Grief is a feeling that every single person feels at one time or another in their life. It can be due to the loss of a loved one, the end of a relationship, or a career coming to a bad end. While most people move on from their grief with the passage of time, there are some who hold on to the grief, ultimately draining them and leading them toward a darker path in life.
In 1917, Sigmund Freud published an essay titled “Mourning and Melancholia,” where he discussed the difference between the two scenarios in detail. Even though the essay was published over a century ago, it still helps therapists understand grief, depression, and the psychological effects on people when they cannot let go of that grief.
What is Mourning According to Freud?
According to Freud, mourning is something that people today refer to as grief. When you lose something or someone, your mind processes it psychologically, which is known as the “reality testing” of loss.
This basically means that the grieving person gradually accepts the loss. Any memory or emotion attached to that loss must be withdrawn and redirected toward the life ahead. This process is painful and slow, but it does pass. Freud saw normal mourning as a natural, if difficult, response to loss, one that resolves on its own without treatment.
There is no shame in grief, and no shortcut through it. But for most people, mourning eventually ends. The world returns to feeling real and inhabitable again.
What is Melancholia?
Freud believed that melancholia was the pathological counterpart to mourning. Today, melancholia is commonly known as depression, especially the one that arises due to loss. That being said, Freud pointed out something specific about the difference between melancholia and ordinary grief, and that is what makes his essay so valuable today.
When a person is in mourning, their world feels empty since they have lost something or someone externally. They themselves feel worthless and diminished. Instead of the loss staying outside, it moves within the person.
Freud described the hallmark of melancholia as an extraordinary diminishment of self-regard. The melancholic person disapproves of themselves constantly and relentlessly. They start to feel morally inferior, inadequate, or deserving of punishment. They start to feel worthless and express that feeling excessively.
Freud’s key insight was that this self-reproach is often not really about the self at all.
The Central Idea: The Lost Object Absorbed into the Self
To better understand Freud’s point of view on melancholia, you first need to understand one core concept of psychoanalytical thinking: when you love someone, you form a deep psychological bond with them, which becomes a significant part of your inner world.
When you lose that person through death, abandonment, or rejection, your mind does not accept it initially. Your mind does not want you to let go of that attachment. Instead of withdrawing emotionally from that person as in mourning, melancholy compels you to take a different unconscious path. You absorb the person you have lost into your own identity. According to Freud, the lost person or object is internalised rather than being realised.
Once that happens, the ambivalence that existed toward the lost person, because we rarely love anyone without some degree of frustration, resentment, or anger, is directed inward. The rage, disappointment, or anger that could not be expressed toward the person who left or died now gets redirected internally.
According to Freud, the self-hatred of melancholia is often displaced anger toward a lost person. This is why self-disapproval of people who are depressed often sounds like an accusation against someone else.
Why This Matters Clinically
Freud described depression in a way that is still valid today. Instead of treating low self-esteem and self-criticism as symptoms that need to be managed, he explored what self-disapproval is about and where it originated from.
This is a question that depression counseling at Nexum is designed to explore. When depression develops due to unprocessed grief or internalised loss, only addressing the surface symptoms often provides only partial relief. It is more important to understand the history beneath the depression to impact a bigger and lasting change.
This is the reason why some people start to feel depressed after losses that appear to be manageable or even positive. A promotion, moving to a new city, or the end of a relationship that you wanted to end yourself are examples of such positive losses. If you are still hanging on to what you lost, you might trigger a melancholic response, even though you wanted that positive loss.
The Role of Ambivalence
One of the most important aspects highlighted in Freud’s essay is his focus on ambivalence in relationships. He observed that melancholia often followed losses of complicated relationships.
This is the case in most significant relationships in life. You do not need to be in a toxic relationship to feel ambivalence. Every relationship has some level of frustration or conflicted feelings.
When you lose a person, the feelings that you never expressed or acknowledged can no longer be expressed or acknowledged. As such, they are redirected internally because the unconscious mind is still managing the conflict.
When you understand this, your guilt about the anger you are carrying after the loss or bereavement is relieved. Grief is not always just sadness. It often includes anger, resentment, relief, and love, all at the same time. When those feelings are not expressed or acknowledged, they will probably be directed inward as a punishment.
How Mourning and Melancholia Connect to Modern Understandings of Depression
Freud practised and wrote the ideas before the era of clinical diagnostic categories, neuroscience, and evidence-based psychotherapy. And even today his observations about depression remain valid.
Modern research confirms that loss and interpersonal conflict are two of the most significant triggers for depression. Interpersonal and anxiety therapy are the most well-researched treatments for depression, was directly influenced by Freud’s ideas about mourning and the relational roots of low mood.
Attachment theory, which grew in part from psychoanalytic foundations, also reflects Freud’s core insight. People who experienced early losses, inconsistent caregiving, or relationships where love was conditional are more vulnerable to melancholic responses when later losses occur.
Contemporary trauma-informed approaches similarly recognise that what looks like depression in the present is often grief about the past, grief that was never given the space or the safety to move through. Online Trauma Therapy in Texas and Online Trauma Therapy in Chicago at Nexum offer approaches grounded in exactly this understanding.
Grief That Gets Stuck: When to Seek Help
Not all grief turns into melancholia. There are people who experience loss while having the support of people around them, their own resilience, and time itself. However, there are signs that grief may have turned inward, as Freud described and that professional support could help.
These signs include a persistent collapse in self-esteem following a loss, self-critical thinking that feels relentless and disproportionate, an inability to feel pleasure or engagement with life over an extended period, feelings of worthlessness or guilt that go beyond normal sadness, and a sense that something inside you has gone missing or died, along with what you lost.
Clients across Illinois, New Mexico, and Texas can connect with licensed therapists through Nexum who specialise in depression, grief, and the deeper relational patterns that shape how we experience and process loss.
What Treatment Looks Like for Grief-Related Depression
When depression has roots in unprocessed loss or internalised grief, treatment tends to go deeper than symptom management alone. Here is what that can look like in practice.
Psychodynamic Therapy
This approach is most directly aligned with Freud’s framework. A psychodynamic therapist will help you explore the relational history behind your depression, including the nature of what was lost, the feelings that were never expressed, and the ways those feelings may have turned inward.
Over time, the therapeutic relationship itself becomes a space where you can begin to experience and work through those emotions safely.
Grief Counselling and Bereavement Support
For losses that are more recent or more clearly defined, grief-focused therapy provides structured support for moving through the stages of mourning without getting stuck. Grief counseling can help you begin that process.
Trauma-Informed Care
When the loss connects to earlier experiences of abandonment, neglect, or emotional unavailability, a trauma-informed approach is important. Many people find that a present-day loss reopens older, deeper wounds that also need attention.
Cognitive Behavioural Therapy
CBT can help address the patterns of self-critical thinking that develop in melancholia. CBT therapy helps identify and challenge the internal voice that has taken on the qualities of the lost object, clients can begin to separate their self-worth from the internalised relationship.
You Do Not Have to Stay in the Grief
Freud’s essay was not a pessimistic one, even though it explores some of the darkest corners of human psychology. His underlying belief was that the psyche has the capacity for repair, that mourning, however painful, moves toward resolution, and that even where melancholia has taken hold, understanding it is the beginning of change.
If you have been living under the weight of a loss that seems to have become part of how you see yourself, therapy can help you separate what happened from who you are. The anger, the grief, the ambivalence, these are not flaws in your character. They are the natural residue of loving someone and losing them.
You deserve the space to work through them.
Let Nexum Connect You with the Right Support
At Nexum, we work with clients across Illinois, Texas, New Mexico, and other locations, connecting them with licensed therapists who specialise in depression, grief, trauma, and the relational roots of emotional pain.
Whether your loss is recent or something you have been carrying for years, the right therapeutic support can make a lasting difference. Getting started is simple. Reach out to our team, and we will help you find the right fit.
