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The editors of this volume chose to assemble selected original papers on mourning and loss rather than use work from a single author, hoping to expand understanding of this important topic, about which much has already been written. Diversity of view would be expected; however, there is a continuity of certain themes which gives this book considerable unity. Not all the papers are strictly psychoanalytic. One of them attempts to apply the psychoanalytic concept of mourning to the current political scene in Germany. Other papers concern conclusions drawn from empirical observations of people who have sustained object loss. The area of conceptual loss is not neglected. Neither is the related topic of normal development viewed within the framework of loss and mourning. Losses, whether they are conceptual or object loss, vary in their type, degree, and the developmental stage in which they occur. Papers addressing these aspects are presented. Taken together, the reader attains a sense of cohesion.
The book is divided into an introduction, five main sections, and an epilogue. The main sections are: Theoretical and Applied Psychoanalytic Perspectives; Developmental Perspectives; Clinical Contributions; Empirical Studies on Loss and their Implications: Research Perspectives; and Loss, Mourning, and The Holocaust.
There are 4 papers in the first section, contributed by George Pollock, William Niederland, Nancy Mann Kulish and Peter Shabad. The first of these is an interesting discussion of mourning in which Pollock stresses its creative outcome that, while most often not a masterpiece, eventuates in the creation of something new, possible a new relationship. He makes the important point that the expected creative outcome is neither a recreation of the past, nor an end to mourning, but a product that stands like a memorial to the past. This observation is illustrated in many of the papers that follow along with the vicissitudes of such a process under pathologic