Mourning and Melancholia, Sigmund Freud (1917) – The 100-year anniversary of the publication of this landmark essay about depression

Abstract

This editorial celebrates 100 years of the publication of the landmark article, Mourning and Melancholia by Sigmund Freud in 1917. Freud's article continues to guide clinical psychiatrists in the distinction between the diagnosis of clinical depression and of prolonged grief. In this article, Freud argues that grief and melancholia have characteristics that overlap with those of depression but that they might be understood as different responses to loss. What makes Freud’s article unique is its descriptiveness of these two states, which elevates his text from a scientific one to having also an artistic element. It also draws out the distinctions between grief and depression through description, thus separating a natural human response from a mental disorder. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved)