ABSTRACT
This chapter dicusses the so-called rebirth beliefs in the Siberian North-that is, the cosmological principle that a dead person's soul will circle back to be reborn in a neonatal, who can, therefore, be identified as an ancestor returned. It pursues the Siberian rebirth doctrine offers a particular model for dealing with grief, which emphasizes the continuity rather than finality of personal relationships. The chapter compares the Siberian indigenous model with Sigmund Freud's famous study of how a bereaved person may, in the face of loss, regress into a depressive state of melancholia, something which Freud considered a severe and even pathological response to death that can result in a suicidal identification with the deceased. It reveals how the Siberian rebirth beliefs offer a quite different type of relief to the pain of loss; a difference which boils down to a distinct conception of time and its impact on what counts as reality.
