ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces, among other important ideas, an advancement of the concept of the "critical instance" and of forms of structuring internalizations such as the introjection of objects and of secondary identifications. Some post-Freudian clarifications and additions must be included so as to have a clearer and more complete picture of the metapsychological concepts that underlie the different observable clinical pictures that both normal and pathological mourning present to our clinical observation. As the mourning process develops the subject in mourning presents transitory symptoms that could coincide with or resemble different clinical pictures. Classical theory holds that the mourning process ends with structural and partial identifications with the lost object. In a favourable evolution of mourning, the author’s basic assumption is that through the continuous flow of life drive, libido, to the psychic representative of the lost object is effected the neutralization of the deadly/persecutory object, and the final separation from it.
