Linking Objects and Linking Phenomena: A Study of the Forms, Symptoms, Metapsychology, and Therapy of Complicated Mourning

This reissue of a classic work that revolutionized the understanding and treatment of pathological mourning contains a new preface, Foreword from Harold F. Searles, and fascinating, detailed reports of actual cases. Building on fifteen years of clinical research, it shows how bereaved persons mired in mourning their loss can be helped in treatment.

Vamik Volkan brings a breadth of theory, academic rigor, and clinical study to the subject of ‘complicated mourning.’ He focuses on the, at times, bizarre ways in which bereaved persons maintain contact with the dead by means of inanimate objects or psychic phenomena invested with magical powers, which he calls ‘linking objects’ and ‘linking phenomena.’ For these individuals, their mourning reproduces the same ambivalence that characterized their lifetime relationships with the deceased and they simultaneously long for and dread a return from the grave. The linking object or phenomenon enables the mourner to maintain the illusion of external control over the dead person and extends the mourning process indefinitely.

Volkan carefully distinguishes this ‘established pathological mourning’ from neurotic depression and normal mourning. Grief in itself is not a mental disorder and he provides original contributions to our understanding of grieving, from both a phenomenological and metapsychological point of view. Volkan introduces his clinical research, describes helpful exercises and psychotherapeutic techniques, and offers examples of a revolutionary brief psychotherapy called ‘re-grief therapy.’ Continuing case studies bring the rich theory to life, including illuminating clinical illustrations of the ‘replacement child,’ and demonstrate the effectiveness of psychoanalytic treatment. On the theoretical side, Volkan compares linking objects with transitional objects, fetishes, talismans, and inanimate objects considered magical by psychotics.

Linking Objects and Linking Phenomena is a seminal work on the subject of mourning which decades on from its original publication continues to give practicing clinicians, academics, and trainees much to ponder, assimilate, and put to technical, theoretical, and practical use.