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In psychodrama, the possibility of replacing the analyst, who is provisionally absent, allows us to see how patients deal with this trauma, its conscious and unconscious effects, defenses, and modifications of transference. Over the course of seven years of treating a bipolar patient, the dynamics brought about by three absences of the analyst-playmaker and the way in which the substitute object of transference was used have led to a rethinking of pathological mourning.