Freud’s Case for 1 Running Head: AN ECONOMIC PROBLEM IN MOURNING Freud’s Case for an Economic Problem in Mourning

Freud’s puzzling claim in his early writing that he could not account for the severity of the pain of mourning prompts a reflection on his subsequent response, which equated the pain with the breach in one’s defenses occasioned by physical pain. Unremarked by Freud, the pain of (nonpathological) mourning and physical pain share striking features, in particular spontaneous remission and the setting aside of the ego, not readily found in other states. Decidedly absent from pathology in particular, these features may afford one definition of mental health, of which mourning, at least in its nonpathological prototype, is a realization. Freud’s Case for