Manic defences in a mourning process of a group of adolescents.

This paper describes the central role of manic defences in the process of working through mourning in a group of bereaved adolescents. Two factors were found to facilitate the effective use of manic defences in working through mourning in the group: (a) manic defences were given a legitimate and important place in the group, and were regarded as agents of life in the ongoing dealings with death; and (b) a certain degree of introspection was always maintained, like a window not allowed to be shut completely, to allow an attenuated encounter with difficult emotions. The use of manic defences, combined with these two factors, allowed flexible two-way movement between the schizoparanoid and the depressive positions, hence facilitated the working through of mourning in the group. The process described in this paper took place in a group of bereaved adolescents. Twenty sessions of one and a half hours were directed by two clinical psychologists, as part of the support offered by the Department of Rehabilitation of the Israeli Ministry of Defence to bereaved families in Israel.