In Sigmund
Freud's "Mourning and Melancholia" (1917) he offers the notion that
melancholy and mourning are two different responses to loss. For Freud, pathological melancholy, unlike normal mourning, is a process in which separation from an object of
attachment remained incomplete for some reason. Instead of retracting the
libido invested with the lost object and redirecting it to another object, the
melancholic person directs its excess libido inwards. As a result a part of the
person identifies with the lost person, resulting in a inner division. The internalization
of the lost loved one forms a separate faculty in the psyche which is harsh,
judgmental, angry and yet attracting. While mourning is associated with conscious
thought, melancholia happens in the unconscious.
In
his famous and important article "The Ego and the Id" (1923) Freud
expanded on "Mourning and Melancholia" arguing that the process is
universal and normal and is in fact a part of the Oedipal Phase. The
internalization of the parent is, according to Freud, the inner division that
forms the "super-ego".
