On Melancholy : Robert Romanyshyn

I cannot accept.. the idea that melancholy is a neurotic condition. But this is precisely the view with Sigmund Freud espoused in his seminal essay “Mourning and Melancholia.” For Freud, melancholia was a failed mourning, specifically a kind of denial on the part of the ego mind to let go of the one who has died…. My experience of melancholy, however, convinces me that it is precisely the opposite of what Freud said….. Melancholy did not chain me to the past. On the contrary, it liberated me into the present, where I am more attentive to the tenuous beauty of the moment, more appreciative of it. In melancholy, I linger just a little longer with the other, perhaps to take a deeper look or perhaps to hold the hand just a fraction longer, because I know that this moment will not come again.

I believe Freud missed this poignant character…