Mourning and Melancholia
1917 work by Sigmund Freud
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Through Sigmund Freud and Psychoanalysis
In this essay, Freud argues that mourning and melancholia are similar but different responses to loss. In mourning, a person deals with the grief of losing a specific love object, and this process takes place in the conscious mind. In melancholia, a person grieves for a loss they are unable to fully comprehend or identify, and thus this process takes place in the unconscious mind. Mourning is considered a healthy and natural process of grieving a loss, while melancholia is considered pathological.
It has been argued by some writers that Freud's description of mourning in this work is not compatible with current models of mourning.
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