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Volume 8, Number 1
January - June 2004


Melanconia: follia, genio o tristezza? Vicissitudini dell'identificazione e formazione dell'Io.
(Melanconia: genius or madness?)
Jacqueline Amati Mehler


SUMMARY

In this paper, the Author revisits the concept of Melancholia from a metapsychological and from a clinical viewpoint.

Drawing on Freud's 1915 seminal essay as a staring point, the author discusses and integrates later contributions to psychoanalytic theory, both by Freud himself and by postfreudian authors.

More specifically, melancholia is explored from the viewpoint of how the object and the ego are conceptualized linked to the complex vicissitudes of identification processes.