| Summary: | There is dissention among psychoanalysts about mourning in childhood, including the criteria appropriate to define mourning, the intrapsychic processes of mourning, the ways these manifest in grief and the factors affecting the outcome of childhood bereavement. In order to place the controversies in context, research on adult mourning, both psychoanalytic and empirical, is first reviewed. Psychoanalytic contributions on childhood mourning, with particular reference to parent loss are then examined, and it is .contended that Klein's theoretical formulations have been under utilised in illuminating childhood bereavement reactions. Questions raised but unanswered by the psychoanalytic literature on childhood parent loss are considered-to be whether the loss of a primary love object has specific repercussions, either in affecting mourning or the child's ongoing development in the parent's absence; whether the therapeutic relationship has been necessary to facilitate mourning in the case-reports discussed; whether generalisations are being made from an unrepresentative sample; and what role cognitive conceptions of death have in affecting bereavement reactions.
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