ABSTRACT
Sigmund Freud, in "Mourning and melancholia", links sanity to the capacity to give up the idea of a permanent possession of the loved object. In The Anxiety of Influence, the literary critic Harold Bloom describes the difficulties a writer faces when he fears that a "dominant predecessor" has "already taken total possession of the field". In a group which met without formal agenda but with the sole purpose of reflecting on difficulties experienced in writing publishable papers, three disparate conversations arose. In a group which met without formal agenda but with the sole purpose of reflecting on difficulties experienced in writing publishable papers, three disparate conversations arose. Hannah Segal suggests that it is the frustration at the breast that causes the infant to split off the bad aspects and with them creates a prototype third.
