable to move forward.
