August 2013 // a precipitate of abandoned object-cathexes

'[e]ach single one of the memories and expectations in which the libido is bound to the object is brought up and hypercathected, and detachment of the libido is accomplished in respect of it' (

In mourning it is the world which has become poor and empty; in melancholia it is the ego itself'

In melancholia, accordingly, countless separate struggles are carried on over the object, in which hate and love contend with each other; the one seeks to detach the libido from the object, the other to maintain this position of the libido against the assault'

'So by taking flight into the ego love escapes extinction'

Just as mourning impels the ego to give up the object by declaring the object to be dead and offering the ego the inducement of continuing to live, so does each single struggle of ambivalance loosen the fixation of the libido to the object by disparaging it, denigrating it and even as it were killing it' (257).