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In this paper the author continues his study of mourning and explores some of its basic psychological processes and their biological roots. He particularly emphasizes the fact that his data is derived primarily from young children undergoing separation from their mothers and contrasts this with Freud's 'mistaken distinction between healthy and pathological mourning'. He draws attention to mourning responses in lower species in order to emphasize the primitive, biological processes that are at work, but at the same time recognizes that 'there are probably also features of mourning specific to man'. Bowlby divides mourning into three phases. In the first, the child is bewildered, angry, and weeps. The second phase is characterized by despair and disorganized and agitated behavior due to the lack of an organizing object; the subjective awareness of this state of disorganization is referred to as depression. The third phase is less clearly described. It deals with the capacity to tolerate the disorganization of mourning and to undertake a reorganization directed toward a new object. Even in healthy mourning the third phase involves processes seen in pathological mourning, such as a split in the psychic apparatus in which the lost object continues unconsciously to lead an independent life or the child's continuation to live as though the lost object were present or retrievable. The pain of mourning is accounted for by the long persistence of yearning for the lost object and the repetitive experience of disappointment upon not finding it.