Difference between revisions of "Melancholia"

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Depression. Freud read melancholia as an example of how the super-ego could go overboard and cause harm to the individual subject; the melancholic's "super-ego becomes over-severe, abuses the poor ego, humiliates it and ill-treats it, threatens it with the direst punishments" ("New Introductory Lectures" 22.61).
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In the traditional language of psychiatry, <i>melancholia</i> denotes a type of depressive state characterized by its intensity and its responsiveness to biological antidepressant agents. The experience of the melancholic individual, often called "mental suffering," is characterized by profound sadness and lack of interest in the outside world. Melancholia brings about a form of pessimism that sees the future as blocked and unchangeable. Such pessimism is accompanied by ideas of guilt and unworthiness, which find expression through...
  
Depression. Freud read melancholia as an example of how the super-ego could go overboard and cause harm to the individual subject; the melancholic's "super-ego becomes over-severe, abuses the poor ego, humiliates it and ill-treats it, threatens it with the direst punishments" ("New Introductory Lectures" 22.61).
 
  
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[[Category:Psychoanalysis]]
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[[Category:Terms]]
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[[Category:Concepts]]
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[[Category:Sigmund Freud]]
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[[Category:Jacques Lacan]]
  
 
== References ==
 
== References ==

Revision as of 07:23, 18 May 2006


Depression. Freud read melancholia as an example of how the super-ego could go overboard and cause harm to the individual subject; the melancholic's "super-ego becomes over-severe, abuses the poor ego, humiliates it and ill-treats it, threatens it with the direst punishments" ("New Introductory Lectures" 22.61).

In the traditional language of psychiatry, melancholia denotes a type of depressive state characterized by its intensity and its responsiveness to biological antidepressant agents. The experience of the melancholic individual, often called "mental suffering," is characterized by profound sadness and lack of interest in the outside world. Melancholia brings about a form of pessimism that sees the future as blocked and unchangeable. Such pessimism is accompanied by ideas of guilt and unworthiness, which find expression through...

References