5

In Deuil et mélancholie, Freud ventured to give a rigorous conception of melancholy. He compared it to mourning, distinguishing the work of mourning from the work of melancholy. They are two ways to consider object loss. In place of the jointed action-reaction, Freud substitutes this notion of work: work of mourning, work of melancholy. Neglecting the notion of Sehnsucht, which he uses elsewhere, he arranges object loss between «leaving» and «abandoning». With abandonment, it is not the intervention of a fourth negation which prevails, but the development of the tranversal aspect of melancholy.