Melancholia and the unabandoned object

Melancholia as the invasive presence of an objectRussell GriggIn this chapter I extend Freud’s analysis of mourning, which, I argue, is flawed by being viewed only from the psychological angle. I then turn to melancholia, and argue that Freud’s comparison of mourning and melancholia is misleading. I point out that, as Freud himself recognises, the attack upon the self in melancholia is too devastating for it to be fully understood as internalised aggression against the object, and so some other explanation of the origins of melancholia needs to be found. I then argue for the thesis that the melancholic suffers from the invasive presence of an object and not, as Freud’s work suggests, from an inability to accept the loss of an object. The chapter finished with an examination of Lacan’s related theses on depression and sadness, and examine the connections between mourning and melancholia and what Lacan calls “moral feebleness”.