In his seminal essay ‘Mourning and Melancholia’ Freud is grappling with the problem of loss. What happens when a loved object is lost? The loss of a loved object is obviously traumatic, but what is the source of this trauma and how does it manifest itself? For Freud the loss of a loved object creates trauma; the ego is attached to what it loves. These attachments are called cathexes. When these attachments are severed, however, the process of anticathexis, of withdrawing the attachments, is very painful. This is the source of trauma created by the loss of a loved object.

This trauma can manifest itself in one of two ways according to Freud, in ‘mourning’ or in ‘melancholia’. Mourning is the healthy and appropriate way to deal with grief. The characteristics of mourning are ‘profoundly painful dejection, cessation of interest in the outside world, loss of the capacity to love, and, inhibition of all activity’. To avoid the dejection of grief it would seem that the ego would naturally attach itself to a new love object and forgo the pain of mourning. Freud's topology of the psyche, however, precludes this. ‘[I]t is a matter of general observation that people never willingly abandon a libidinal position, not even, when a substitute is already beckoning to them.’ Freud argues that in the case of a loss reality-testing shows that the love object no longer exists and demands that all libidinal investments be withdrawn from it. This withdrawal cannot be done immediately.