Freud's Mourning and Melancholia

Mortality, Vol. 6, No. 2, 2001 CLASSICS REVISITED Freud’s Mourning and Melancholia MARY BRADBURY Mourning and Melancholia, Standard Edition XIV. London: Hogarth Press Sigmund Freud London: Hogarth Press, 1917 [1915] Introduction Freud’s Mourning and Melancholia is a classic. Written in 1915 and published 2 years later, it signalled a signiŽcant shift in both psychoanalytic theory and in our understanding of how people react to various kinds of loss. While the impact of Freud’s thinking upon models of grief over the last 84 years has been incalculable (see Stroebe & Stroebe, 1987; Middleton et al., 1993), all too often his conception of grief is presented like an uprooted tree, torn from its psychoanalytic roots. Authors dutifully describe the ‘psychoanalytic perspective on grief’, before getting onto the real business of articulating their own approach (see Archer (1999) for a typical example). In this paper I will attempt to describe the theory that lies at the heart of the paper. I will also put the paper in a historical context. In fact, one could argue that the central topic of Freud’s paper is actually the crucial mechanism of what he called ‘identiŽcation’. Melancholia (depression) was used as the illustrative example, while mourning, in contrast, was used as an example of the norm. Freud provided somewhat brief descriptions of normal and pathological mourning. Yet, these thumbnail sketches of grief and mourning were to prove to be brilliant and profound. The metapyschology papers It is worth bearing in mind that Mourning and Melancholia was written during the First World War. Freud, whose two sons were Žghting at the front, anxiously followed the accounts of the slaughter in the daily papers; loss was on everyone’s minds. Yet, as Gay (1988) notes, the war gave 59-year-old Freud Correspondence to: 40 Osborne Road, London N4 3SD. e-mail: [email protected] ISSN 1357-6275/print/ISSN 1469-4885/online/01/020212-07 Ó 2001 Taylor & Francis Ltd DOI: 10.1080/13576270120051866 Freud’s Mourning and Melancholia 213 plenty of time for work; there were few patients to see in Vienna, no editorial chores and no psychoanalytic congresses to attend. Freud may have been lonely and worried, but he could throw himself into his writing and thinking, busy working, ‘in secret’, as he put it in a letter to Lou Andreas-Salomé in November 1914, with ‘comprehensive and perhaps momentous things’ (Gay, 1988: 362). Mourning and Melancholia was originally conceived as one chapter in what Freud called his ‘metapsychology’ book. Ambitiously, he hoped that this book would provide a clear exposition of the theory of the new discipline of psychoanalysis. However, in the very process of writing the interrelated papers, Freud found that his theory began to crumble before his eyes. By 1915, increasingly struggling with novel and contradictory concepts, Freud must have been aware that it was time for some fresh theory building; Gay notes that in mid-June of that year Freud, in his correspondence with the psychoanalyst Ferenczi, expressed some reservations about the book. This helps to explain why Freud sounds so tentative at times in Mourning and Melancholia—there is no doubt that his conŽdence was shaken (see particularly pages 250 and 253). In the end, only Žve of the papers were published; Freud destroyed the remaining seven. Yet his initial enthusiasm was to prove to have been prophetic; several of the surviving chapters, such as Repression (1915) and The Unconscious (1915), remain landmark works. Bristling with jargon, these ‘metapsychology’ papers were clearly written for an academic audience; Freud uncompromisingly presumes an understanding of his work. At this point of time he was writing for his eager and enthusiastic psychoanalytic community—his ‘inner circle’ (Gay, 1988). Of course, Freud would also have had in mind a less benign audience, one which expressed the narrow-minded and anti-Semitic attitudes of the Austrian psychiatric establishment. The combination of being both an outcast and a charismatic leader resulted in a strange mix of defensiveness and deŽance in Freud’s writings. This is much in evidence in the 1917 paper; both the opening and closing paragraphs give space to elaborate, yet unconvincing, disclaimers. Mourning and melancholia and Freud’s theories of mind It is generally acknowledged that Freud’s work can be separated into three phases (Rapaport & Gill, 1959; Sandler et al., 1997). Freud’s theorising developed through a process of to-ing and fro-ing between theory and clinical experience; new ideas were tried out in the consulting room and particular patients, many of whom are household names in psychoanalytic/therapeutic circles, unwittingly helped to cause theoretical breakthroughs. In the Žrst phase Freud, inuenced by the French psychiatrist Charcot as well as the Austrian physician Breuer, focused upon the aetiology of hysteria. At this time Freud argued that hysterical symptoms, such as paralysis, resulted from traumatic experience in childhood, such as the seduction of a young girl by her father; the tumult of emotions aroused at the time of the seduction were imagined to have been largely repressed into the unconscious part of the mind. Using hypnosis and suggestion, therapeutic results could be achieved by releas- 214 Mary Bradbury ing these strangulated emotions (often called affects) by talking about, and thereby bringing into consciousness, the trauma. By the late 1890s, deep in his own self-analysis and busy with the dreams of his patients, Freud came to see that the tales of misbehaving fathers, among others, were usually not so much retrieved memories of abuse but ‘phantasies’ of seduction (Sandler et al., 1997). This revelation signalled the start of the second phase of Freud’s thinking. In the highly productive 26 years that followed, Freud worked upon his so called ‘topographical’ model of mind—Žrst outlined in his famous book The interpretation of dreams (1900). Freud described three ‘systems’: the instinct-driven unconscious; the thought-, knowledge- and memory-full preconscious; and the system conscious (see Sandler et al., 1997). Unlike the unconscious system, which is ruled by the ‘pleasure principle’, seeking discharge or satisfaction of drives regardless of repercussions, both the preconscious and conscious systems adhere to the ‘reality principle’, an interaction between reason, standards of conduct and the outside world. Freud therefore developed a model of mind based upon a battle between the pleasureseeking primitive drives for, say, sex and food (what he called at this stage in his theory of mind the ‘sexual’ and ‘ego’ instincts) and the ‘higher’, verbal, systems of the mind. Thus, neurotic symptoms were envisioned as arising not so much from childhood experiences but from on-going unconscious conict between the systems; one could argue that this was Freud’s big discovery (Gay, 1988). Analysis of these areas of conict, using the technique of free-association, did not necessarily promise cure (although ideally, the patient could be rid of their neurotic symptoms); at this point in time Freud was more interested in using psychoanalysis as a navigational tool, as he mapped the mind (Gay, 1988). In many ways Freud’s conception of the mental states of depression and grief was quintessentially nineteenth century, drawing upon themes of natural causality, determinism and adaptation (Sandler et al., 1997). As Sandler notes, Freud, inuenced by the physiologist Brucke, envisioned psychological processes operating in terms of energy which could be released or withheld. He believed that the mental apparatus aimed to keep supplies of energy as low, or as constant, as possible. In both, On narcissism (1914) and Mourning and Melancholia Freud is, in a sense, exploring the fate of this energy. During the second phase, Freud conceived of the instincts or drives as being mainly sexual, although he did, later, concede that they can also be aggressive. The psychological aspect of the sexual drive was called ‘libido’ by Freud. Another way of grasping the meaning of libido would be to think of all that is encapsulated by the word ‘love’ (Freud, 1921). Libido can ‘cathect’, or invest, in an ‘object’ (the site of satisfaction) (Laplanche & Pontalis, 1988). Such cathexes of libido ow from the ego (the reservoir of all libido) to both whole and part-objects in the outside world and, Freud implied, representations of objects in the internal world. Mourning and Melancholia, written during this second phase, draws upon this drive-psychology and upon the topographical model of mind; any under- Freud’s Mourning and Melancholia 215 standing of what Freud has to say about either melancholia or mourning in this paper is predicated upon a grasp of the above. One also needs to have an understanding of Freud’s theory of psychosexual development. Just a decade earlier Freud had written his groundbreaking Three essays of the theory of sexuality. In this controversial yet extraordinarily modern book, Freud described what he saw as phases of heightened libidinal investment of different body parts, or erotogenic zones (see Sandler et al., 1997). Moving through the oral, anal and phallic stages in the Žrst 5 years of life, he argued that one can observe degrees of Žxations and regressions to these early psychosexual stages (ranging from the normal to the pathological) throughout adult life. As you will see, much of his work on melancholia centres around the regression to orality. Yet, there is more to Mourning and Melancholia than a relatively straightforward description and comparison of the two conditions in terms of drive-psychology within topographical and psychosexual developmental frames of reference. Along with the sister metapsychology paper, On narcissism, written the year before, the content of Mourning and Melancholia marked the end of this middle period and heralded the start of Freud’s third phase of work. In these papers Freud described the concepts of ‘narcissism’, in which he postulated that the ego could take itself as an object of love, and the ‘ego ideal’, a body in the mind made up of a constellation of both idealised self and identiŽcations with parental Žgures. While the realisation that the ego could be libidinally invested blew apart Freud’s earlier conception of drives being either sexual or self-preservative (it appeared to Freud at this point that they were all sexual), the description of the ‘ego ideal’ put him on the track of identifying the third agency in mind, the ‘super-ego’. Just 8 years after he had written Mourning and Melancholia Freud published The ego and the id—which perhaps could have been more helpfully entitled ‘The id, ego and super-ego’—which describes for the Žrst time the structural model of mind. In this book he outlines the role of the newly ‘discovered’ agency, the ‘super-ego’, that complex critical body that operates as a control or standard against which we measure ourselves. In one sweep Freud not only explained the existence of the emotions of guilt and shame, but also the psychological origins of culture. Melancholia In Mourning and Melancholia Freud uses the latter in order to elaborate upon the themes of narcissism and identiŽcation, so clearly articulated in the 1914 narcissism paper. Typically, Freud entices the reader by describing the symptoms of what he calls ‘psychogenic’ melancholia: ‘a profoundly painful dejection, cessation of interest in the outside world, loss of the capacity to love, inhibition of all activity, and a lowering of the self-regarding feelings to a degree that Žnds utterance in self-reproaches and self-revilings, and culminates in a delusional expectation of punishment’ (p. 244). Freud wonders why lowered self-regard should be a feature of this mental state. Somewhat disingenuously, 216 Mary Bradbury he adds that these self-reproaches do not Žt and appear to be directed against someone else. Freud then suggests that the depressed person appears to be unconsciously mourning over a loss of someone or something. Having skilfully caught our attention, Freud then takes time to expand upon his theme, much like a crime novelist. Freud suggests that in melancholia we see an identiŽcation with an abandoned, and therefore ‘lost’, object [see Wollheim (1991:93) for a good description of this process]. On losing the object, rather than directing freed libido to a new object—the healthy response—the melancholic appears to have withdrawn the freed libido back to the ego. This libido is then used to establish a narcissistic identiŽcation of the ego with the abandoned object; ‘Thus the shadow of the object fell upon the ego’ (p. 249). This explains why the ego is impoverished. Here ‘object loss’ has been transformed into ‘ego-loss’ (p. 249) and the old struggles between ambivalently loved object and ego are thus replaced by a new struggle—experienced as guilt—between the super-ego (here simply called ‘conscience’, p. 247) and the ego (see Fenichel, 1996). So, by holding the object within, as it were, the melancholic can enjoy, at leisure, the opportunity of vilifying it. Freud argues that this helps to explain the way in which the depressed rail against themselves so violently. He is suggesting that these lengthy, vocal and unashamed condemnations are actually not so much self-criticisms but internalised-object criticisms. This accounts for the uninhibited nature of such laments—‘They are not ashamed and do not hide themselves, since everything derogatory that they say about themselves is at bottom said about someone else’ (p. 248). In a Žnal twist to the plot, Freud notes that, as the real object—consciously unacknowledged—of loss (such as the unloving/unloved wife) is not uncommonly still close at hand, the lamenting melancholic can revenge themselves by causing great suffering to the root of all this pain. Expanding on his theme, Freud suggests that there is a regression from narcissistic object-choice, where the object is chosen on the model of the subject’s own self (Laplanche & Pontalis, 1988), to original narcissism, using the mechanism of identiŽcation or, rather, introjection (the more primitive or corporeal form of identiŽcation in the late ‘oral’ infant). ‘The ego wants to incorporate this object into itself, and, in accordance with the oral or cannibalistic phase of libidinal development in which it is, it wants to do so by devouring it’ (p. 250). Given the confusion arising from this ambivalently related-to, lost and identiŽed-with, object, within an overwhelmed ego, it is easy to see how harm towards the lost object can become self-harm. Sadism and hate—all the more powerful owing to the regressed state of the person—have been turned in upon the subject’s own ego. Melancholia can come to an end quietly, without leaving any trace, or can be marked by a contrasting period of mania. Noting that there appears to be the release of energy, experienced as joy, triumph and a readiness ‘for all kinds of action’ (p. 254), in mania, Freud discusses the possible reasons for this release before, somewhat tentatively, suggesting that the link must lie with the re- Freud’s Mourning and Melancholia 217 gression of libido to narcissism. Frustratingly—but quite understandably given the nascent state of his theorising at this time—Freud ends by saying that ‘it will be well to call a halt and to postpone any further explanation of mania’ (p. 258); he was to return to this in Group psychology and the analysis of the ego in 1921. Normal grief Freud notes that while many of the characteristics of normal mourning appear the same as those of melancholia, there is no loss of self-regard in grief. In this 1917 paper, he argues that this is due to the fact that in normal mourning there is no identiŽcation with the deceased. Instead, the survivor is undergoing the lengthy and painful process whereby, despite the strong desire to deny reality [remaining in a state of ‘hallucinatory wishful psychosis’ (p. 244)] they have consciously to face the reality of the loss of the loved-object and start to decathect libido from it. In his own words; ‘Each single one of the memories and situations of expectancy which demonstrate the libido’s attachment to the lost object is met by the verdict of reality that the object no longer exists; and the ego, confronted as it were with the question whether it shall share this fate, is persuaded by the sum of the narcissistic satisfaction it derives from being alive to sever its attachment to the object that has been abolished’. This time-consuming and painful ‘work of mourning’ (p. 245) leaves the ego inhibited and circumscribed. Once all the libidinal attachments are broken, suggests Freud, the ego is ‘free and uninhibited again’ (p. 245). Maybe a rather mechanistic description; just 5 years later when his daughter Sophie, pregnant with her third child, died of inuenza, Freud was very clear in his correspondence to his friends that this was a grief without end (see Gay, 1988: 392–393; Lussier, 2000: 671). There is no mania at the ‘end’ of the grieving process, proposes Freud, precisely because ‘the work of severance is so slow and gradual that by the time it has been Žnished the expenditure of energy necessary for it is also dissipated’ (p. 255). Pathological grief Freud also hypothesised about what happens when grief goes wrong. He argued that in this instance the ambivalent nature of the relationship towards the deceased when living has led to an obsessive state in which the mourning individual feels that they have somehow willed the death. Crucially, in the 1917 paper Freud was not saying that the pathologically mourning person has necessarily introjected or identiŽed with the deceased—‘These obsessive states of depression following upon the death of a loved person show us what the conict due to ambivalence can achieve by itself when there is no regressive drawing-in of the libido as well’ (p. 251). However, in the same passage, he acknowledges that these states of ‘obsessive depression’ (without identiŽcation) and ‘melancholia’ (with narcissistic identiŽcation) are closely allied. Indeed, if the pathologically mourning individual becomes melancholic, then one can presume that identiŽcation with the lost object is playing its part (see pp. 243 and 250). Later, in 1923, 218 Mary Bradbury Freud was to elaborate upon the central role of identiŽcation, arguing that the earliest of these regressive identiŽcations form the very nucleus of the developing super-ego (Editor’s note to Mourning and Melancholia, p. 242). In conclusion Lussier (2000), argues that Freud was not ‘interested’ in the subject of mourning. While he was no stranger to bereavement, having lost his father in 1896 and both his half-brothers in 1911 and 1914, he did not often write about his experiences of loss. This stands in great contrast to his frank and detailed descriptions of his dream life, given in his Interpretation of dreams (1900) (Lussier, 2000). Yet Freud acknowledged that his bereavements did have an impact upon his work in general, a fact he frankly admitted to, for example, when discussing his paternal bereavement in the preface of the 1908 second edition of his ‘dream book’ (Gay, 1988). Despite this piece of self-insight, however, it does seem fair to say that Freud did relish writing about the topic of grief. It is notable that he was most indignant when Fritz Wittels suggested that his theoretical ‘discovery’ of the controversial ‘death drive’ was inspired by his daughter Sophie’s death. Freud wrote a defensive letter of response, pointing out that Beyond the pleasure principle was written before the loss of his darling ‘Sunday child’ (Gay, 1988; Lussier, 2000). Psychoanalytic conceptions have permeated contemporary society, and it should come as no surprise to Žnd that the same is true of therapeutic and academic approaches to grief and mourning. Freud’s account of loss and depression, articulated in Mourning and Melancholia and elaborated upon for the next 24 years by Freud, was used extensively by pioneers of grief studies, such as John Bowlby (1961), Eric Lindemann (1944) and Colin Murray Parkes (1986). The inuence of Freud’s thinking can be clearly seen in current descriptions of grief [see Raphael (1984) for a typical example]. Indeed, as Stroebe and Stroebe (1987) note, no treatise on bereavement can afford to ignore this landmark paper. The idea of unconscious activity, Freud’s work of mourning, is tremendously helpful in explaining the existence of such phenomena as intense preoccupation with the deceased as well as hallucinations and dreams of the lost person. Meanwhile, Freud’s insights into the role of ambivalence and his work on identiŽcation with a lost object (not completely articulated or worked through in this 1917 paper) have had an enormous impact on how we view both normal and pathological grief. Critiques of Freud’s theories, his professional and personal life abound. While his description of normal and pathological grief has been proven to be awed (see Stroebe & Stroebe, 1987; Parkes, 1986), I think all of us will have to agree that there is something about his insights that stick. It is a testament to Freud’s genius that his almost off-hand account of mourning, written in prose that is moving, gently ironic and steadfastly unsentimental, has stood the test of time. Freud’s Mourning and Melancholia 219 Acknowledgements Warm thanks go to Anna Joynt, Rael Meyerowitz and Mark Swartzentruber for their helpful suggestions. REFERENCES ARCHER, J. (1999). The nature of grief: the evolution and psychology of reactions to loss. London: Routledge. BOWLBY, J. (1961). Processes of mourning. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 42, 317–340. FENICHEL , O. (1996). The psychoanalytic theory of neurosis. London: Routledge. FREUD, S. (1900). The interpretation of dreams, Standard Edition, Vols IV & V. London: Hogarth Press. FREUD, S. (1905). Three essays on the theory of sexuality, Standard Edition, Vol. VII. London: Hogarth Press. FREUD, S. (1914). On narcissism, Standard Edition, Vol. XIV. London: Hogarth Press. FREUD, S. (1915). Repression, Standard Edition, Vol. XIV. London: Hogarth Press. FREUD, S. (1915). The unconscious, Standard Edition, Vol. XIV. London: Hogarth Press. FREUD, S. (1920). Beyond the pleasure principle, Standard Edition, Vol. XVIII. London: Hogarth Press. FREUD, S. (1921). Group psychology and the analysis of the ego, Standard Edition, Vol. XVIII. London: Hogarth Press. FREUD, S. (1923). The ego and the id, Standard Edition, Vol. XIX. London: Hogarth Press. G AY, P. (1988). Freud: a life for our time. London: MacMillan. LAPLANCHE, J. & PONTALIS , J.B. (1988). The language of psychoanalysis. London: Karnac Books. LINDEMANN, E. (1944). Symptomatology and management of acute grief. American Journal of Psychiatry, 101, 141–148. LUSSIER, M. (2000). ‘Mourning and Melancholia’: the genesis of a text and of a concept. The International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 81. MIDDLETON , W., MOYLAN, A., RAPHAEL, B., BURNETT, P. & MARTINEK, N. (1993). An international perspective on bereavement-related concepts. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, 27, 457–463. PARKES, C.M. (1986). Bereavement: studies of grief in adult life. London: Peguin. RAPAPORT, D.A. & GILL, M.M. (1959). The points of view and assumptions of metapsychology. International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 40, 153–162. RAPHAEL, B. (1984). The anatomy of bereavement: a handbook for the caring professions. London: Unwin Hyman. SANDLER, J., HOLDER , A., DARE, C. & DREHER, A.U. (1997). Freud’s models of the mind: an introduction. London: Karnac Books. STROEBE, W. & STROEBE, M. (1987). Bereavement and health: the psychological and physical consequences of partner loss. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. WOLLHEIM, R. (1991). Freud, second edition. London: Fontana Press. Biographical note Mary Bradbury is currently training at the Institute of Psychoanalysis (a part of the British Psychoanalytic Society) and is an Honorary Clinical Associate at the Tavistock Clinic. She has a PhD in social psychology and is author of Representations of death: a social psychological perspective, published by Routledge in 1999. Copyright of Mortality is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.