Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book looks at the way Sigmund Freud made use of the seemingly focal exploration of the psychological states-mourning and melancholia as a vehicle for introducing–as much implicitly as explicitly–the foundation of his theory of internal object relations. It shows mourning as a detachment from a love object with whichever acts of love can no longer be exchanged. The book reviews some of the Holocaust literature but proceeds to apply the finding to the missing persons during the period of the terrorist State in Argentina. It focuses on societal mourning and cites George Pollock's observation that funeral music may express composers mourning for their own anticipated deaths. The book provides an observation by Jorge Luis Borges that Plato wrote his dialogues out of mourning for Socrates.