Using reconstruction of a bereavement at age six in the analysis of a twenty year old, the author discusses the issue of whether adult and childhood "mourning" significantly differ. With detailed clinical material she presents her view that although the same words are used, "mourning" in a two year old as compared with a six year old (this patient was quite clearly in latency, in developmental terms) describes a very different process, the former essentially an affective state and its behavioral concomitants, the latter a much more complex intrapsychic process. The difference results from the more advanced psychic apparatus of the six year old, whose mourning is thus much more like the adult's.