Blocked Mourning, Melancholia, and Depression's Trap

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In his essay “Mourning and Melancholia,” Freud described two different responses to the loss of a person or thing. In the famous 1915 essay, written a year after the outbreak of the First World War, Freud described the trap of melancholia, what fires it, and the flow of dynamic energy.

After a loss, an individual can become stranded in grief, in melancholia that intrudes in daily living, consumes one’s energies, and shuts off engagement with the outside world. In ancient Greece, melancholy was thought to result from an imbalance of bodily liquids believed to be caused by an excess of black bile. Today the word "melancholia" is roughly synonymous with depression, also characterized by a loss of interest in the external world and lessening one's ability to love.

In Freud's theory, melancholy occurs when the relationship lost is ambivalent, consisting of strong feelings of love and hate. In response to loss, for instance, the death of a friend or loved one, the relationship is internalized. Part of the ego becomes identified with the lost person. As Freud said, "Thus the shadow of the object fell upon the ego." The conflict of the relationship is internalized, too, and preserved as part of the self. The hate that was felt toward the person becomes directed at the self.

The relationship that is preserved internally exerts a powerful influence on the aggrieved. Freud claimed that such a mind is cleft in two: one part rages against the other in excessive criticism and self-reproach. In his terminology, the critical superego hammers away at the ego with blame and fault-finding, which enfeebles it.

The loss of another is transformed into a loss of ego, and self-esteem is lowered. “Melancholia is a disease of narcissism,” Thomas Ogden said. The melancholic avoids the pain of loss and mourning by internalizing the ambivalent relation, but at an enormous cost: the loss of ego vitality. The self adapts to people and things in the external world at the expense of internal reality.

Psychoanalyst Michael Balint argued that one of the main aims of psychotherapy is growing the superego. The superego is made of introjections of parents and authority figures that become integral parts of the self. In Balint's words, the superego is a composite of the “mental scars” left by the loved people of childhood.

One of the goals of therapy is to heal these scars, loosen their grip, soften their edges. What parts of the self might be released if not under the vise-grip of a damning or shaming superego? Therapeutic treatment aims to help the depressed patient tolerate sadness as part of the human experience. In mourning, the loss is worked through after a certain time lapse, and sadness is allowed.

During the working through of grief, one's emotional attachment to the lost person or thing is redirected toward another creative purpose. One is able to grow from the memories of the person lost and bring alive something that never was.

To find a therapist, visit the Psychology Today Therapy Directory.