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

Author: Vamık D. Volkan

£20.69 – £31.99

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.

Due to be published July 2025

Author

Vamık D. Volkan
ISBN

9781800134096
Format

Paperback, e-Book, Print & e-Book
Page Extent

320
Publication Date

July 2025
Subject Areas

Psychoanalysis
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Description

Vamık 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.

About the author

About the author

Vamık Volkan, MD, DFLAPA, received his medical education at the School of Medicine, University of Ankara, Turkey. He is an emeritus professor of psychiatry at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville and an emeritus training and supervising analyst at the Washington Psychoanalytic Institute, Washington, DC. In 1987, Dr Volkan established the Center for the Study of Mind and Human Interaction (CSMHI) at the School of Medicine, University of Virginia. CSMHI applied a growing theoretical and field-proven base of knowledge to issues such as ethnic tension, racism, large-group identity, terrorism, societal trauma, immigration, mourning, transgenerational transmissions, leader–follower relationships, and other aspects of national and international conflict. A year after his 2002 retirement, Dr Volkan became the Senior Erik Erikson Scholar at the Erikson Institute of the Austen Riggs Center, Stockbridge, Massachusetts and he spent three to six months there each year for ten years.

In 2006, he was Fulbright/Sigmund Freud-Privatstiftung Visiting Scholar of Psychoanalysis in Vienna, Austria. Dr Volkan holds honorary doctorate degrees from Kuopio University (now called the University of Eastern Finland), Finland; from Ankara University, Turkey; and the Eastern European Psychoanalytic Institute, Russia. He was a former president of the Turkish-American Neuropsychiatric Society, the International Society of Political Psychology, the Virginia Psychoanalytic Society, and the American College of Psychoanalysts. Among many the awards he received are the Nevitt Sanford Award, Elise M. Hayman Award, L. Bryce Boyer Award, Margaret Mahler Literature Prize, Hans H. Strupp Award, the American College of Psychoanalysts’ Distinguished Officer Award for 2014, and the Mary S. Sigourney Award for 2015. He received the Sigmund Freud Award given by the city of Vienna, Austria in collaboration with the World Council of Psychotherapy. He also was honored on several occasions by being nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize with letters of support from twenty-seven countries. Dr Volkan is the author, co-author, editor, or co-editor of more than fifty psychoanalytic and psychopolitical books, including Enemies on the Couch: A Psychopolitical Journey through War and Peace. Currently Dr Volkan is the president emeritus of the International Dialogue Initiative (IDI), which he established in 2007. He continues to lecture nationally and internationally.

Contents

Contents

Table of Contents 

Preface to the reissue
Acknowledgments
About the author
Foreword by Harold F. Searles, M.D.

  1. Introduction: The evolution of research into complicated mourning

Part I: Phenomenological and theoretical findings

  1. Uncomplicated mourning
  2. Complications in the initial stage of the mourning process
  3. Complications in the work of mourning: Reactive depression
  4. Complications in the work of mourning: Established pathological mourning
  5. An example of the linking object: Othello’s handkerchief 

Part II: Treatment

  1. Psychoanalytic psychotherapy of established pathological mourning
  2. The daughters of Goodbar
  3. Re-grief therapy
  4. Three more examples of re-grief therapy 
  5. A yellow spot in the bottom of a coffee cup

Part III: Living linking objects and related psychological states

  1. Children’s reactions to death: “Negative” outcome – the case of the stone swan
  2. Children’s reactions to death: “Positive” outcome – the case of “Immortal Atatürk”
  3. A living linking object: The case of the Night of the Living Dead

Part IV: Coda

  1. Magical inanimate objects

References
Name index
Subject index

 

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