A differentiation is made between depression which is borne, sustained, and worked through, thus revealing an integrative process, and depression of a non‐developmental kind, deviation as a means of escape from psychic pain into pleasure and excitement, and acting out in its destructive and task‐avoiding aspects. These are all manifestations of a failure to negotiate the depressive position. That position itself depends upon the ability to tolerate relinquishment and to work through the pains of separation and loss without overwhelming persecutory anxiety and the abdication from it which leads to brutalization.
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