1940 Mourning and its Relation to Manic-Depressive States
1940 Mourning and its Relation to Manic-Depressive States. Int. J. Psycho-Anal., 21:125-153 (IJP)
Mourning and its Relation to Manic-Depressive States1
Melanie Klein
An essential part of the work of mourning is, as Freud points out in 'Mourning and Melancholia', the testing of reality. He says that 'in grief this period of time is necessary for detailed carrying out of the behest imposed by the testing of reality, and ?by accomplishing this labour the ego succeeds in freeing its libido from the lost object', 2 And again: 'Each single one of the memories and hopes which bound the libido to the object is brought up and hyper-cathected, and the detachment of the libido from it accomplished. Why this process of carrying out the behest of reality bit by bit, which is in the nature of a compromise, should be so extraordinarily painful is not at all easy to explain in terms of mental economics. It is worth noting that this pain seems natural to us.'3 And, in another passage: 'We do not even know by what economic measures the work of mourning is carried through; possibly, however, a conjecture may help us here. Reality passes its verdict梩hat the object no longer exists梪pon each single one of the memories and hopes through which the libido was attached to the lost object, and the ego, confronted as it were with the decision whether it will share this fate, is persuaded by the sum of its narcissistic satisfactions in being alive to sever its attachment to the non-existent object. We may imagine that, because of the slowness and the gradual
1This paper was read originally before the Fifteenth International Psycho-Analytical Congress, Paris, 1938. It was subsequently revised and enlarged with a view to its inclusion in the Ernest Jones Sixtieth Birthday Number of this JOURNAL, Vol. XX, Parts 3 and 4, 1939.
2Collected Papers, Vol. IV, p. 163.
3Collected Papers, p. 154.
4Collected Papers, p. 166.
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way in which this severance is achieved, the expenditure of energy necessary for it becomes somehow dissipated by the time the task is carried through.'4
In my view there is a close connection between the testing of reality in normal mourning and early processes of the mind. My contention is that the child goes through states of mind comparable to the mourning of the adult, or rather, that this early mourning is revived whenever grief is experienced in later life. The most important of the methods by which the child overcomes his states of mourning, is, in my view, the testing of reality; this process, however, as Freud stresses, is part of the work of mourning.
In my paper 'A Contribution to the Psychogenesis of Manic-Depressive States', 5 I introduced the conception of the infantile depressive position, and showed the connection between that position and manic-depressive states. Now in order to make clear the relation between the infantile depressive position and normal mourning I must first briefly refer to some statements I made in that paper, and shall then enlarge on them. In the course of this exposition I also hope to make a contribution to the further understanding of the connection between normal mourning, on the one hand, and abnormal mourning and manic-depressive states, on the other.