Torok and Abraham, Introjection vs. Incorporation

Building on Freud’s “Mourning and Melancholia”, “Introjection vs. Incorporation” critiques Freud and Melanie Klein by exploring the origin of “fantasy”, which they define as the opposition to reality. There are two broad ways of dealing with fantasy: Introjection is “casting inside”, the subconscious replication of attitudes or beliefs, and/or the development of metaphors to understand… Continue reading Torok and Abraham, Introjection vs. Incorporation

Mourning and Melancholia by Sigmund Freud

Freud’s Mourning and Melancholia distinguishes between the two on the basis of self-knowledge. Melancholia is related to an “object loss which is lost from consciousness”– the melancholic might know rationally what they have lost, but not what specifically was lost to them. In mourning, there is “nothing about the loss which is unconscious” (245). In… Continue reading Mourning and Melancholia by Sigmund Freud

The Melancholy Assemblage by Drew Daniel

In The Melancholy Assemblage, Drew Daniel claims that melancholy in the early modern period constitutes an epistemological-affective assemblage, a collection of factors that is always plural; it emerges in individuals and yet is also a “social and material assemblage of bodies being together” (15). In being both interior and exterior, melancholy can be recognized but… Continue reading The Melancholy Assemblage by Drew Daniel

Amy Hollywood, Acute Melancholia

Amy Hollywood’s collection of essays is about the experiences of medieval mystics and other religious women, and modern attempts to reckon with and define their experiences. As she mentions in the first section of the introduction, she is interested in determining “what it might mean to say that the Virgin is real– actual, present, palpable–… Continue reading Amy Hollywood, Acute Melancholia