Failure to Mourn, and Melancholia
- 1 October 1982
- journal article
- Published by Royal College of Psychiatrists in The British Journal of Psychiatry
- Vol. 141 (4) , 329-337
- https://doi.org/10.1192/bjp.141.4.329
Abstract
Summary: This paper reviews ideas about depression and mourning from various quarters, particularly from psychoanalytic writings, from the work of George Brown on the social origins of depression and from some of the work in behavioural psychotherapy on guided mourning. Its essence is foreshadowed in a statement of Winnicott's: “If in an individual the depressive position has been achieved and fully established, then the reaction to loss is grief, or sadness. Where there is some degree of failure at the depressive position the result of loss is depression”.Keywords
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