The metapsychology of melancholia and death anxiety is described. The author delineates familiar qualities of melancholia and proposes that death-anxiety involves loss of the protective aspect of the superego with or without a simultaneous "attack"

from other, critical elements of the superego. The description of two rituals is used to illustrate the author's hypothesis of how religious ritual becomes a mode for internalizing this protection against death anxiety. The last section of the article contains speculations on the dynamics of curses and the occasional physical death of the cursed. The explanations rely heavily on very mechanistic borrowings from Hartmann and Rapaport. The result is a somewhat convoluted and circular presentation of some very interesting ideas.