ABSTRACT
Learning to live with, transcend, survive, be strengthened by loss and separation is an inescapable part of the developmental and maturation process. Milton's 'Lycidas' and Tennyson's 'In Memoriam' are both poems by young men about the loss of loved and valued fraternal comrades. Weiss distinguishes the companionship provided by friends from the intimacy of adult attachment typically to be found in a sexual partnership. Heard and Lake write about the need for 'likeminded companions of similar experience and stamina with whom to engage in mutually interesting and enjoyable activities' as an essential part of the 'attachment dynamic'. The inevitability of loss means that grief sometimes outshines attachment in importance, that psychoanalysis often seems to over-emphasise negative emotions in comparison with the positive, just as for the republican Milton, Satan and the underworld were more vibrant and interesting than the monarch, or even the kingdom of heaven.
