415: Mourning and Melancholia Revisited
Instructors
Ben Kafka, Ph.D.
Cassie Kaufmann, Ph.D.
September 16 – November 4, 2026
Wednesdays, 8:40 – 10:00 pm
Co-requisites
Candidates must have or have had at least two cases in supervised psychoanalysis to be eligible for upper level courses.
Course Description
Educational Objectives:
Upon completion of this course, participants should be able to:
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explain the place of mourning in both Freud and Klein’s theory of the mind
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pinpoint the distinctions between mourning and melancholia and to describe them each in terms of the different ways they present clinically as well as the implications they each have for mental life.
Evaluation Method
Each student’s participation in class discussion and his or her demonstration of understanding of the course objectives and reading material is assessed in a written evaluation by the instructor(s).
These articles are protected under relevant copyright regulations. They are available in the New York Psychoanalytic Society & Institute Electronic Reserve for your convenience, and for your personal use.
Readings for 2026-27 are confirmed.
CLASS 1: September 16, 2026
REQUIRED READING
Freud, S. (1917). Mourning and Melancholia. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume XIV (1914-1916): On the History of the Psycho-Analytic Movement, Papers on Metapsychology and Other Works, 237-258.
CLASS 2: September 23, 2026
REQUIRED READING
Ogden, T.H. (2002). A New Reading of the Origins of Object-Relations Theory. Int. J. Psycho-Anal., 83(4):767-782.
CLASS 3: September 30, 2026
REQUIRED READING
Klein, M. (1940). Mourning and its Relation to Manic-Depressive States. Int. J. Psycho-Anal., 21:125-153.
CLASS 4: October 7, 2026
REQUIRED READING
Klein paper, continued.
Sodre, I. (2015). The Wound, The Bow and the Shadow of the Object: Notes of Freud’s ‘Mourning and Melancholia.’ In: Imaginary Existences. New York: Routledge, pp. 161-182.
(recommended) Steiner, J. (2005). The Conflict between Mourning and Melancholia. Psychoanal Q., 74(1):83-104.
CLASS 5: October 14, 2026
REQUIRED READING
Green, A. (1986). The dead mother. In: On Private Madness. The Hogarth Press Ltd.: London. [Read pp. 142-155]
Deutsch, H. (1937) The Absence of Grief. Psychoanalytic Quarterly 6: 12-22
Wetmore, R. (1963) The role of grief in psychoanalysis. IJP 44:97-103
CLASS 6: October 21, 2026
REQUIRED READING
Array of options on M&M in social life, choose one to present on:
Eng & Han (2000), Dialogue on Racial Melancholia. Psychoanalytic Dialogues 10: 667-700 (no access yet)
Zeavin, L., McClure, M. M., Hamer, F. & Davids, M. F. (2022) Mourning in America. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 70:939-968.
DOWNLOAD THE PDF
CLASS 7: October 28, 2026
REQUIRED VIDEO
CLASS 8: November 4, 2026
REQUIRED READING
re-read:
Freud, S. (1917). Mourning and Melancholia. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume XIV (1914-1916): On the History of the Psycho-Analytic Movement, Papers on Metapsychology and Other Works, 237-258.