The New Black

1. Depression is a Multifaceted Response, Not a Singular Disease

Depression is a vague term for a variety of states.

Beyond Biochemistry. The book challenges the prevailing view of depression as solely a biological problem treatable with medication. It argues that depression is a complex set of symptoms arising from diverse human experiences, particularly those involving loss and separation. Reducing it to a mere chemical imbalance neglects the intricate stories and unconscious mental lives of sufferers.

Social and Economic Factors. The rise of market-driven economies and the breakdown of social support systems contribute to feelings of isolation and depletion, leading to depressive states. This perspective sees depression as a form of protest against the values of efficiency and economic productivity, a refusal to be reduced to a unit of energy in industrialized societies.

Mourning and Melancholia. The author advocates for reviving the concepts of mourning and melancholia to better understand the nuances of human responses to loss. These concepts offer more precise tools for exploring how individuals deal with separation, bereavement, and the inevitable losses that are part of human life, moving beyond the broad and often misused term "depression."

2. Mourning Requires External Validation and Social Rituals

Mourning, I will argue, requires other people.

Private vs. Public Grief. Freud's view of mourning as an individual task is incomplete. Every documented human society gives a central place to public mourning rituals. These rituals, customs, and codes, ranging from changes in dress to memorial ceremonies, involve not just the bereaved individual but the larger social group.

Erosion of Rituals. Modern societies, suspicious of public displays, tend to make grief more and more a private event, the domain of the individual. This erosion of social mourning rites may make mourning more difficult. The absence of a shared, symbolic space for grief can hinder the process of acknowledging and processing loss.

Dialogue of Mournings. The book emphasizes the importance of a "dialogue of mournings," where individuals can access their own grief through the shared experience of others. Public displays of grief, literature, and art provide a framework for articulating and understanding personal losses, offering a sense of validation and connection.

3. Melancholia Involves a Profound Loss of Self-Worth

The melancholic represents himself as ‘poor, worthless and despicable, and expects to be cast out and punished’.

Lowered Self-Regard. Melancholia is distinguished from mourning by a significant lowering of self-regard. The melancholic subject experiences intense self-reproach, self-reviling, and a delusional expectation of punishment. This goes beyond mere feelings of sadness or inadequacy; it involves a deep-seated conviction of worthlessness and a belief that one's very existence is a sin or crime.

Internalized Reproaches. The self-reproaches of the melancholic are, in fact, reproaches directed towards a lost loved one who has been internalized. The anger and hatred directed at the lost person are displaced onto the ego, which is now judged as if it were the forsaken object. The "shadow of the object" falls on the ego, subjecting it to merciless criticism.

Certainty vs. Doubt. Unlike neurotic individuals who may link feelings of unworthiness to specific aspects of their physical image, the melancholic experiences a much deeper complaint. It is the very core of their being which is unworthy or wrong. There is a certainty here rather than doubt.

4. Unresolved Anger Complicates the Mourning Process

Absence is never accepted without rage.

Ambivalence and Loss. The book highlights the role of ambivalence in the mourning process. It is not the intensity of positive feelings towards the lost loved one that is decisive, but rather the mixture of love and hate. Unresolved anger and hostility towards the deceased can significantly impede the work of mourning.

Displaced Anger. Hostility to the dead is not well tolerated, and anger is often displaced onto other targets, such as colleagues, friends, or even medical professionals. This displacement can manifest in various ways, including the emergence of an "enemy" in the bereaved person's circle after a significant loss.

Unconscious Fury. One of the most important discoveries of psychoanalysis is the fact that we can feel fury without being consciously aware of it. This unconscious hostility can emerge in dreams, slips of the tongue, or even acts of violence during sleep, highlighting the complex interplay between affection and hatred in our emotional lives.

5. Identification with the Lost Object Shapes Mourning and Melancholia

In mourning, we grieve the dead; in melancholia, we die with them.

Homeopathy with the Dead. In both mourning and melancholia, individuals identify with the ones they have lost, taking on aspects of their behavior, mannerisms, and even their ways of looking at the world. This "homeopathy with the dead" can manifest in various ways, from mimicking physical symptoms to adopting the interests and pursuits of the deceased.

Melancholic Identifications. In melancholia, the identification with the lost object is pervasive, with the self entirely swallowed up in an identification with the lost loved one. The melancholic might spend their days visiting every place the deceased had visited, looking at the world exclusively from the latter's place.

Building the Ego. Freud believed that our egos are made up of all the leftover traces of our abandoned relationships. Each broken relationship leaves its stamp on us, and our identity is a result of the building up over time of these residues. It's less 'You are what you eat' than 'You are what you've loved.'

6. The Arts Provide a Framework for Processing Loss

The arts in fact be a vital tool in allowing us to make sense of the losses inevitable in all of our lives?

Art as Mourning. The arts serve as a vital tool in allowing us to make sense of the losses inevitable in all of our lives. Literature, theatre, cinema, and the visual arts offer a framework for processing grief, providing models of creation that emerge from the turbulence of human experience.

Identifying with the Creator. We identify not only with the protagonists of works of art but also with the creator, someone who could make something out of an inferred experience of loss. This identification allows us to access grief and find ways to articulate our own experiences of loss.

Emotional Literacy. Rather than imposing a pre-set language on individuals, the arts expose them to a variety of ways of creating, from Shakespeare to Picasso, from J. K. Rowling to Tracey Emin. Children are thus confronted with the ways that individuals have responded in their own unique fashion to the experience of frustration, sadness and loss.

7. Mourning Involves a Shift to a Symbolic Space

In mourning, this reference point is not just removed, but its absence is registered, inscribed indelibly in our mental lives.

Framing the Loss. Mourning involves a shift from the real to the symbolic, a process of "making artificial." This is reflected in the ubiquity of frames, doorways, arches, and stages in the dreams of bereaved people, which serve to divide up space and draw attention to the artificial nature of what is being played out.

Monuments and Memorials. The very principle behind the idea of the monument is that the space cannot be allowed to remain the same as it was before the moment of tragedy and loss. Rather, in order to become memorials, they have to be changed: either through total demolition and then erection of a new structure, or through some alteration or intervention.

Reversal of Conventions. Many cultures have mourning rituals which involve the reversal of established conventions, such as men dressing as women or inverting social hierarchies. By reversing established conventions, these practices illuminate the symbolic, artificial nature of social reality.

8. Killing the Dead is Necessary for Symbolic Closure

One then has the choice of dying oneself or of acknowledging the death of the loved one, which again comes very close to your expression that one kills this person…

Symbolic vs. Biological Death. Mourning involves not just acknowledging biological death but also achieving symbolic closure. This often requires a symbolic "killing of the dead," a process of banishing and keeping at bay the restless spirits of the departed.

Death-Wishes and Guilt. The book explores the role of death-wishes and guilt in the mourning process. Unconscious hostilities towards the lost loved one can complicate mourning, leading to feelings of guilt and self-reproach.

Cultural Rituals. Many cultures have rituals that address the need to manage death-wishes and guilt, ranging from "comedies of innocence" that shift blame away from the bereaved to rituals of punishment that externalize feelings of guilt. These rituals serve to protect the mourner from their own self-reproaches.

9. Loyalty to the Dead Can Hinder New Attachments

We will never find a substitute [after a loss]. No matter what may fill the gap, even if it be filled completely, it nevertheless remains something else.

Conflicting Loyalties. A problem occurs when a pervasive sense of loyalty to the dead prevents any expression of ties to the living. This loyalty may be rooted in guilt feelings, with the mourner feeling an overpowering sense of owing something to the deceased.

Dimensions of Debt. The book distinguishes between two forms of debt: those that can be repaid and those that cannot. Confusing these two dimensions can lead to a severe disturbance in the mourning process, with the mourner feeling that they can neither pay nor leave the debt unpaid.

Symbolic Sacrifices. Mourning involves a certain sacrifice, a voluntary giving-up of something dear to us. This may take the form of a lock of hair or some other object thrown into the grave, symbolizing the mourner's consent to the loss and their willingness to move forward.

10. The Melancholic Impasse: A Blocked Symbolic Order

In mourning, we grieve the dead; in melancholia, we die with them.

Two Worlds. The melancholic subject is in two places at once, two entirely different spaces that cannot be superimposed. This split existence can lead to the feeling that the living are not really alive, with the melancholic viewing others as empty husks or unreal shadows.

Symbolic Impasse. At the heart of melancholia is a symbolic impasse, a difficulty in accessing word representations through thing representations. The melancholic is left in a limbo, unable to fully integrate their experience of loss into a coherent narrative.

The Call of the Dead. The melancholic's loyalty to the dead is so strong that they may choose to join them literally, through suicide. This is not simply a desire to escape pain but a fundamental inability to relinquish the attachment to the lost loved one and the world they represent.

Last updated: March 16, 2025