ON BOREDOM’

RALPH R. GREENSON, M.D.

Boredom is a phenomenon which is easier to describe than to

define. T h e uniqueness of the feeling of being bored seems to de-
pend upon the coexistence of the following components: a state
of dissatisfaction and a disinclination to action; a state of longing
and an inability to designate what is longed for; a sense of e m p
tiness; a passive, expectant attitude with the hope that the ex-
ternal world will supply the satisfaction; a distorted sense of time
i n which time seems to stand still. (The German word for bore-
dom is Langeweile-which, literally translated, means “long
time.”)
Boredom is seen to occur in healthy people as a transient state.
In the neurotic, boredom usually does not play an important role
since the patient is preoccupied with anxieties, depressions, frus-
trations, obsessions, etc. I n the psychoses, boredom proper is
rarely described, but we do see similar reactions in apathy and i n
--.
the depressions.
I t is the purpose of this presentation to investigate, on the basis
of clinical material, the various dynamic and structural factors re-
sponsible for the state of boredom. T h e most systematic and com-
prehensive analysis of this subject was made by Fenichel (3) in
1934. I n that paper Fenichel demonstrated that the bored person
is in a state of dammed-up instinctual tension, but the objects and
aims are repressed. H e described two forms of boredom, one char-
acterized by motor calmness, the other by motor restlessness; but
he found in both the same essential pathology. He, and later
1 Presented in part at the Annual hleeting of the American Psychoanalytic Asso-
ciation, Cincinnati, May. 1951.
7

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8 RALPH R. GREENSON

Spitz (19), depicted the peculiar role of monotony in producing

both states of high excitement and boredom. In addition, Fenichel
indicated the importance of orality and sketched briefly some con-
nections between boredom, depersonalization and depression.
Other writers, namely, Ferenczi (5), Spitz (19), Winterstein (21) ,
and Bergler (2), have contributed to one or another aspect of the
problem. This paper will be limited to a further exploration of
boredom, emphasizing particularly the disturbances in the think-
ing processes, the vicissitudes of the oral impulses and the defense
mechanisms involved i n this syndrome.
A twenty-nine-year-old, attractive married woman with four
children, entered analysis with the chief complaint that she was
terribly bored. For the past five years, her main preoccupation
was trying to fill u p her empty life. Her husband, her children,
her many acquaintances, her social activities, all bored her. She
had attempted various hobbies, took lessons of all sorts, had begun
drinking, had become promiscuous-all to no avail. Her life re-
mained empty. She could not get emotionally involved i n anybody
or anything and her only aim was to kill time, to push the hours
away, hoping the intolerable boredom would somehow vanish.
About a year before coming to treatment she had gone through
an acute depression, but after a suicide attempt with sedatives the
depression disappeared and the old feeling of boredom returned.
T h e relevant part of the patient’s present situation can be re-
ported as follows: Her husband was a kindly man whom she had
married ten years previously because he was wealthy and good to
her. She was fond of him but had never loved him. In recent years
she noted an increasing resentment toward her husband because
of characteristics in him which she considered “motherly.” H e was
overly protective toward the children, extremely emotional with
them, and completely inconsistent. T h e patient, herself, was fond
of the children but only in a rather distant way. She was unable
to become really emotionally involved with them and felt much
more like their sister than their mother. She had no idea of how to
spend time with them, how to talk or how to play with them. She
hired a nursemaid to care for them and rarely saw them.
The patient’s recent sexual history revealed that she had been

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ON BOREDOM 9

faithful to her husband for many years and had only started hav-
ing extramarital affairs when her boredom became extreme. She
enjoyed these affairs because of the intrigue; they were interesting
and diverted her mind. Her sexual satisfaction was greater with
her husband, however.
Since the onset of the boredom, the patient had taken to drink-
ing quite heavily and consumed about ten to fifteen alcoholic
drinks per day. She did not consider herself an alcoholic, since, in
her social sphere, this quantity of drinking was usual. Her own
reason for drinking was that it made her feel pleasantly quiet and
it made the time pass quickly.
T h e significant past history of this patient disclosed that her
father had deserted the family when the patient was two and a
half years of age and she was abandoned by her mother at three.
From that time on the patient lived with grandparents, aunts and
uncles; being shifted about at irregular intervals. From time to
time her mother would visit and spend time with her.
T h e patient’s mother was a warmhearted, irresponsible, promis-
cuous, alcoholic woman. In the first years of her life the patient
yearned for this mother because she was so warm and giving in her
ways in contrast to the cold, austere grandparents. Later on she
turned against her, felt great conscious hatred toward her and was
determined never to become the kind of a woman her mother
was. During the course of the analysis the fear of becoming like
her mother was uncovered to be one of the dominant anxieties
i n the patient’s life.
T h e patient’s early sexual history is noteworthy because of the
many traumata and because of the ease with which she was able
to recall these experiences. From age two she could remember
primal scenes; at age four she experienced cunnilingus with dogs;
somewhat later there were doctor games and before six clitoral
masturbation. At twelve there was a resumption of masturbation,
at fifteen the first heterosexual experience. She had an abortion at
age sixteen, syphilis at seventeen, a homosexual affair at eighteen
and indulged in various perverse acts until nineteen, when she
was married. Most of these activities were pursued because they
were a means of establishing an interpersonal relationship. T h e

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10 . RALPH R. GREENSON

patient felt she had little else to offer anyone and she was grateful
for any emotional warmth shown her. T h e search for sexual satis-
faction was an unimportant factor in this behavior.

I1

T h e analysis began with the patient pouring forth a flood of

memories with much painful affect. It was striking that these mem-
ories had not been repressed but were readily available. ’IYith the
production of these memories and the affects connected with
them, the boredom vanished; instead the patient became tearful
and depressed. This, however, she felt as a relief from her usually
torturesome boredom. Within two weeks after the recital of the
many traumatic events, the boredom returned and it was now pos-
sible to study more minutely what this boredom represented. It
quickly became clear that in the bored state the affects connected
to the traumatic events were repressed. When she was bored it
was possible to get her to describe a traumatic event, but this was
done without any emotion. T h e initial welling u p of strong affect
was possible because of a strong early positive transference. T h e
return of the boredom indicated the re-establishment of the old
defenses, directed against affects primarily, not against memories.
During the bored state the patient would describe her feelings
as follows: “I can’t get with it. I’m nowhere. I’m gone. I feel
empty. I am constantly hungry but I don’t know what for.” Dur-
ing these periods she would drink excessively, usually awakening
with an amnesia for the evening’s events. At these times the pa-
tient would experience short-lived, acute obsessional ideas con-
cerning the fear of becoming fat and she would go through pe-
riods of alternately starving herself to undo this and stuffing her-
self to celebrate her accomplishment. Wulff (22) has described a
picture of food addiction with this manic-depressive undertone.
She consumed a great deal of time looking at her image in the
mirror, carefully scrutinizing her figure to determine any minute
changes. She squandered hours in beauty parlors, at hairdressers
and had massages. I n the evenings she would watch television for
hours on end. I t was at these times that she hungrily searched for

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ON BOREDOM 11

a sexual affair because it would give her something to think about.

During this phase of the analysis it was characteristic for the
patient to report in exact detail the trivia of her everyday life. I t
was particularly striking that she was never silent and although
she would describe activities and happenings, she never volun-
tarily talked of her emotions or thoughts. Her statement “I can’t
get with it; I’m nowhere,’’ represents her awareness of the fight
against feelings, impulses and fantasies. T h e struggle against the
fantasies was a key point of her defenses. This patient would
experience the most vivid night dreams, yet her associations went
to the day remnants and then on to the minutiae of her everyday
life. There was no link from the night dreams via associations to
fantasies, or thoughts, or memories. Yet she was apt to describe
other people’s fantasies very readily. She could imagine what her
friends might be imagining. Her night dreams were so vivid that
she usually felt them to be real. Often her husband would relate
that she spoke or acted out something in these dreams. T h e con-
tent of these dreams dealt primarily with some traumatic event of
early childhood; but her defenses when awake rendered the recital
of these dreams into a monotonous performance.
T h e absence of fantasies was most vividly demonstrated i n the
patient’s sexual life. I n order to reach orgasm it was necessary for
her husband to tell her stories of some sexual perversion which
he had committed or imagined in the past. T h e epitome of this
kind of behavior was using pornographic motion pictures pro-
jected on a screen in the bedroom prior to intercourse. Even i n
masturbation the patient would get bored because she had “noth-
ing to think about.” (In the past, however, she had been able to
obtain autoerotic satisfaction by imagining cunnilingus being per-
formed on her, usually by a dog or a woman.)
T h e impoverishment of the fantasy production was also mani-
fested in the patient’s language. She spoke in a very simple slang
and used a minimum of words. Her description of her bored state
was typical. “I’m gone. I’m nothing. I’m nowhere.” An evening’s
conversation with friends was dismissed with “Some friends
dropped over for some routine dialogue.” If she changed her
coiffure, she would ask the analyst “How do you like my new

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12 RALPH R. GREENSON

type?” If the analyst made an interpretation which was meaning-

ful, the patient would simply say “bong!” If the interpretation
seemed farfetched, her response would be “no bong.” Her lan-
guage contained a minimum of metaphor and verbal imagery.
Metaphor is personal and individual and is determined by the
speaker’s specific past history (Sharpe, 18). In this patient’s lan-
guage one sees her struggle against individuality, against her own
past history. Further, the concreteness and the condensation char-
acter of her speech have the qualities typical for the primary
process rather than the secondary process. T h e patient’s responses
to interpretations, “bong” and “no bong” are typical examples of
this. It seems that her ego could use the primary process and not
only be overwhelmed by it. Freud (7) in his explanation of wit and
Kris (14) in his paper on preconscious mental processes describe
related phenomena. (See also Freud, 8; Goldstein, 11.)
T h e inhibition of the fantasy life of bored people has been
stressed by Fenichel (3) and Winterstein (2 1). T h e analysis revealed
that fantasies (and even thinking and feeling) had to be fought
against since they were a threat. Freud (8) described the unique
position of fantasy among the mental phenomena, in that it
possesses qualities of both system Pcs and Ucs. Kris (14) stressed
the point that in fantasy more libidinous and aggressive energy
is discharged than in effective thinking, where neutralized energy
is used. Fantasy is closer to the id and primary process than reflec-
tive thinking. Thus fantasy is closely linked to both voluntary
motility and involuntary discharge. I n addition, since visual
imagery was particularly exciting for this patient, as manifested i n
her sexual practices, it was imperative that fantasy be curtailed.
I t is pertinent to recall that the patient’s night dreams were
extremely vivid; most of the time they felt real to her. This can be
construed to mean that as long as motility was blocked by sleep
it was possible for her to endure strong visual imagery. Further-
more, fantasy depends on and leads to memory. For this patient,
to remember meant either to feel the traumatic abandonment of
early childhood or the guilt feelings and anxieties derived from
her later experiences. Thus the motive for the ego’s inhibition of
fantasy seems to be based on the fact that fantasy could lead either

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ON BOREDOM I3

to dangerous actions or to painful remembrances. Throughout her

analysis one could see the transition between states of boredom
which when lifted led either to severe depressive reactions. or to
impulse-ridden behavior.
.The method by which this inhibition was achieved is more
difficult to formulate. T h e answer seems to lie in the shifts of
cathexis required for the perception of preconscious thought.
T h e censorship systems between system Cs and Pcs prevent the
necessary hypercathexis or the connection to verbal imagery, thus
blocking the gateway to consciousness and to motility (Freud, 6;
Rapaport, 17; Kris, 14). I n general, one sees in this patient a severe
disturbance in the thinking processes of the ego. T h e contrast
between the vividness of the dream imagery and the emotional
impoverishment of the waking thoughts indicate the patient’s
struggle against perceiving her fantasies. It also indicates the los-
ing struggle, in the sense that the dreams seemed more real. This
would indicate the weakness of the ego’s ability to defend itself
from the affects attempting to break through into consciousness.
Freud (10) and later Lewin (15) describe such phenomena in dis-
cussing psychotic states.

Despite the seeming absence of drives during the apathetic

bored intervals it was possible to discern some remnants of libid-
inal strivings. T h e most prominent feeling in this patient was the
sensation of emptiness, which she construed to mean hunger. She
was afraid to eat, since eating would make her fat, and being fat
would make her like her mother. She was also unable to accept
being a mother, for this meant she would be her mother. As stated
above, she did not feel like her children’s mother, but rather like
an older sister. T h e manysidedness of this struggle was evident i n
her frequent failures at dieting, her marrying a “motherly” man,
and i n her preference for cunnilingus. T o be fat meant to be
well fed, contented; but it also meant to be like mother, to be
dirty, to have a vagina and to be unlovable. To be thin was to be
clean, to be a penis and to be worthy of love. Yet thinness meant

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14 RALPH R. GREENSON

to be empty and to be constantly hungry. T h e few times in her

life when she was relatively content were when she was pregnant,
for then she was full, but not yet a mother. After delivery she was
impelled to combat the awareness of being a mother.
T h e drinking was, at first, a defense against the impulse to eat.
Later on it was a means of becoming unconscious, Le., to have an
orgasm. Drinking meant she was able to indulge in sexuality
without having to remember her fantasies. Drinking also gave her
a feeIing of having something in her without feeling unpleasantly
full. T h e patient claimed that when she drank she felt quiet.
Finally, drinking also meant to be like her mother, and thus even-
tually was also intolerable.
T h e promiscuity which was prevalent before the analysis was
basically a means of maintaining some semblance of interpersonal
relationship. I n her homosexual relationships, the patient usually
sought strong, protective women, who would do things for her
sexually. T h e promiscuity and the homosexuality had to be re-
nounced when they became linked to the patient’s conception of
her mother.
T h e analysis revealed the patient’s primary libidinal orienta-
tion focused on her oral strivings, which is in accord with Feni-
chel’s findings. O n the surface the libidinal aim was passive, i.e.,
the wish to be sucked. For the patient this symbolized the greatest
token of being loved: it was a means of simultaneously gratifying
libidinal and narcissistic needs. I t was an attempt to undo the
traumatic deprivation of her early childhood. I t was interesting
that when cunnilingus was being performed upon her she felt
like the little one who was being cared for by the adult-man or
woman was unimportant. But beneath this passive oral impulse
there was an active oral striving to “melt” her mouth into the
genitals or another woman (Fenichel, 3). At these times she would
describe her aim as wanting to lose the awareness of the boundary
between her mouth and the woman’s genitals. This was the most
deeply repressed and the most resistant unconscious impulse. This
patient, despite her conscious hostility and contempt for her
mother and her fear of becoming like her mother, unconsciously
was searching for an oral reunion with her mother. She wanted

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ON BOREDOM 15

to re-establish the infantile unity of mother and child via the

mouth. T h e acute depression one year prior to the analysis was
precipitated by a sudden, irrational jealousy of her husband’s
relationship with a woman very similar to her mother.
It was possible to observe how this patient in her struggles
against these impulses had attempted to give u p object relation-
ships and regressed to identifications in various forms. Then, when
these identifications proved threFtening, she attempted to re-
nounce all actions reminiscent of her mother, became withdrawn
and more narcissistically oriented. T h e looking in the mirror, her
preoccupation with her body, the occasional choice of homosexual
partners who resembled herself, all pointed in this direction. This
narcissistic withdrawal, however, brought with it the feeling of not
being here, of being gone, which also was painful, but which
served the purpose of denying the existence of her body with the
incorporated mother image. Her attempts to escape from the
nothingness then led her back in the direction of unconsciously
seeking a relationship to a woman, or a man, like her mother.
Thus this patient vacillated between different kinds of object
relationships with men or women who were mothers in some
aspects of their relationship to her, but she could not maintain
one where motherliness and sexuality were combined. ’CVhen the
awareness of the motherliness became too clear, she resorted then
to finding new objects for sexuality which led to promiscuity,
only once again to be reminded of her mother. T h e vicissitudes
of the patient’s attempts to cope with her oral-incorporative urges
toward her mother are reminiscent of the struggle between super-
ego, ego and introject in psychotic depressions (Freud, 9; Abra-
ham, 1; Fenichel, 4; Lewin, 15). Part of the object relationships
of this patient were aimed at finding a good introject in order
to neutralize the bad introject which had already been incorpor-
ated. This is similar to the question of good food versus bad food
(Rado, IS), which obsessed her during her struggles with eating.
Apparently, one of the ways this patient was able to avoid a
psychotic depression was by discharging different oral-incorpor-
ative impulses in eating, fasting, drinking, homosexuality, cun-
nilingus and pregnancy, However, she was not merely an impulse-

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16 RALPH R. GREENSON

ridden personality; her main complaint was boredom. Most of the

time she did not feel driven. On the contrary, she complained of
feeling empty and longed to fill up the emptiness. A further study
of this feeling of emptiness and the mechanisms responsible for it
provides the key to the understanding of her boredom.

IV

T h e feeling of emptiness combined with a sense of longing and

an absence of fantasies and thoughts which would lead to satis-
faction is characteristic for boredom. I n patients who suffer from
apathy we also find a feeling of emptiness but here there is no
more longing and a far greater inhibition of the ego’s thinking
and perceptiye functions (Greenson, 12). I n the depressions, too,
there is a feeling of emptiness, but it is the world which is felt
as empty; the self is sensed as heavy, weighted down, or low. Fur-
ther, in depressions there is a rich, though morbid, fantasy life
concerning specific objects or their derivatives.
T h e emptiness in boredom is in the first place due to the re-
pression of the forbidden instinctual aims and objects along with
the inhibition in imagination. However, there seem to be addi-
tional determinants for this empty feeling. Emptiness represents
hunger. T h e patient ate, drank, looked at television or i n the
mirror when bored. Most bored persons resort to oral activities.
T h e bored individual’s feeling of emptiness is similar to the expe-
rience of the child waiting hungrily for the breast. T h e aim and
object, sucking, breast and mother, are repressed, however, and
only the feeling of emptiness remains. I t seems that we are dealing
here with the substitution of a sensation for a fantasy. Instead of
having imagery involving derivatives of her mother and her
longing, the patient regressed to a more archaic thought form and
perceived, instead, a sensation of emptiness. This is a manifesta-
tion of ego regression, a primitivization of ego functions, to use
Kris’ term. This phenomenon brings fantasy closer to the id and
the primary process. T h e emptiness is not merely a sensation,
however, it is a psychic representation (Isaacs, 13). This conception
may be expressed thusly: the emptiness represents the hungry

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O N BOREDOM ’ 17

child with the image of “no-mother,” “no-breast,” “mother-will-

not-come.’’ (This may help to explain the agonizing slowness of
the passage of time in these patients. T h e experience of time seems
to be dependent upon delay of impulse discharge. Excessive dis-
charge delay seems to slow down the passage of time, whereas
quick impulse discharge makes time seem to pass quickly (Feni-
chel, 3; Rapaport, 17).
If we return to the problem of the feeling of emptiness, it seems
plausible that the formulation of the hungry child with the image
I
of “no-mother” may also represent an attempt to deny that the
mother was incorporated within the patient. It may be that
through the boredom the patient was saying: “It is not true that
my mother is within me. I’m just a little baby waiting hungrily
for some satisfaction.” T h e denial of the introjection appears to
be the decisive defense mechanism which made it possible for
this patient to develop boredom and at the same time to ward off
a severe depressive reaction.* T h e mechanism of denial is further
illustrated by the fact that the bored person often claims to be
in a state of lack of tension, and boredom has been described as
a displeasureful lack of tension. T h e denial seems to becloud the
fact that the patient is full of tension, but i t is a special kind of
tension-the tension of emptiness. “The bored person is full of
emptiness.” Another aspect of the denial can be seen in the readi-
ness of bored persons to describe situations and people as boring
rather than to acknowledge that the bored feeling is within. “It
bores me,” is more ego syntonic than “I am bored.” When one is
bored even the most exciting events can be felt as boring. [At this
point one might speculate upon the connection between boredom
and elation which also makes extensive use of denial mechanisms
(Lewin, 15) 1.
T h e feeling of emptiness is thus seen to be overdetermined.
T h e mechanism of denial is a n important factor in producing this
sensation. I n this way the ego has attempted to ward off the aware-
2Edith Jacobson and Edward Dibring, in discussing this paper at the Annual
Meeting, stressed the fact that boredom is an affective state which is the result of
certain complicated defense mechanisms. I am indebted to both discussants and to
David Rapaport for many suggestions which were helpful in the final formulations.

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18 RALPH R. GREENSON

ness of strong oral-libidinal and aggressive-incorporative impulses.

This defense succeeds since it temporarily prevents the outbreak
of a severe depression or self-destructive actions. This defense
failed in this case of severe boredom, since the self-inflicted depri-
vation stirred u p feelings from the traumatic deprivation of early
childhood and therefore brought with it the feeling of being
overwhelmingly bored, which was also intolerable.

T h e crucial therapeutic factor in this case was the transference.

T h e patient was able to develop a strong, positive transference
which eventually led to a change in the character of the incor-
porated objects which were now reliable and permissive. Gradu-
ally she was then able to tolerate object relationships on a higher
libidinal level.
An interesting aspect of this improvement was seen in the pa-
tient’s reactions to the purchase of a new and beautiful home. T h e
patient’s attitude to possessions is noteworthy: If she bought some-
thing which she liked and considered beautiful, it was not merely
her possession, but it was she. She would exhibit a beautiful vase
to her friends with the phrase, “Look at me.” She would exclaim
when she saw a pretty dress she wanted, “This is me.” She did not
like her rented home because it represented a part of her she
preferred to disavow. It was big, rambling, i.e., fat, sloppy, like
mother. T h e new and beautiful home was sleek, pretty, and thin;
for her it meant, “The new me, the me I want to show.” TVhereas
previously she had often felt homeless despite her luxurious
setting; with the purchase of the new home with which she could
now identify, she now felt “at home.” It should be emphasized
that the patient’s utterances about her possessions were always
said with tongue-in-cheek, as though part of her ego were well
aware of her ego boundaries.
As the apathetic bored state disappeared and fantasies began to
return, one could then discern a different kind of boredom: agi-
tated boredom. There persisted some feeling of emptiness, but
with the perception of fantasies the patient began to do things.

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ON BOREDOM 19

T h e actions undertaken, however, were not satisfying and there

was an atmosphere of restlessness and dissatisfaction in these activ-
ities. Fenichel (3) and Spitz (19) have described the fidgetiness
i n children who are in a high state of conflictual excitement about
the parental night noises they hear. A similar condition can also
be observed in the agitated boredom of the prepuberty child. In
the patient under discussion it seemed that the agitated boredom
was due partly to her dissatisfaction with the available activities.
I n the transitional phase the real aims and objects of her instinc-
tual demands were still not accessible to her. Nevertheless, since
body sensations had begun to become capable of translation into
visual imagery and thought, the gateway to motility was opened.
I n a sense, however, the images and thoughts were still deflected
and distorted by the persisting censorship and therefore led to the
“wrong” fantasies and therefore to dissatisfying actions. Many
people suffer from boredom of this type. They are characterized
by a great need for “diversions and distractions.” T h e very mean-
ing of these terms confirms the persisting censorship between
impulse and action. These people do not enjoy true satisfaction
and therefore have to resort to frequent “distractions.”

VI

On the basis of the foregoing formulations in reference to the

clinical case cited above, it now seems possible to attempt to
explain the occurrence of boredom in normal people. One might
construct the following sequence of events: At the behest of the
superego, certain instinctual aims and/or objects have to be
repressed (Spitz, 19; IVindholz, 20). This step results in a feeling
of tension. At this point, if the ego has to inhibit fantasies and
thought derivatives of these impulses because they are also too
threatening, we have as a consequence a feeling of emptiness.
This is perceived as a deprivation, a self-administered deprivation.
IVe thus have a combination of instinctual tension and a vague
feeling of emptiness. T h e instinctual tension is without direction
due to the inhibition of thoughts and fantasies. Tension and emp-
tiness is felt as a kind of hunger-stimulus hunger. Since the

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20 RALPH R. GREENSON

individual does not know for what he is hungry, he now turns to

the external world, with the hope that it will provide the missing
aim and/or object. I believe it is this state of affairs which is char-
acteristic for all boredom. (If fantasies or other derivatives of for-
bidden impulses would break through into consciousness, there
would be _no boredom but either frustration, anxiety, depression,
or obsession, as we see in other neuroses.)
Boredom can occur on any Ievel of libidinal organization. How-
ever, the hypotheses set forth above, the clinical case herein de-
scribed, and the general experience that boredom occurs more
frequently in depressed patients indicate that people with strong
oral fixations are particularly predisposed to boredom. The expla-
nation for this lies in the role played by deprivation in the pro-
duction of boredom as well as in the related states of depression
and apathy. Depressed people feel deprived of love, either from an
external or internal object, or both. I n apathy, too, traumatic
deprivation plays a decisive role-only here the external world is
responsible. I n boredom we find a self-administered deprivation;
the loss of thoughts and fantasies which would lead to satisfaction.
Depressed persons are full of fantasies i n their struggle to regain
the unloving object. Apathetic persons have given up the struggle
and their fantasy life is restricted to factors concerned with the
question of survival. I n boredom there is a longing for the lost
satisfactions similar to what one sees in the depressions along with
the feeling of emptiness characteristic for apathy.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Abraham, I;. (1924) A short study of the development of the libido, viewed
in the light of mental diseases. Selected Papers on Psycho-Analysis. London:
Hogarth Press, 1927.
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