ABSTRACT
This chapter examines two movies, Secretary1 and Mostly Martha.2 Drawing a parallel between the two plots by examing psychic loss, this chapter focuses on the two lead women's struggles with troubled father±daughter relations. On one hand, the case can be made for a simplistic pro®le of a healthy working-through process in Mostly Martha versus a pathological solution in Secretary. However, the author shows how normal mourning and aspects of paranoid-schizoid pathology can overlap, providing certain internal bargains that work adequately and serve to maintain a functioning ego. The corresponding psychoanalytic concepts of acting out, sadomasochism, and working through are reviewed.
