The authors describe a specific mechanism of identification which they designate as "endocryptic." The individual identifies not just with an object, but comes to express the imagined sufferings of that object. The object is "entombed" in a psychic crypt, as it were, in an effort to mask the real and unresolved trauma created by its loss. The authors suggest this specific mechanism is an important one for the understanding of the fantasy life of many melancholics. They offer clinical examples from their own cases and claim, too, that the "secret" of the Wolf Man involved not just the memory of being seduced by his sister, but also an earlier seduction of the sister by their father. The authors suggest techniques for dealing with the opening of the endopsychic crypt in the course of therapy and the reintegration of the libidinal attitudes toward the lost object.