ABSTRACT
According to Abraham's contributions on depression, the suffering of melancholia arises out of the patient's perception of a self capable of hating rather than loving. That is why melancholia, unlike mourning, includes conscious hate for the subject's own self. Unlike a bereaved person, the melancholic feels not only that his world has become meaningless but also that his ego has been emptied out. In confirmation of his own unworthiness, he attributes to himself not merely guilt but all the negative qualities of the world, too. Freud points out that, in melancholia, it is not just the relationship with the lost love object that is altered, as in mourning, but in addition the relationship with the subject's own ego. Whereas in mourning the loss concerns the object, in melancholia it is the ego itself that is affected. Freud hypothesizes that the patient has had a traumatic early relationship with the love object.
