Mourning and Melancholia: Freud’s Thoughts on Loss

Danielle Trudeau, MA

Many of us have endured significant upheavals which has made grief and frustration a constant: the postponement or loss of a job, the inability to visit loved ones, changes in childcare, or the return to a family or parents’ home. Some of us have lost loved ones in an unexpected way. Plans may have changed. We’ve lost our basic routines, and meaningful opportunities or events have been canceled or might have to be. The future looks different, and vastly more unpredictable. Most of us are adjusting to changes in our lives that we hadn’t anticipated even a month ago. 

We are all dealing with loss—what psychoanalysis might call an object loss, the experience of losing something or someone deeply tied to our emotional or psychic stability.

Sigmund Freud published a paper in 1917, just in the wake of World War I, musing on the psychological responses to loss. In this paper, which he called Mourning and Melancholia, Freud argues that there are two different kinds of responses to loss, called (you guessed it!) mourning and melancholia. Both responses look similar in terms of mood or expression because they both deal with grief. But while mourning, in Freud’s view, is a finite and transforming painful process, melancholia is a persistent state, and takes root just outside of a person’s conscious understanding — often linked to unresolved ambivalent feelings towards the lost object.

In mourning, a person feels their pain for the loss in an external way. The world around them may feel changed, bleak, or heartbreaking, but as they allow themselves to feel and process this change, they can reform their feelings of loss: their pain slowly turns into a positive motivation to replace or move away from what they’ve understood is gone. Freud describes mourning as a process that ends with a kind of acceptance, in that the mourner can eventually feel motivated to participate in the external world, even though the object has ultimately changed or disappeared.

The way Freud describes melancholia, on the other hand, is more complex. In this response to loss, a person feels their pain in an internal way. Freud argues that the pain of object loss in melancholia is felt within the unconscious—meaning that the significance of the loss isn’t quite so apparent to the griever, even though the pain of it might still be deeply felt. This can result in ego attacks, where the pain of loss and conflict gets turned inward, harming the sense of self.

For that to make sense, it helps to understand a little about the unconscious itself. Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, believed that we all have conscious minds, which comprise the specific experiences, thoughts, and feelings that we are aware of every day. The unconscious, on the other hand, is the part of our mind that contains repressed, generalized thoughts and feelings—often difficult, aggressive, or traumatic—that impact us beneath the surface of awareness.

This unconscious set of feelings and experiences is outside of our awareness, but just because we aren’t thinking about them doesn’t mean they’re not there. This is where melancholia comes in: Freud believed that in melancholia, a loss is so unbearable that it gets relegated to the unconscious, where the grief exists but can’t get processed by the conscious mind. And so, the person gets a little bit stuck: the pain is felt internally and, without the specificity that the conscious mind could give it, the pain very often becomes directed toward the self. This internal conflict—shaped by narcissistic object choice, where the self is bound too closely to the object—becomes a deeply entrenched psychological dilemma, one that modern psychology and psychoanalysis continue to examine today.

Let’s think about an example. People experience all kinds of losses. One of the most common losses in these times is the loss of a job. It can help to know that many people are going through this at the same time, but the loss might still feel very personal to someone experiencing it.

Maybe they start to worry that the job loss means something awful about them: if only they’d been a more competent worker, or if only they’d demonstrated their gratitude for the job better. Maybe it reminds them on some level of something they’ve experienced earlier in life that made them feel similarly, like when their parents would send them to bed without dinner when they couldn’t understand their homework, and how unsupported and incompetent that made them feel. This triggers shame and worthlessness, and they start to feel like they can’t tell anybody about it for fear their friends or family will realize how unlikable or useless they really are. They start to feel like all their losses are their own fault and internalize that feeling of being “bad.” The feelings become so unbearable and generalized that they become part of the person’s unconscious. This is the effect of melancholia.

In mourning, by contrast, the same person might experience a job loss, and it might even trigger the same memory of being “bad,” but the pain of the loss doesn’t get generalized in the unconscious in the same way because the person has the opportunity to verbalize their pain. That might involve talking with someone they trust about the loss, expressing their pain and anger, and verbalizing their terrifying worries about what the loss might mean about them. Maybe it’s easier to talk with a therapist about their anger, anxiety, and ego attacks than it is with someone they know personally. Either way, by verbalizing these immense feelings and memories with similar feelings, the person can give them specificity and hold their feelings in perspective (i.e., in the “external world”).

Freud’s ideas have been around for a long time. What “mourning vs. melancholia” offers for us in a modern viewpoint is a distinct way to look at what happens when people are able to process their feelings, and when they’re not.

What Freud suggests is that, rather than holding the pain and anxiety of loss inside, properly mourning a loss occurs when we have a chance to make sense of it. And we make sense of our feelings by verbalizing them to someone who is really listening and trying to understand.

Now, if that sounds hokey or like wallowing in your feelings too much, trust us, it’s not. Taking the time to specify and understand the feelings we have due to loss and grief is one of the best and most immediate ways to keep our feelings from getting buried and left unprocessed. If we are incapable of describing our feelings and worries about what our losses mean, then they could get internalized, and we’ll really believe all the worries and pain are valid beyond reason.

In these difficult times, we’re all experiencing loss in some way. It might be reminding us of loss we’ve already experienced and never fully processed. And it might feel particularly lonely because we’re all having to isolate ourselves from one another. But having the space to express our pain and fears is of the utmost importance. A therapist can help you make real meaning of your feelings and the experiences you’ve had both in the past and now, and maybe even help you out of “melancholia” and onto the path of understanding.

Key Differences Between Mourning and Melancholia 

Loss is a human experience, yet coping with the painful process can differ for individuals. Whether it’s the loss of a loved one or the end of a relationship, sadness, depression, and withdrawal are natural. However, Sigmund Freud distinguished a subtle but powerful difference between two psychological reactions: mourning and melancholia. When you think of it, they might sound the same because both involve sadness for what’s been lost, but in reality, there are differences in how they affect human psychology and ways to resolve them. 

Mourning: Healing Through Grief 

Mourning is a natural way to respond to losing something or someone significant. The loss leaves a sense of emptiness but follows a specific rhythm. The pain turns you inward, leaving you to focus on the memories of the object or person lost. Daily life feels bleak, with no joy in anything that once gave you happiness. Despite the pain of the lost object, the self remains intact when mourning. 

Mourning usually fades as time passes. As the nervous system slowly processes and walks through the loss, your emotional energy—what Freud identified as a part of the libido—gradually shifts from the object loss and reinvests in something else. Life slowly regains its pace and ring. Although mourning may leave scars, it ultimately creates a doorway to returning to everyday life, like how cold, harsh winters give way to warm, blissful spring.

Melancholia: Loss Turns Inward

Melancholia is far more complex and problematic than mourning. On the surface, both may have similarities—withdrawal from the present, sadness, and loss of interest in things—but the core difference lies in how the pain is directed. The melancholic cannot identify the loss, or their grief mixes with personal failure. Instead of saying, “I wish she were here. I miss her,” the person makes unjustified self-criticism, “I am nothing. I am a failure.”

The melancholic is not just sadness. S/he is consumed by self-loathing, guilt, and worthlessness. Their grief and depression turn accusatory and self-destructive: “I don’t deserve love. I am useless.” Unlike mourning, where you heal with time, melancholy lingers and consumes you from within because of the unresolved conflict. Freud also suggests that in melancholia, the person identifies with the loss and attacks themselves, leading to self-criticism and self-blame. There’s no resolution, and it leads to clinical depression if melancholia persists.

Take a look at the table to identify the main differences. 

Mourning is how a healthy nervous system responds to a loss, where you endure pain but heal with time. Melancholia’s influence on the mind, on the other hand, takes a darker turn and may require extra care, compassion, and professional intervention. The simple distinction between how a mourner and a melancholic react to a loss is enough to point out who needs extra support to overcome ambivalent feelings and heal. 

Healthy Grief vs Pathological Grief 

Grief is how we respond to a loss, but not all grief follows the same pattern. Healthy grief, also known as normal grief, follows a clear course: you see the loss and its significance and slowly begin to accept its reality. You allow yourself to experience the pain of your loss and give yourself the time to heal and adjust to the new reality. 

Pathological grief is far more complex and worsens with time. It lingers and intensifies and traps your mind in overwhelming sadness and guilt. Extreme focus on hopelessness, bitterness about your loss, lack of trust, numbness, detachment, pining for the deceased, intense sorrow, and rumination are a few critical symptoms of pathological grief that can affect normal life and lead to critical mental health issues.

The main difference between healthy and pathological grief is identified in the resolution. Healthy grief allows you to focus on the healing process, while pathological grief blocks the entire process. Recognizing the symptoms of pathological grief early can save you from the personal struggle with proper care. 

Unconscious Grief: Understanding Melancholia

In his essay, Freud offered a psychoanalysis-based interpretation of unconscious grief. He explained how mourning brings the loss of an object into consciousness, while melancholia hides the pain deep down in the unconscious. The pain of losing an object gets absorbed into the ego, which fuses with the qualities of the lost object to produce extreme guilt, hopelessness, and self-criticism. This, what Freud called narcissistic object choice, is where love invested in another turns inward and becomes self-destructive. 

What’s truly fascinating about melancholia is how it shapes your life and influences your mental health without your realization. Freud’s interesting take on this psychoanalysis deserves respect not only for its psychological depth but also for how it differentiates between love, loss, and identity. 

When we review melancholia from his perspective, it’s not just sadness that heals with time. Instead, it’s an interesting portrait of the unconscious and its role in keeping unresolved feelings alive. His explanation of the narcissistic object choice, where the separation from the object of love feels like parting with one’s identity, brilliantly highlights that melancholia is not just a mere grief—it’s far more intense and internal. Once you understand unconscious grief, you will realize it’s more than an emotional wound—it’s your psyche’s internal turmoil. 

Why Freud’s Theory Still Matters in Modern Psychology

Although Freud’s psychoanalysis is over a century old, his contribution to understanding the concept of the unconscious mind and exploration of unconscious grief in the essay Mourning and Melancholia remain the cornerstones of modern psychology. His essay is the earliest framework for understanding the influence of hidden emotions on an individual’s behavior. While some of his ideas and methods are debatable, concepts like unconscious conflict, identification, and repression continue to guide psychological research and therapeutic practices. 

Freud paved the way for individuals who sensed things but could not voice them. His explanation of melancholia, where grief turns inward, remains relevant today, whether for neuroscientific research or mental health discussions. He is a pioneer in psychoanalysis, trauma studies, and cognitive therapy, and his insights remind us that every symptom has a story that should be understood.

Conclusion

Grief in any form, conscious or unconscious, portrays the complexities of the human mind. Freud’s exploration of melancholia gives a valuable understanding of how hidden consciousness works on losing an object, person, or identity. Reviewing his timeless contribution to the field, we realize how his core ideas on the role of unconscious conflict and its identification and interpretation remain relevant. Freud’s work serves as a poignant reminder of how healing begins when you acknowledge loss and how it can lead to mental and emotional complications when unseen ties remain unresolved. Understanding grief through his lens is important for understanding psychoanalysis and contributing new insights to the field.

FAQs

How does Freud’s idea of loss differ from modern grief theories? 

Freud proposed healthy grieving, in which one detaches from the deceased and reinvests in new relationships. Modern grief theories emphasize accepting living with loss while acknowledging its non-linear nature. Instead of drawing closures, contemporary approaches suggest developing a healthy, continued relationship with the deceased while integrating the loss into life.

Is melancholia the same as clinical depression?   

No, melancholia is not quite the same as clinical depression. According to Freud, melancholia is grief turned inwards, followed by self-criticism, hopelessness, and intense sadness. In contrast, clinical depression can be characterized by several symptoms and causes. However, today, psychologists recognize melancholic depression as a subtype of severe depressive disorder. 

What happens when mourning becomes pathological? 

When mourning becomes complex, grief doesn’t heal but lingers. The mourner struggling to let go of the deceased cannot get on with their life. The usual symptoms resemble depressive disorder: guilt, withdrawal, persistent sadness, and uselessness. Instead of healing and adapting, the person feels trapped in unresolved emotions, which risks their mental and physical well-being.

How is libido involved in Freud’s theory of mourning and melancholia? 

According to Freud, mourning releases libido through gradual detachment to form new attachments. In melancholia, libido regresses into the ego, prevents withdrawal, and merges with the qualities of the lost person or object. The result is self-destructive and hostile, and increases internal conflict, which results in pathological grief.

Can understanding unconscious grief help in mental health treatment today?

Yes, understanding unconscious grief helps in mental health treatment because the approach helps to uncover hidden losses or experiences that resulted in anxiety or depressive disorder. Freud’s analysis of repressed mourning helps psychologists and therapists to explore complex emotions and uncover unresolved attachments, guilt, or self-criticism. With this awareness, clinicians can develop healthier coping mechanisms so individuals can overcome their pain and regain emotional control.