Extract
[...] In fact, the work of mourning is initiated at the loss of relations with an 'loved' object. This loss leads to a more or less painful trauma, knowing that the ego is influenced by this situation of object loss and the individual may have a certain impression that they are also dead with the object in such a way that the lost object is idealized. The individual, led psychologically by this loss of object, may resort to functional split' as a means of confronting the 'harsh reality of loss'. [...]
[...] As for affliction, sorrow, and suffering, they are initially experienced by the subject himself, taking pleasure in cruelly suffering in the sense that they turn towards the ego internalizing the object. When auto-sadism takes on a greater magnitude to become masochism, 'the exits from melancholy open'. In reality, for there to be real masochism, a 'sadistic object' must be present. It is a sine qua non condition. Indeed, according to S. Nacht, 'masochism is a neuropsychopathic state characterized by the search for suffering.' (Nacht S Le Masochisme, Paris, Petite bibliothèque, Payot). [...]
[...] However, his case worsened with the breakdown of his car and he became melancholic. An electrical malfunction suddenly set the vehicle on fire. This loss, the source of his melancholy, is considered by the individual to be unconscious, so much so that he reproaches himself and feels guilty. His ego wants to appropriate the lost object, which has become a sadistic object, at all costs. He becomes masochistic because, in addition to self-mutilation, he takes pleasure in enduring his own suffering. [...]
[...] To what extent can one identify melancholy and masochism through the analysis of a clinical situation using data from psychoanalytic literature? Referring to the chronology of Freud's works translated into French, including Results Ideas Problems I and II, written between 1890 and 1938, Neurosis, Psychosis, and Perversion in 1973, The Technique of Psychoanalysis in 1953 and many others, we can understand that the study 'Mourning and Melancholia' precedes that of masochism. If we try to go further into psychoanalysis, particularly analytical and clinical psychoanalysis, the concept of masochism presents chronic atypical symptoms of melancholy based on the determination made by Freud himself at the beginning of the 1900s, more precisely in 1915. [...]
[...] T is elderly years old. He has never been married. He always lived with his parents until he was 41 years old, when they died suddenly, his father by drinking acid and his mother from a cerebral trauma. An old car left by his parents, which T never let break down, became an object of mourning, knowing that he was still in the process of experiencing a complicated mourning for the semi-tragic death of his parents. He was never able to properly mourn, so much so that chronically he would become melancholic. [...]
