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Karl [[Abraham ]] (1912/1989) was one of the first [[psychoanalytical ]] authors to concern himself with depressed [[patients ]] and to describe the extent of the [[ambivalence ]] of their [[drives]]. [[Narcissism ]] is [[another ]] characteristic of the depressive [[personality]], which that [[Freud ]] emphasized in "[[Mourning ]] and [[Melancholia]]" (1916-17g [1915]). Subsequently, Abraham (1924/1927) described the [[pregenital ]] underpinning of this ambivalence, given the importance of [[oral ]] fixations in these patients.

Freud compared the [[psychological ]] mechanisms of melancholia with those of mourning, which constitutes a depressive [[state ]] in the normal person. The essential [[difference ]] is the narcissism of the melancholic, whose [[intolerance ]] of experiences of [[loss ]] lead him to the oral [[incorporation ]] of the lost [[object ]] into the ego, where it is attacked by the [[superego]]. Conversely, the person in mourning finds himself faced with the painful difficulty of detaching the [[libido ]] cathected onto the [[lost object ]] so as to recathect it onto [[objects ]] in the [[external ]] [[world]]. However, the major problem raised by Freud's descriptions of the dynamics of melancholia is that he does not specify the variations in the psychological mechanisms corresponding to the different degrees of depressive states.

Melanie [[Klein ]] (1940) developed the comparison with mourning in her description of the depressive [[position]]. For her, the capacity to [[work ]] through one's mourning will depend on the possibility of resolving the reactivation of the [[conflict ]] proper to the depressive position that the conflict causes, i.e., the [[feeling ]] of losing [[good ]] [[internal ]] objects. Klein, like Freud, is imprecise when it comes to the different problematics of depression. However, [[clinical ]] [[analysis ]] shows a [[whole ]] series of levels of severity in this problematic between the [[working ]] through of the mourning [[process ]] (or during the integration of the depressive position) and the peak of this process, which Klein described as "a melancholia in statu nascendi" (Palacio Espasa). These depressive forms of conflict can be defined by reference to the predominant [[form ]] of the [[fantasies ]] expressing the experiences of the loss of the object of [[libidinal ]] [[cathexis]], and by the quality of the types of [[anxiety ]] experienced by the ego.

When fantasies of the catastrophic and irreparable [[destruction ]] of the object predominate, given that the [[subject ]] has very little confidence in his libidinal capacities, [[feelings ]] of [[guilt ]] become intolerable and feelings of sadness are massively denied. The ego can only resort to archaic mechanisms of [[defense]]: [[splitting]], [[denial]], projective [[identification]], [[idealization]], etc.—the mechanisms proper to schizo-[[paranoid ]] functioning or to the dynamics of extreme melancholia, with confusion between the ego and the object attacked (the "parapsychotic" depressive conflict proper to borderline or [[psychotic ]] [[structures]]).

When fantasies of severe and barely reparable damage or [[death ]] of the objects take the upper hand, the ego will be confronted with intense feelings of guilt and sadness. The significant [[repression ]] of the [[aggressive ]] drives towards the object (an [[aggressiveness ]] that reinforces the severity of the superego) will make it possible for the [[negative ]] affects to be partially denied. The ego will succeed in keeping the conflict interiorized but at the cost of diverse inhibitions in the functions of the ego. Thus, the [[symbolic ]] possibilities of the [[individual ]] are limited, but are not qualitatively affected. This very narrow form of repression is often insufficient, and the ego also has to resort to maniacal defenses or to defenses of a melancholic type, which then determine the clinical manifestations of mood disturbances.

When feelings of abandonment and [[rejection ]] prevail—i.e., when the experiences of loss are above all fantasies such as the loss of the object's love—depressive conflict will take a "paraneurotic form." The feelings of sadness are often [[conscious]], for guilt is less intense and can equally easily become conscious. The ego's greater confidence in its libidinal capacities gives these [[subjects ]] a profusion of fantasies of reparation that will counteract the damage done to the object, damage that is fantasized as resulting from their own aggressiveness. These fantasies underlie many of the [[neurotic ]] mechanisms of defense, especially those of an [[obsessional ]] kind, for example [[retroactive ]] cancelling, reaction [[formation]], etc. Under their influence, repression authorizes a greater possibility of symbolic expression, which distinguishes neurotic repression from the massive repression of the depressive type. Such a libidinal predominance changes the [[nature ]] of what is [[repressed]], for the counter-cathexis does not operate on aggressiveness alone, but also on the libidinal fantasies of an incestuous nature. This contributes to the [[sexual ]] differentiation of parental objects, bringing into operation the conflict occasioned by triangulation and the [[Oedipus ]] [[complex]].

See also: Abandonment; Acute [[psychoses]]; Adolescent crisis; [[Anaclisis]]/anaclitic; Anxiety; [[Dead ]] [[mother ]] complex; Depressive position; Essential depression; Guilt, [[unconscious ]] [[sense ]] of; Identification; Internal object; Lost object; Manic defenses; Mania; Melancholia; Mourning; "[[Mourning and Melancholia]]"; Psychoanalytical nosography; [[Self]]-[[punishment]]; [[Suicide]]; Superego; [[Transference ]] depression.