ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the nature and meaning of the many potential losses faced in middle and old age, and the ways in which healthy and less healthy defences may be employed to manage losses. Whilst some losses are “objectively” huge and seemingly unrecoverable from, others seem less massive and yet become the critical moment or event from which the subject never recovers. It discusses what it is that allows some individuals to re-establish some sense of purpose, and yet for others the loss becomes impossible, irrevocable and terminal. The chapter also describes some of the developmental tasks of ageing, and the notion of the prematurity of loss, and illustrates these ideas with clinical material.
