Comparing Freud's Mourning And Melancholia

Judy Blume once said, “Some changes happen deep down inside you and the truth is, only you know about them.” Freud’s concepts in his 1917 work Mourning and Melancholia offer possibilities of thinking about change and loss in different ways and at different levels. In this paper I shall explore the idea that mourning rather than melancholia must occur throughout all developmental stages of life in order to reach a healthy and peaceful time in your life where the concept of loss can be fully accepted and understood. To support this I shall present and explain how it is crucial to mourn childhood, adolescence, and adulthood to move acceptably and steadily through life and not remain melancholic, or fixated, in any particular life stage finding
yourself in a position where you feel “stuck.” I shall also present case studies where you will see both an example of successful mourning through life stages and one in which the young person has failed to mourn their attachments in that stage and instead becomes fixated on such attachments, remaining in a melancholic state unable to move forward. In Freud’s work, Mourning and Melancholia, Freud compares two similar but certainly different phenomena’s in response to loss and grief. First we must take a look at the subject of loss and undergoing grief. Freud acknowledges that the loss of an object or relationship that involves libidinal investment can lead to one way of undergoing grief, which is mourning. Freud argues that mourning is recognized as a healthy and normal [process that is essentially necessary to recover from the object or relationship that has been lost (Freud, 1917, p. 243). Freud understands the concept of mourning as a type of “work” or process of undergoing the loss of a libidinal invested object or relationship. Through mourning, one slowly comes to terms with reality and gains larger consciousness as the process of mourning continues. For example, a person who has lost a loved one, may revisit every aspect of their relationship, reliving their past love in each other through feelings and memory alone. By revisiting every aspect of the relationship with the object that was lost, uncomfortably, bit-by-bit, the loved object is eventually abandoned and surrendered. For Freud, melancholia is an alternative process one can encounter when undergoing grief after experiencing a type of loss.
He argues that melancholia is not as normal of a grieving process and can be known to be what we call depression. Freud acknowledges that the symptoms of melancholia can certainly resemble the symptoms of mourning as in his work he makes a comparison between the two phenomena’s. These resembled symptoms can include the loss of interest in the outside world, persistent sadness, and certain indifferences to work and love. Although beyond these similarities an individual in a melancholic state can suffer from continual self-criticism, low self-esteem, and in a delusional way can at times anticipate some type of punishment. The process of melancholia can be considered to be more painful as it is through the unconscious process of melancholia that there is a loss for self-regard and the loved object of relationship is internalized. A melancholic will unceasingly describe themselves as morally reprehensible as they will act in a way as if the relationship or object that is lost is truly still there and presents elements of depression such as difficulty eating or sleeping. They have lost an object to which they remain attached by identifying with that object or relationship. Through this identification or internalization of an object in melancholia, an individual’s ego is divided, allowing them to enter into a manic depression or what Freud calls mania. Therefore, instead of separating from and giving up the object or relationship causing ambivalent feelings, a melancholic will remain attached by becoming the object
themselves.