Mourning and Melancholia

Melancholia is a disorder studies in psychoanalysis. It is a disorder characterized by guilt, hopelessness, depression and withdrawal. Mourning is a sign for grief. An expression of a loss one has suffered. The author compares the relationship that exists between mourning and melancholia. It is evident that dreams serve as a way people show the presence of mental disorders in them. The two conditions are caused by environmental factors that affect an individual. Mourning is caused by the loss of a loved object or person. It is characterized by sobbing. To some extent when people lose someone or something dear to them, they may exceed mourning and move to melancholia. This is generally caused by pathological disposition. Mourning and melancholia can become medical conditions if they reach a certain point. Mourning is left to subside on its own but melancholia must be clinically treated.

Melancholia is evident when a person has the following signs; losing interest in life, loss of capacity to love, painful dejection, utterances of self-reproach and self revealing. This leads to delusional expectation of punishment. Mourning has the same characteristics but present them in a mild manner. The person mourning has self-regard but losses interest in life. The person has a painful frame of mind and looses interest in the activities going on around him/her. There is no capacity of adopting a new object to replace the lost one. The person does not carry out any activity that reminds him/her of the loss and keeps off for a certain period. Some people may mourn excessively leaving no room to do activities that will distract them from the loss. In the case of excess mourning, the person has opposition for almost everything. The person may undergo hallucinations and wishful psychosis. At this stage, the person is headed toward melancholia. After a certain period the mourning comes to a halt, the person undergoes an ego boost, and their conscience is now free and uninhabited as it was before the loss.

In the case of melancholia the person’s reaction goes out of control. Melancholia is related to the object and after loss; something is removed from the conscience of the individual. In mourning, such a relation does not exist. In melancholia, the ego becomes completely bruised unlike in mourning where the world becomes meaningless. The patient who transitions from mourning to melancholia presents symptoms of self loathe and punishment. He goes back in his pats mentally and hates his past due to the present event. He/she undergoes moral inferiority and goes into a delusional state of mind. When describing himself or herself he despises himself and calls himself unworthy. In this state of self loathe the person tells the truth about every detail in their life and may end up causing permanent loss of self-esteem. This state of clinical mentality requires treatment.

An inferiority complex still exists even after recovery from melancholia. Some patients under treatment undergo reproach presenting genuine statements, which are aimed at their loved ones. The approach used around such people is submissiveness and humility. The people undergoing this situation present a condition called object-cathexis where they show a strong fixation towards a loved object. This is done in order to fill the void left by the loss. This condition helps repress the narcissistic attitude these people get. Further melancholia translates to serious psychiatric issues. Hysteria, which is the main resultant after many months of untreated melancholia.