Sigmund Freud Mourning and Melancholia and Lars Von Trier’s Melancholia

This paper is mainly a comparison of Sigmund Freud’s Mourning and Melancholia and Lars Von Trier’s movie Melancholia. Melancholia is swaying in the descriptive psychiatry. Melancholia occurs in various clinical forms, however, the abstract form seems assured- an assurance that serves as a reminder of somatic rather than psychogenic affections[1]. Melancholia is a deeply painful depression where a person shows no concern towards the outside world. There is a loss of the ability to love, reticence in any activity and decreased sense of self-esteem that manifests itself in self-criticism and self abuse and will wait until the delirious punishment.

Melancholia is not so much the end of the world as it is about people’s reaction to it. And that is not a lie. In Mourning and Melancholia, Sigmund Freud (1915) references two remarkable syndromes, melancholia and mania, both too “normal” for everyone to understand within the actual experiences in relationship[2]. A puzzling feature of depression, it is that the worst is in the morning, around the time of awakening, during the evening, the depression tends to subside.

The material is limited; apart from the impressions in which each observer is at their command, to a small number of cases whose psychogenic was no doubt. Melancholy is awarded emotionally by a deeply painful indigestion, a repeal of the interest in the outside world, through the inhibition of each performance and the reduction of self-esteem, which manifests itself in self-blame and self-abuse and to delusional expectation of punishment increases.

Freud assumed that the majority of psychiatric disorders processed are caused by defective mourning processes of childhood did. Freud’s most famous case was the “Wolf Man”, to prove that every adult neurosis is based on a sexual shock in early childhood. Years later, the wolf man, whose identity was known, Freud’s interpretations were contrived in his opinion by the hair. “Wolf Man” is not a serious case history, but a novel episode of childhood trauma that went down in the world literature. Freud explained by the story of the wolf and the seven little goats, which the patient had known as a child. The dream is not simply about the fear of the wolf- it symbolizes the fear of the father[3].

Freud asserted that the speech of the analyzed relates images are indeed dream images. Lucid dreams that a person cannot materially have, are placeholders for psychophysical events that can in turn open up only indirectly, by words. And this description produced retrospectively only the image[4]. The basis of the psychoanalytic interpretation of the one on which to rely dream text and interpretation, therefore, has a very precarious state. Actually, it is a circular argument: The dream text is generated before the dream images actualize themselves.

The melancholic is narcissistic because he magnificently in all guilt and all evil, is accusing his own ego. The melancholic then, resides in the splendor of his own collapse. The Freudian concept of narcissism thus inherits the ambiguity of melancholy in the Western tradition; beginning with Aristotle, melancholy is the source of some of the most terrible forms of madness, but also exists as the most sublime creations. Even today, narcissism is considered a vital self-love, which allows the forgiving of ourselves, but also the root of the most destructive psychosis.

Lars von Trier’s film, Melancholia, is about the end of the world. The devastating planet Melancholia, hence, the name of the film, hits Earth. ‘Melancholia’ is most of all about the special psychological condition called melancholy. Two sisters are equipped with their own state of mind. One sister Justine is unbalanced and melancholic. The second sister Claire, in contrast, is joyful and seemingly balanced- similar to the natural state of life on earth. Throughout the film, Claire attempts to correct Justine’s futile mind-state, but the correction proves insignificant after the movie’s climax, when the characters learn of their devastating fate. At the movie’s end, Justine joins Claire and sinks into her own state of melancholy[5].

Lars von Trier’s Melancholia’ first and foremost is about melancholy – or about a woman who finds harmony in the end of the world. ‘Melancholia’ is a defense of melancholy and imbalance and thus an attack on the harmony, which in general is seen as the only acceptable mode of human existence[6]. Never has the state of melancholy been so thoroughly and comprehensively described and supported in a movie.

In some, the situation of melancholia is a place of deep fluid sadness- capable of movement. It must be remembered that for Freud and Lars von Trier, the term refers to the melancholic depression. Today it is considered that melancholy is a disease rather than a state of mind. It can also be recognized throughout the centuries, the terms have changed[7]. Now, thanks to contributors like Freud and Lars von Trier, grief demands its mourners to again look to the future.

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