Brief History
Melancholy has been a concept known, contemplated, studied, and sought to be defined since ancient times. Attracting people’s attention and interest, this concept has been evaluated by various disciplines within the subjectivity of each discipline itself. I believe the reason for this is that melancholy has a subjectivity of its own. This subjectivity has been objectified by different disciplines throughout history by adding secondary meanings and has been approached in line with the characteristics of each era. For example, in Ancient Greece, it was evaluated within the field of medicine and, under the influence of Hippocrates, it was treated within the framework of disease definition (Teber S. 2002). With the definitions of Theophrastus and Aristotle, it began to be used more in relation to literature and art; in the Middle Ages, however, efforts to conceptualize this notion were largely abandoned, and it was said to be nothing more than laziness and idleness. In modern times, melancholy was revisited and re-examined, becoming a common subject of inquiry among interconnected disciplines such as psychology, sociology, and literature. Aristotle’s question regarding melancholy, which attracted the attention of thinkers and writers—“Why is it that all men who have become outstanding in philosophy, statesmanship, poetry or the arts are clearly melancholic?”—opened a new door to understanding melancholy, highlighting that it is both different from depression and closely connected to creativity and thinking. Although melancholy contains affective states such as anxiety, fear, collapse, and sorrow, it can only be truly understood within its own subjectivity.
Contents
The melancholic human character appears in written culture for the first time in the epics of Homer (Teber S. 2002). Although the word “melancholy” is not used in Homer’s epics, the temperament and melancholic behaviors of certain heroes are presented in a very distinctive manner. Among these, the most sharply prominent are Bellerophon and Ajax; although not to the same degree, Agamemnon is also seen to display psychological behaviors typical of melancholy (Teber S. 2004).
In the form in which it appears in the Iliad, Bellerophon is punished by the gods by being condemned to live an utterly solitary life. Although the reason for this punishment is not known, the Iliad refers to the pains and sorrows Bellerophon has suffered (Homer, Iliad). “Bellerophon, as recorded in secular history, is the first melancholic personality, the first archetype, and he served as a source for the famous physician of Antiquity, Aretaeus of Cappadocia, in developing his approach to mania–melancholy” (Teber S. 2002). Aretaeus proposed that behind angry and aggressive behaviors lies the presence of sorrow and fear, and defined melancholy as a kind of darkening of the soul and internal organs that arises from anger (Teber S. 2002).
In Homer’s time, melancholy was explained through a serious chain of definitions (Homer, Iliad). This indicates the importance attributed to melancholy. The conceptualizations developed regarding the various forms of melancholy did not concern only the body or only the psyche, but rather reflected a particular kind of mind–body relationship/unity. Some of the words reflecting this are “darkening,” “anger,” “chest region,” and the “middle region” of the body (Teber 2002).
The middle region of the body includes the chest and upper abdominal area. This region is defined as the source of breath and as the place where the “seventh sense” resides, and it appears as an area comprising organs such as the lungs, stomach, and heart. Although this may at first seem like a purely physical explanation, the emphasis on this region actually points to a holistic mind–body unity. The reason is that the darkening of this region is not believed to be the result of a bodily defect alone, but rather of a psychogenic effect. According to the same view, certain everyday experiences can alter the state of this region and may even cause changes in the body’s anatomy. The word “darkening” refers, in parallel with the notion of the middle region of the body, to the darkening of the internal organs. According to this, as a result of anger, the invisible inner parts of the body darken and swell. This condition arises mainly from the intensification of emotions that are not expressed outward. Fears, excitements, sadness, and anxiety accumulate in the inner regions of the body, causing these areas to become darkened. “Darkening” manifests itself both through the accumulation of blood and bile in the upper regions of the chest and abdomen and as a result of emotional accumulations such as excitement and anger. This is an anatomical, physiological, and psychic darkening. The “darkening of the middle region” results more from events experienced than from organ defects (Teber S. 2002).
When we look at the Homeric epics, melancholy emerges as a consequence of heroes falling into anger or being punished by the gods; this leads to loneliness, distress, meaninglessness, and in some instances suicidal behavior. In addition, the emphasis on the body in the epics and the idea that certain bodily changes are in interaction with the psyche provided important clues for Hippocrates, Aristotle, and Theophrastus, who later went on to define melancholy in a highly detailed manner.
In antiquity, the predominant basic idea about melancholy was the doctrine of the four humors, known as “Quattuor Humores.” According to this, there are four fundamental humors in the human body, and each has a different role in determining a person’s temperament and character. These are blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile (Dörthe Binkert). The humor that produces melancholy is black bile (Pamuk O. 2003). These four humors also correspond to periods of mourning, elements, and seasons. They may increase or decrease depending on these periods. The idea that black bile is the cause of melancholy and even madness was generally dominant up until the Middle Ages. Among the important sources on the subject is “On the Causes of Bodily and Psychic Pathology” by Rufus of Ephesus (2nd century AD), which addresses bodily and mental analyses in depth.
In Hippocratic writings, melancholy, defined through black bile, fundamentally refers to a state of internal, intrathoracic, immanent, bodily health disturbance—of illness. Accordingly, as the fluid secreted by the gallbladder dries up, the gallbladder begins to exude a kind of poison. The stomach, liver, intestines, and head are affected by this negative condition, and as a result, confusion of consciousness appears. “In melancholic individuals, insomnia, episodes of fear, withdrawal from others, absent-mindedness, fits of anger, and sadness are seen. These individuals do not feel like talking. When asked questions, they respond briefly and reluctantly. The chest region of melancholic patients is particularly sensitive and painful. Vomiting may occur.” Although this seems largely like a bodily analysis, for Hippocrates melancholy is less an affective disorder and more a bodily-based illness (from Hippocrates, cited in Serol Teber 2004).
The book “Problems XXX” by Aristotle and Theophrastus is the first known work written specifically on melancholy. Its most important emphasis is the establishment of a link between melancholic temperament and art and creativity. At the same time, they asserted that the “black bile”-centered approach dominating antiquity was insufficient to explain melancholy.
Throughout the Middle Ages, melancholy was treated as a negative concept. This was, as is known, a perspective shaped by the influence of Christian culture. The positive understanding of melancholy in Aristotle’s work from antiquity did not find much resonance in this period. Melancholy, which in antiquity had been understood as a way of life, came to be regarded in the Middle Ages as impiety and rebellion against divine order and was thus conceptualized as acedia, a deadly sin. In other words, melancholy moved away from an immanent domain and shifted toward a transcendent one (Teber S. 2002).
In antiquity, melancholic personalities were typically associated with extraordinary individuals, whereas in medieval art they were depicted as sluggish, listless, lazy, and intellectually mediocre. For centuries, the concept of melancholy continued to be understood in this way (Demiralp O. 1999). When we reach the Enlightenment period, it is striking that the words acedia and melancholy were scarcely used.
In the “Encyclopédie” published by Diderot and his colleagues, the word “acedia” does not appear (Teber S. 2002). During the Enlightenment, melancholy began to be associated with new forms of life. Labels such as madness and insanity brought with them a negative outlook that also encompassed melancholy. When we recall that Michel Foucault’s “Madness and Civilization” covers the period between the 15th and 18th centuries, this situation becomes clearer (Foucault M. 1972). In these centuries, the places once reserved for lepers were assigned to the mad, and a great confinement took place. “In 1509, Erasmus wrote ‘In Praise of Folly’. Then came the works ‘Utopia’ by Thomas More and ‘The City of the Sun’ by Campanella, which can be regarded as projects for a kind of anti-mad society” (Teber S. 2002). These works are subjective responses against the growing madness of reshaping society driven by humanist thought. According to the general view of humanist writers, “where people are unhappy, poor, rebellious, barbaric, inclined to revolt; where the land is barren and marshy, cities filthy, public works poorly managed—there the people are restless. Society is like a sick body; its humors are not properly mixed and not sufficiently cleansed. There the soul is melancholic. Waves of madness appear. There is an urgent need for reforms” (Teber S. 2004).
The points mentioned above also reveal, in a sense, the attitude of the movement called humanism toward melancholy. Subjectivities and life forms that were beginning to free themselves from religious authorities were now forced to conform to the rigid normative systems of rationalism. Those who did not or could not conform to these rationalist norms were no longer labeled “sinful” or “godless,” but instead “irrational,” “insane,” or “wretched mad.” These “irrational madmen” were thus excluded from the “enlightened society.” The underlying reason was that melancholics and the mad were not part of the production process, in contrast to the heavily glorified work ethic of the time. As a result, as Foucault has shown, the so-called “idling consumers,” the mad, became the objects of psychiatry, which took on the authority to confine and “treat” them in the name of society and the state (Foucault M. 1972).
If we are to summarize the historical and theoretical development of melancholy, we can say that the link established in antiquity between melancholy and creativity and intellectual capacity gradually gave way to an identification with marginal characters living on the fringes of society. Perhaps it would not be wrong to suggest that, in this sense, melancholy has always had a certain conflict with ruling powers.
Melancholy from a Psychoanalytic Perspective
In texts produced within the framework of classical psychoanalysis on melancholy, the first striking approach is the one that connects melancholy with narcissism. “Researchers with a classical psychoanalytic orientation explain melancholy as a response to narcissistic injuries experienced by the individual.
Turning first to Abraham, we see that he listed five factors in the development of melancholy: an excessive structural predisposition to oral erotism, a fixation at the oral stage of psychosexual development, early and repeated frustrations related to love in childhood, the occurrence of the first major developmental disappointment before the resolution of Oedipal wishes, and the repetition of the primary disappointment in the person’s later life. According to Abraham, individuals who, due to a powerful superego, cannot express their aggressive feelings externally, turn these feelings toward themselves. In other words, drives are caught in a conflict between Id (the unconscious drives), Superego (the internalized moral authority), and Ego (the self). As a result, self-esteem declines, and the person begins to accuse themselves. At the same time, in order to regain the lost object of love, the internalization (introjection) of this love object into the ego is affirmed (Abraham, 1924).
In 1895, in a letter to Fliess, Freud attempted to define melancholy, including depressive states, from a purely neurological perspective. In a 1897 text in which he first announced the Oedipus complex, he stated that mourning and melancholy are distinct concepts, drafted a framework for his later work, and wrote the following: “Hostile impulses towards parents (wishing them to die) are also an inseparable part of the neuroses. They appear consciously in the form of obsessive thoughts. During the periods when affection towards one’s parents is active—during their illness or after their death—this hatred is repressed. In such periods, self-reproach over their death (that which is known as melancholy) or (through the idea of punishment) hysterically seeking to be punished in the same way as they were is an expression of mourning. As we can see, the identification that occurs here is something more than a mode of thought and does not relieve us of the need to search for motive.” In this passage, Freud superficially touched upon the differences between mourning and melancholy. At the same time, he referred to the role of conscience and identification. Freud drafted his first article on melancholy in 1915, and in that article he proposed that there is a connection between melancholy and the oral stage of libidinal development (Freud 1915). With the shift from a neurological to a psychological perspective, Freud realized that melancholy is a more complex condition than a mere “state of depression.” Believing that the dynamics of melancholy would only rest on firm ground once the frameworks of neurosis and psychosis became clearer, Freud, in his work “Mourning and Melancholia,” demonstrated how the object choice in melancholy is based on a strongly narcissistic foundation, whereas in mourning there is a more neurotic underpinning, and how libidinal investments differ in mourning and in melancholy. He also noted that the mechanism operating in melancholy becomes more complex under the influence of ambivalence and that the conflict is waged on multiple fronts (Freud 1917).
According to Freud, both in mourning and in melancholy there is a loss of a loved person, an ideal, or an object. However, in melancholy, unlike mourning, there is a disturbance in “self-regard” brought about by this sense of loss. This observation is one of the most distinctive aspects of melancholy. Freud describes the manifestations of melancholy as “profoundly painful dejection, cessation of interest in the outside world, loss of capacity to love, inhibition of all activity, and a lowering of self-regarding feelings that culminates in self-reproaches and the expectation of punishment.” (Freud 1915). In mourning, on the other hand, there is no devaluation or disregard of the ego itself; the devaluation of the ego and the weakening of the sense of self, along with the loss of self-confidence, are the most important differences between mourning and melancholy. Freud notes that whereas in mourning there is a real loss of an object, in melancholy—even when there is no actual loss—the person behaves as if they had lost a love object. He identifies three preconditions for melancholy: the loss of the object, ambivalence, and regression of the libido into the ego (Freud 1917).
The mechanism presented by Freud reveals that the self-reproach and self-denigration expressed by the melancholic person are in fact entirely directed at the object. On this point, Freud writes: “If one listens patiently to the many and various self-accusations made by a melancholic, one cannot help being impressed by the fact that the most violent of them are hardly applicable to the patient himself, but that with slight modifications they do fit someone else, someone whom the patient has loved or loves or should love.” According to Freud, the hysterical wish to be punished observed in mourning does not appear in the same way in melancholy. That is, in mourning and in melancholy, both the object choices and the investments in the object—as well as the quality and intention of these investments—differ at Oedipal and pre-Oedipal levels. Abraham pointed to the refusal to eat and drink as an indication of the ego’s wish to appropriate the object and to devour it in an orally cannibalistic manner. He emphasized that what is to be taken in, in melancholy, is solely the object; the effort to internalize the object and make it part of the ego is associated with a wish and effort to punish the object. Compared with the relatively simple mechanism of mourning, this condition in melancholy is highly destructive and damaging (Abraham K. 1908). Likewise, in his 1914 case history “The Wolf Man,” Freud discussed the crucial role of the oral stage in melancholy, stating that the ego wishes to achieve fusion with the object by devouring it, in accordance with the oral and cannibalistic phase of libidinal development. Freud showed that in melancholy, the object is to be swallowed in oral-cannibalistic fantasies, that libidinal attachment to the object regresses to narcissism, and that the ego, by attempting to appropriate the object, turns it into a part of itself (Freud 1914).
Turning to Melanie Klein, we encounter not only the fear of losing love but also a guilt feeling stemming from hostile wishes towards the hated object, associated with what she calls the “depressive position,” which is a period of major ambivalence (Klein 1946). Klein argued that failure to resolve this condition predisposes the child to future depression. In her later writings, Klein asserted that the depressive person’s suffering initially stems from the ego’s inability to place a good object inside, and thus an intense sense of “badness” becomes part of the self. She believed that establishing a secure relationship with a good internalized object is the key to a productive and creative life. Klein described a period of great ambivalence in the child’s development, called the depressive position, and linked depression to this period. According to her, when, between the second and sixth month, the child unifies good and bad object images into a single object, they become distressed by the idea that their sadistic and destructive fantasies may have damaged the mother. Klein called this anxiety, directed at the mother as a whole object, depressive anxiety and argued that it is followed by the depressive position. In this period, the child both strongly desires the love object and fears losing it, while at the same time hating it and thus feeling guilty. The central experience here is not, as in the paranoid–schizoid position, fear of being harmed by others, but fear of harming others. Guilt thus becomes the child’s primary affective experience. Klein held that depressive individuals have failed to successfully pass through this early depressive period and, as a result, have been unable to form “good” internal objects. She argued that such patients destroy their beloved internal objects through their own destructiveness and greed, and that consequently they are persecuted and tormented by the “bad” internal objects. While they long for the lost good objects, they suffer under the oppression of bad ones (Klein M. 1957). According to Klein, manic defenses such as omnipotence, denial, idealization, and devaluation are produced because of the longing for lost love objects. These defenses may be used to rescue and repair lost love objects, to get rid of bad internal objects, or to deny excessive dependency on loved objects. Clinically, such individuals deny their anger and destructive feelings toward others, display an euphoria inconsistent with their life circumstances, and show either idealization of others or, conversely, a dismissive and contemptuous attitude that denies the need for relationships. Another purpose of manic defenses is to gain a victory over the parents and to reverse the parent–child relationship. The wish for this victory leads to guilt and depression. Klein believed that this mechanism is partly responsible for the depression that develops following success. At such times, anxiety and depression are replaced by the denial characteristic of mania. Hypomanic defenses are also mobilized against the threat of grief or depressive affect. For some patients, success represents a loss of an ideal state; the pain of this loss may culminate in depression (Klein M. 1937).
Otto Fenichel maintained that the guilt feelings accompanying the commission of a crime and the satisfaction that accompanies the realization of an ideal are normal models for melancholy and mania. He argued that the depressive person suffers a narcissistic injury in childhood and thus equates self-esteem with love, so that when they do not receive the positive responses they expect from others, their self-esteem collapses. He linked suicidal fantasies to phantasies of gratifying the wish to merge with the lost love object (Otto F. 1974).
Silvano Arieti, on the other hand, described a distinctive ideology that is clearly present in severely depressed patients before the onset of the illness. According to him, individuals prone to depression live not for themselves but for what he calls the “dominant other.” Often the dominant other is the spouse, but it can also be an ideal or an institution (a dominant goal or dominant ideology). In a way similar to Bibring’s views, Arieti emphasizes the patient’s helplessness at the moment they realize that this is impossible. Such patients can neither imagine nor accept an alternative to living for someone or something else. They become aware that living for another is not working, yet at the same time they feel unable to change. If they do not receive the responses they expect from the dominant other or fail to reach impossible goals, they perceive life as worthless. For they cling tightly to an unrealistic yet indispensable life plan (Arieti S. 1977). Rado believed that melancholy stems from the punitive superego of the individual. According to him, the patient is punished by the superego because of unconscious hostile feelings toward a deceased loved one. The depressive person’s self-worth depends on external narcissistic supplies. Rado emphasized the depressive person’s narcissistic needs and self-confidence. He defined depression essentially as a sense of helplessness and suggested that anhedonia—the inability to derive pleasure from enjoyable experiences—is a key phenomenon in depression (Rado S. 1928).
The narcissistic regressions of the melancholic—that is, the internalization of the object and the processing of it within the self—lead to a splitting of the ego and the transformation of the object into a part of the self. One part of the ego becomes the conscience, while another part becomes the object. In other words, the conflict, which seems to be external or located in outer reality, actually occurs entirely within the self. However, in this process, the internal is separated from the external; that is, the doors to external reality are closed. These complex events that unfold within the ego sometimes lead to the devaluation of the object and the enjoyment of triumphing over it, and at other times to manic reactions, including grandiosity. Another pathway to mania emerges when the conscience, which is part of the ego, interrogates and ultimately overcomes other parts of the ego, arriving at the thought “I am not guilty.” In melancholy, the conscience, one part of the ego, sometimes criticizes the sadistic attitude toward the object that has become part of the ego, while at other times, while enjoying the victory over the internalized object, this same conscience gives rise to powerful feelings of guilt, and another part of the ego is subjected to narcissistic regression. As can be seen, melancholy, unlike mourning, is not a simple expression but a war with many fronts and a state of confusion. If we look closely, we see that the melancholic person sometimes resorts to manic defenses, often experiences depression, and occasionally experiences both mania and depression together (Rank O. 1923).
The fact that object choice in melancholy occurs on a narcissistic basis is vitally important for the melancholic. On this ground, at one end lies the ego, and at the other, the object. This ground, which allows for movement in both directions, enables the libido, in a situation of danger or imagined loss, to withdraw into the ego, thereby protecting the melancholic against the loss of the object or of an attribute of the object. Thus, in melancholy, rather than a simple mourning reaction, there is a danger of loss—real or imagined—and an attempt to protect the self against the fear and anxiety created by this danger. It is not clear exactly what is lost. With the internalization and identification with the object, a unity forms between the two. In fact, it is only through melancholy that the hostile feelings toward the lost love object can be fully realized and inflicted in a sadistic manner. This aspect reveals the sado-masochistic dimension of melancholy. On this point, Gabbard writes: “Object relations in such patients are sado-masochistic; either they feel utterly awful and worthless themselves, or they identify with the persecutor and torment those around them. Suicide is the culmination of this process” (Gabbard 1994). The partially realized sadistic feelings toward the internalized object are in fact the indirect gratification of the melancholic’s masochistic wishes. The melancholic’s description of themselves as entirely worthless and morally contemptible and their apparent self-humiliation actually express their ambivalent feelings toward the love object. We can call this a seemingly masochistic stance that, in reality, reflects intense sadistic wishes. In addition to the internalization of the object, we may also include withdrawal from external reality and narcissistic closure among the derivatives of masochism in melancholy. The melancholic’s efforts at self-degradation and self-denigration, which do not correspond to reality, may be seen as a negative narcissistic attitude. When we examine the functioning of this mechanism, we can say that in melancholy many concepts and multiple developmental stages of psychic life are intertwined, and that the conflicts belonging to these stages are highly archaic and regressive. The failure of external reality to become impoverished in the melancholic—instead of a thinning of external relations, there is a profound inner weakening—can be explained by the fact that the struggle is being waged on several fronts within the self and that libidinal investment is consumed in this struggle (Freud 1917). Thus, in melancholy, there is an intense, invisible inner struggle that demands a great deal of psychic energy.
The Problem of Inner and Outer in Melancholy
Although the experience of feeling “abandoned by internal objects” is universal, anyone may, under sufficient internal or external pressure, briefly experience this sense of abandonment. For some, however, this terrifying internal threat leads to a subjective experience of being a victim, and they construct psychological mechanisms designed to deny the presence of this inner state. Melancholy is one of these constructions. Freud stated that, in order to survive, the self needs to feel loved by its internal objects and continued: “For the ego, to live means to be loved by the superego.” The horror experienced by the melancholic is related to the loss of the feeling of being loved by anything within (Freud 1915).
In melancholy, as in mourning, the object is not actually dead, yet the person behaves as if it were, and they deny the fact that it is still alive. That is, the object’s not being actually dead but lost is equally traumatic for the melancholic. The personal world, thoughts, and subjectivity of the melancholic are so real that this world is almost equivalent to and just as effective as external reality. The internalized object of the melancholic is taken into the ego and becomes part of it by being transformed into an internal object. The melancholic’s cannibalistic internalization and “devouring” of the object and finally incorporating it into the self operate against the pleasure–unpleasure principle (Freud 1920). As is well known, the gratification of desire depends on external reality. In melancholy, however, gratification is achieved in a delusional way. In a sense, the melancholic’s attitude might be expressed as follows: “The object is within me; therefore, I do not need the outside world.” Once the object is incorporated into the ego, the need for external reality disappears. Yet external and internal realities are always in interaction, and one foot of internal reality necessarily remains in external reality. Therefore, this is perhaps the most important difference between mourning and melancholy. In mourning and sadness, there is a constant interaction between external and inner-psychic reality. Sadness arises due to the loss of the object in the external world. The loss of the object is not denied, nor is external reality. Moreover, there is no internal weakening or depletion; rather, there is a deprivation experienced in external reality. The object remains external, while its memories are internalized and re-experienced. In mourning, libidinal investment continues to be redirected toward external reality. There is no need for narcissistic regression. In contrast, in melancholy, once the object has become part of the ego, there is no longer any need for external reality, and libidinal investment continues in narcissistic form (the gratification experienced is thus false). This pseudo-gratification—that is, separating internal/psychic reality from external reality and the pseudo-pleasure experienced in the wake of these processes—never constitutes a true experience of pleasure. Consequently, the ego, which cannot experience real pleasure, becomes impoverished, weakened, and fragile. Because drives exist to be gratified, drives that are left ungratified or that reach only pseudo-satisfaction eventually lose their vitality and their ability to be worked through (to be satisfied). The drying up of instinctual life, in turn, weakens, thins, and exhausts the ego. Behind the doors that have closed off access to external reality, the ego enters an impoverished and barren world together with the internalized object, with which it had hoped to find satisfaction. The melancholic, by internalizing the object, establishes within the self the same splitting mechanism that separates internal and external realities. What makes melancholy so complex is this twofold splitting mechanism operating both within the self and between inner and outer. Once this mechanism is activated, external reality is suspended, and the self is made as independent as possible from it; subjective reality becomes objective reality. For the melancholic, subjective reality becomes the only reality. When the pleasure–unpleasure principle is activated, a pseudo-gratification mechanism of an autoerotic and delusional nature comes into play. As is known, the reality principle is the true gratification of desire, whereas the pleasure principle, in melancholy, is subverted. The reality principle allows for the gratification of unsatisfied drives (Freud 1920).
Because the hatred of the melancholic, which is originally directed toward the object, cannot be fully experienced openly and at its true source, the relationship remains on a narcissistic level. At this point, it is necessary to discuss hatred, which is a crucial feeling. According to Freud, the object is born with hatred. Hatred is the emotion that allows separation from the object and the formation of individuality (Freud 1897). The child cries, “Mother, where are you? Feed me,” and reveals its hatred. The melancholic’s hatred, however, is experienced in such a convoluted and indirect way that gratification remains on an autoerotic level; instinctual satisfaction cannot be achieved, and the relationship to reality becomes weakened. Object relations are experienced within, through a symbiotic mode of internalization. Within the “I,” there arises a “we.” Yet drives cannot remain ungratified forever. Autoerotic gratification creates only the illusion of fulfillment. This illusion is comparable to a hungry or thirsty person merely imagining that they are drinking water or assuming that their hunger has been satisfied—a dangerous and potentially lethal condition. Barbara Low’s concept of the Nirvana principle works in melancholy in a reversed way but leads to the same result (Low B. 1923). If maximum gratification leads to death, then persistent unpleasure leads to the same end. In other words, one might say that in melancholy there is a fundamental problem with “unpleasure.” The narcissistic basis of object choice in melancholy disrupts the functioning of the pleasure principle. Since instinctual gratification does not occur, the continuity of the psychic apparatus is endangered. In mourning, unlike in melancholy, the continuity of pleasure is interrupted but this interruption is nothing more than a postponement of pleasure. During mourning, abstaining from food, drink, and other positive activities serves to protect both internal and external reality. These negative signs are aimed at facilitating separation from the object and at enabling investment in external reality.
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Abstract
In this study, melancholic depression is evaluated from a psychoanalytic perspective. The study consists of three parts. The first part presents the definitions and conceptualization efforts of researchers on melancholy from past to present. In the second part, the evaluations of psychoanalysts—especially Sigmund Freud—on melancholy are discussed, with particular emphasis on the similarities and differences between mourning and melancholia. The final part, which can be regarded as a brief summary of the study, focuses on how the melancholic uses the concepts of external and internal reality.
Key Words
Psychoanalytic approach, mourning, melancholia.
Summary
In this study, melancholic depression is evaluated from a psychoanalytic point of view. The work consists of three sections. The first section covers the definitions and conceptualization efforts on melancholy made by researchers from earlier periods up to the present. In the second section, the evaluations of psychoanalysts, primarily Sigmund Freud, on melancholy are presented. Within these evaluations, the similarities and differences between mourning and melancholia are discussed comparatively. In the final section, which can be considered a brief summary of the entire study, it is shown how the melancholic uses the concepts of external and internal reality.
Clinical Psychologist
Fatih Sönmez
