ABSTRACT
In "Mourning and Melancholia" Sigmund Freud did not probe into the relationship between mourning and creativity, but dealt with inhibition in melancholia. The genesis of psychoanalysis is somehow related to Freud's mournings. Remembrance and memories–sources of knowledge, elaboration, and inspiration–play a fundamental role in working through mourning. Memories and drive charge coming from the body and from what had no representation in the past merge in the scenic construction of what is lost. This is, to the author’s mind, the contribution of memories, unconscious fantasy, and imagination to creativity in mourning, thus allowing mental space for a poiesis of death. Identification is another source of creation during mourning, provided the object had a separate existence and was not a narcissistic object. The work of mourning can lead to possible paths of creativity–the kind that produces transformations in the psyche as well as the one that is the germ of future works.
