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Dear Editor
I am sorry that David Malan found my piece on mourning paranoid, contemptuous and extreme (British Journal of Psychotherapy 11(3)). However I do wish that despite such strong reactions he could have read it more carefully, and I wonder if I could take up a little more of your space to correct a couple of misrepresentations and reply to a couple of other points.
Firstly, Malan says'… he accuses Abraham, who merely pointed out that internalisation of the loved one was part of normal mourning, of trying to “establish the mourning process as an area of professional expertise and control”. Freud, Abraham and Klein “illustrate a process of a profession carving out an area of power for itself”…’
If he returns to these passages he will see that I say that the three theorists can be read in such a way but I spend the next page and a half trying to show how once Freud sets up the normal/pathological distinction it is undermined by Abraham, and even more by Klein, who, I say, is the ‘theorist who least fits into my argument’ and who shows the complexity of the mourning process.
Secondly, David Malan says that ‘If he spelled out more clearly that he is concerned with a trend in certain areas of society and psychotherapy, the article would be much more acceptable.’
Again, if he re-reads the paper, he will find that I am talking about general social