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In writing his metapsychological papers, Freud used dreams and the process of mourning to illustrate his theory, holding that these phenomena were normal prototypes of pathological afflictions. He stated that there are other such phenomena and mentioned love. According to Guillaumin, he could also have mentioned adolescence, the creative process, pregnancy, and the experience of a patient in analysis. Guillaumin proposes to examine all these states from the point of view of the rather poorly defined Freudian concept of work. We find the concept of dream work, the work of mourning, and therapeutic work frequently used. It is evident that the same concept is applicable to love and to the tasks of adolescence. These concepts are at a descriptive and operational level, and are more synthetic, or molar, than the other, more refined atomistic concepts of metapsychology. Other molar concepts would be transference, transference neurosis, countertransference, resistance, etc. The notion of work corresponds to a sort of continued state of crisis, engendering a new economy in the passage from past to present. Guillaumin holds this to be an important distinction between the scientific, closed discourse of metapsychology and the global and dynamic discourse centered on intentionality, effort, and suffering in the search of a goal, as implied by these synthetic and molar concepts. Guillaumin proposes a comparative study of the work of mourning, dreams, and these other aspects of psychic work. He discusses each type of psychic work from the point of view of its origins, its object, its goal, its product, and the psychic organizations involved.