I would slightly alter what Freud has said. That which is lost is not clearly seen and is of an “ideal kind” because everything rather than something is lost. When the loved one in our life dies or leaves us behind, our entire world collapses into non-existence. Freud’s jilted girl finds nothing for which she wishes to live. When a prized project must be abandoned, then there is no reason to hope for anything good or productive in the future. When an ideology collapses, then a believer wanders aimlessly on the streets, finding nothing of lasting value in their life. I personally witnessed this ideologically based melancholia when I was working in the country of Estonia during the years when the Soviet Union was collapsing (Bergquist and Weiss, 1994). I found that many of the Estonians who were closely aligned with the Communist doctrine that they had been taught in school and that they believed deeply in their heads and hearts was now shattered. These “believers” (who were often men) seemed to be totally alienated from any sense of personal values or purposes (Hoffer, 1951).
Freud proposes that in a state of melancholia, one does not redirect emotional energy outward, transferring this energy to new objects, persons or ideas. Instead, the melancholic person directs the energy inward—there being nothing outside of oneself to which the energy can be directed. There iareonly a void and the absence of any reason to attend to matters outside ourself. For Freud, this internal direction produces self-reproach, guilt, and harsh self-criticism. We are somehow responsible for the undefined loss that has occurred. I once again offer Freud’s (1915/1957, pp. 246-247) own words:
“The melancholic displays something . . . lacking in mourning—an extraordinary diminution in his self-regard, an impoverishment of his ego on a grand scale. In mourning it is the world which has become poor and empty; in melancholia it is the ego itself. . . [A melancholic patient has] suffered a loss in regard to an object; what he tells us points to a loss in regard to his ego.”
At a later point in his career, Freud (1923/1990) suggested that the inward turning of energy is directed not by one’s ego (which is focused on adapting to external circumstances), but instead by one’s superego (which is focused, like the Id, on internal conditions). For Freud, the inward turning of libido can create an internal division, where the ego seeks to somehow cope with the lost object, person or idea (if the ego can identify what this elusive object, person or idea is), while the superego is engaged in a critical and judgmental onslaught of one’s sense of self.
Regret
In his book, Stumbling of Happiness, the noted psychologist, Daniel Gilbert (2007, pp. 195-196) provides an excerpt from the final scene of a famous movie:
“Who can forget the scene at the end of the I942 film Casablanca in which Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman are standing on the tarmac as she tries to decide whether to stay in Casablanca with the man she loves or board the plane and leave with her husband? Bogey turns to Bergman and says: ‘Inside we both know you belong with Victor. You’re part of his work, the thing that keeps him going. If that plane leaves the ground and you’re not with him, you’ll regret it. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow. But soon and for the rest of your life.’”
Gilbert (2007, p. 196) offers his comment on this scene:
“This thin slice of melodrama is among the most memorable scenes in the history of cinema-not because it is particularly well acted or particularly well written but because most of us have stood on that same runway from time to time. Our most consequential choices—whether to marry, have children, buy a house, enter a profession, move abroad—are often shaped by how we imagine our future regrets (“Oh no, I forgot to have a baby!”). Regret is an emotion we feel when we blame ourselves for unfortunate outcomes that might have been prevented had we only behaved differently in the past, and because that emotion is decidedly unpleasant, our behavior in the present is often designed to preclude it.”
