Mourning or Melancholia:Interpretation on Freud's Text of Mourning and Melancholia

The text ofMourning and Melancholiais a landmark for research of mourning and depression.Starting from the clinical phenomenon,the text expanded around the issue ofmourning or depressionand explored their psychological mechanisms.Mourning and depression are the reactions to the lost,in which individuals at a time deviate themselves from their normal lives,and show depression,decreased interests and limited capacity.However,there are essential differences between mourning and depression.The former is a normal psychological reaction while depression is pathologically abnormal.Meanwhile,though a mourning person often blames himself/herself,he/she is competent to recognize reality.In contrast,the self-reproaches of depressor are not only unrealistic,but also against a beloved object instead of themselves.The psychological mechanisms of depression are the loss of the idealized beloved object,unconscious ambivalence and narcissistic identification.