Kernberg, O.F. (2000). “Mourning and Melancholia” Eighty Years Later. Changing Ideas In A Changing World: The Revolution in Psychoanalysis. Essays in Honour of Arnold Cooper, 95-102 “Mourning and Melancholia” Eighty Years Later “Mourning and Melancholia” is Freud's (1917e) first and fundamental contribution to the psychoanalytic understanding of normal and pathological mourning, the psychopathology of major affective disorders, and the psychodynamic determinants of depression. At the same time, it also marks major developments in psychoanalytic theory at large, particularly the early formulations of the concept of the superego, the fundamental nature of identification processes, and the role of aggression in psychopathology. There are several strikingly original and fundamental propositions in the theory of the psychopathology of depression put forth in “Mourning and Melancholia”. These include the central importance of aggression turned against the self when intensely ambivalent object investments are lost; the role of the superego in this self-directed aggression; the split in the self revealed in the superego's attack on the ego; and the fusion of another part of the s [This is a summary or excerpt from the full text of the book or article. The full text of the document is available to subscribers.] |
