ABSTRACT
Just as the other patients reported in this book, Phillip stands out as one of the most vibrant examples of the human capacity for developmental mourning, with its positive form of suffering. The therapeutic object relations journey in this chapter is one of opening up the avenue to deep grieving for the longed for muse parent, which for Phillip had differentiated father and mother components. Phillip's capacity to suffer in the positive sense of developmental mourning has been both palpable and profound. His capacity to sob through his grief, as well as his capacity to simultaneously conceptualize the process – along with my guidance as a psychoanalyst – is vivid and evocative. Such capacity on Phillip's part displays the healthy psyche that is capable of psychic dialectic: the dialectic of cognition and affect, the dialectic of self and other, the dialectic of monologue and dialogue, the dialectic of symbol and symbolized, the dialectic of love and creativity (Kavaler-Adler 1996), and the dialectic of subjective need and empathy for the subjectivity of the other.
