^aCentre for Psychoanalytic Studies, University of Essex, Wivenhoe Park, Colchester, Essex CO4 3SQ, UK. E-mail: kfiglio@essex.ac.uk

Abstract

In this paper, I define hope, in psychoanalytic terms, as an experience of unfulfilled anticipation that expresses a tension in the gap between ego and ego-ideal. In this form, one can see more clearly a duality of hope: a libidinal form and a destructive form, based on projection and projective identification. The former reinforces groups, the latter polarizes them. I relate these forms to reparation and manic reparation, and suggest that hope is an affect of reparation.