The author notes that Freud's exile in London was not the first ; on the contrary, it followed the thread of a work of melancholia that had been ongoing since early childhood. Having been confronted with a dead mother, according to André Green's point of view, Freud tried throughout his life to give a place to the unrepresentable and unthinkable absence of the object. The work of melancholia involved deferred operations such as screen-memories, as well as the collection of statues that led him towards melancholic identifications in a final work of melancholia.