The Mourners. A Clinical Encounter.

A literary reconstruction of an encounter in the form of a hermeneutic clinical reading. A young man arrives with what surfaces as depressive symptoms. His deeper difficulty is read here as an incapacity to recognize his own worth through any living channel. The reading traces that incapacity across his family, his friendships, romantic relationships, and a recurring fantasy, in which -- it is argued -- being mourned becomes the one condition under which he can imagine being loved, and believe it. Observation, inference, and speculation are marked as such throughout, and the relationship, including the author's countertransference, is kept within the frame. The account is interpretive, not empirical, and makes no claim to generalize beyond the encounter it reads.