Sigmund Freud - Mourning and Melancholia

Mourning and Melancholia (German: Trauer und Melancholie) is a 1918 work of Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis.

In this essay, Freud argues that mourning and melancholia are similar but different responses to loss. In mourning, a person deals with the grief of losing of a specific love object, and this process takes place in the conscious mind. In melancholia, a person grieves for a loss they are unable to fully comprehend or identify, and thus this process takes place in the unconscious mind. Mourning is considered a healthy and natural process of grieving a loss, while melancholia is considered pathological.

Freud's description of mourning in his work has no basis in empirical method.